Meanwhile, in Washington, by late summer, despite the rhetoric of success, there were at least three major reviews of Iraq strategy under way inside the administration. The principal one was being done by Steve Hadley and the NSC staff; the others were at the Department of State, by Secretary Rice’s counselor Philip Zelikow, and at the Pentagon, under the auspices of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pete Pace.
After confirmation, though not yet sworn in, I first spoke my mind during a private breakfast on December 12 with the president and Hadley in a small dining room adjacent to the Oval Office. I said the president needed to send a message to Maliki that we had reached a decisive moment, a watershed for both countries’ leaders: “This is the time. What kind of country do you want? Do you want a country? Chaos is the alternative.” I said we needed to force the issue in Baghdad: Could Maliki deliver and, if he couldn’t, then who could? I said that our people in Baghdad were too bullish; they said there was “some reduction in sectarian violence,” but it was like the tide, coming and going and coming back again. What’s the follow-on economically and politically? I asked. I said that Syria and Iran needed to be made to understand that there is a price to pay for helping our enemies in Iraq. I suggested the Saudis had to get into the game, too: they said they were worried but they took no action. Finally, I asked what would happen if a surge failed. “What’s Chapter 2?”
We had been discussing when Bush might make a speech if he decided to change the strategy and order a surge. He had decided to hold off until I was sworn in and could go to Iraq as secretary and return with my recommendations. I urged that he not let events drive the date of the speech. If he was not ready, then he should delay. “Better a tactical delay than a strategic mistake,” I said.
On December 13, the president came to the Pentagon to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their conference room, long dubbed “the Tank.” The vice president, Don Rumsfeld, and I were there. I said little at the meeting because Rumsfeld was still the secretary and spoke for the Department of Defense. But the meeting offered me a good chance to get a feel for the chemistry in the room among the principal players, and for how the president conducted meetings. The session also gave me a chance to observe the chiefs and their interactions with Bush and Cheney. Bush raised the idea of more troops going to Iraq. All of the chiefs unloaded on him, not only questioning the value of the additional forces but expressing concern about the impact on the military if asked to send thousands more troops. They worried about “breaking the force” through repeated deployments and about the impact on military families. They indicated that tour lengths in Iraq would need to be lengthened to sustain a larger force.
I was struck in the meeting by the service chiefs’ seeming detachment from the wars we were in and their focus on future contingencies and stress on the force. Not one uttered a single sentence on the need for us to win in Iraq. It was my first glimpse of one of the biggest challenges I would face throughout my time as secretary—getting those whose offices were in the Pentagon to give priority to the overseas battlefields. Bush heard them out respectfully but at the end simply said, “The surest way to break the force is to lose in Iraq.” I would have to deal with all the legitimate issues the chiefs raised that day, but I agreed totally with the president.
I couldn’t help but reflect on an e-mail I had seen a year or so earlier at Texas A&M from an Aggie deployed in Iraq. He had written that, sure, he and his buddies wanted to come home—but not until the mission was completed and they could make certain that their friends’ sacrifices would not be in vain. I thought that young officer would also have agreed with the president.
Hadley and I subsequently had a long telephone conversation on December 16 in preparation for my trip to Iraq. He said I would report to the president on the trip on December 23, and then the national security team would meet at the ranch in Crawford on December 28 to decide the way ahead. He went through the proposed agenda for the Crawford meeting. It was all about a surge, and the strategy for Baghdad. Did Casey have the resources to provide sustained protection for the Iraqis in Baghdad, and did he understand that the surge was “a bridge to buy time and space for the Iraqi government to stand up”? Could we surge both in Anbar province—where Sunni sheikhs were beginning to stand up to al Qaeda and the insurgency because of their wanton viciousness—and in Baghdad, or could we handle Anbar with special forces and Sunni tribes willing to work with us? How would we describe the broader transition strategy—security, training, or both? If we embedded our forces with Iraqi units, would it reduce the number of U.S. troops in the fight?
On December 19, the day after I was sworn in, I talked with David Petraeus. I wanted to pick the brain of the Army’s most senior expert on counterinsurgency. I also wanted to get better acquainted with the leading candidate to replace George Casey. I asked him what I should look for in Iraq, what questions I should ask. Fundamentally, he said, the question was whether our priority was security for the Iraqi people or transition to Iraqi security forces. We probably couldn’t do the latter until we had improved the former.
A few hours later I departed on my first trip to Iraq as secretary. I was accompanied by Pete Pace and by Eric Edelman, the undersecretary of defense for policy. Going to Iraq as secretary of defense was quite different than going as a member of a study group. For security purposes, I flew in a military cargo plane, but inside the vast hold was a sort of large silver Airstream trailer—a capsule nicknamed the “Silver Bullet”—for me and a handful of others. I had a small cabin to myself with a desk and a sofa that folded out into a bed. The bathroom was so small you could not use it with the door closed. There was a middle section with a desk and seat for a staff member, and a small refrigerator, and another section where two or three additional people could sit. It was tight quarters for a twelve-hour flight but significantly better than the seats out in the cargo bay, and a lot quieter as well. Still, because there were no windows in the plane, it was a lot like being FedExed halfway around the world.
Upon arrival in Baghdad, I was met by Generals Abizaid and Casey and helicoptered to Camp Victory, a huge complex that included the Al Faw palace, our military headquarters, and the Joint Visitors Bureau (JVB). The JVB guesthouse was another of Saddam’s palaces and was ornately decorated in what I would call “early dictator,” with huge furniture and a lot of gold leaf. My bedroom was roughly the size of a basketball court and featured a huge chandelier. The bathroom was long on ornamentation and short on plumbing. I would stay at the JVB many times, and after the National Guard took over its management, living conditions would improve. Still, the relative plushness made me uneasy because I knew what kind of conditions our troops were enduring. My staff and I had no cause to complain—ever.
I spent a lot of my two and a half days in Iraq with our commanders. It was during this trip that I would first meet several of the Army’s warrior generals I would come to know, respect, and promote in the years to come, including Lieutenant Generals Ray Odierno, Stan McChrystal, and Marty Dempsey.
I had lengthy meetings and meals with all of the senior Iraqi government officials. These conversations were much more productive than what I had experienced when visiting as a member of the Study Group, which was not surprising, given how important I had become to their future.
I began a practice on this first trip that I would continue on all future visits to Iraq and Afghanistan, and also at every military facility and unit I would visit as secretary—I had a meal with troops, usually a dozen or so, either young officers (lieutenants and captains), junior enlisted, or middle-level noncommissioned officers. They were surprisingly candid with me—partly because I would not allow any of their commanders in the room—and I always learned a lot.