That day in the Tank, the president was very candid and reflective. He told the group assembled, “Many people have a horizon of an inch; my job is to have one that is a mile.” He went on to say, “We’re dealing with a group of Republicans that don’t want to be engaged. They think democracy in the Middle East is a pipe dream. We are dealing with Democrats who do not want to use military force.” He said that the psychology of the Middle East was “in a bad place,” and we needed to assure everyone that we were going to stay. He was concerned that drawing down to ten brigade combat teams in Iraq—about 50,000 troops—might be excessive, and we should look at the implications before September. Bush observed that “many in Congress don’t understand the military.”
The same day I met with Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, to see if he would have any problem supporting Pace for a second two-year term as chairman, historically a routine matter. While Pete’s first term wouldn’t be over until the end of September, senior military nominations are complicated at Defense and the White House, and in Congress, so we tried to get them on track months in advance. I wanted Pace to continue for a second term. We worked very well together, I trusted his judgment, and he was always candid with me. It was a good partnership. But my call on Levin turned out to be anything but routine. He told me he would make no commitment to support Pace and that renominating him was not a good idea. He said there was likely to be opposition; he would check around among the Democrats on the committee. I was stunned.
The next day I talked to John Warner, the ranking Republican on the committee. He was unenthusiastic and said the reconfirmation could be a problem; he would check around among the Republicans. The same day I talked to John McCain. He said someone new was needed, but he would not lead the opposition fight. Warner called back on the fifteenth to tell me that he had talked to Saxby Chambliss and Lindsay Graham, and all three of them thought putting Pace up again was a bad idea. Levin called the next day and told me Pete was highly regarded personally, but he was considered too closely tied to past decisions. Levin also told me that Democrats had been furious when the president used their confirmation of Petraeus against them. Indeed, Levin was explicit about this publicly: “A vote for or against Pace then becomes a metaphor for where do you stand on the way the war is handled.”
I then talked with Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate. He thought that Pace’s nomination would lead to a further erosion of Republican support on subsequent votes to change course on Iraq. More and more Republicans were feeling “quiet anger” that Bush was letting Iraq “sink the entire government.” His bottom line: if the Republican leadership of the Armed Services Committee was against Pace’s renomination, we probably ought to listen to them.
A week later Lindsay Graham told me that Pace’s confirmation hearing would be backward-looking; it would become a trial of Rumsfeld, Casey, Abizaid, and Pace—a rehash of every decision over the previous six years. The focus would be on mistakes made, and the process would probably weaken support for the surge. A new person could avoid all that.
I had kept Pete informed of everything I was doing and everything I was hearing. He was predictably stoic, but I could tell he was disappointed that people in the Senate who he had thought were friends and supporters were, in fact, not. (I reminded him of Harry Truman’s line that if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.) That said, he wanted to fight. I had two concerns with going forward. The first was for Pete personally. From firsthand experience, I knew better than most just how nasty a confirmation hearing could get. And based on what I was hearing from both Republicans and Democrats on the committee, there was at least a fifty-fifty chance Pete would be defeated for a second term after a long and bloody destruction of his reputation. I felt strongly that Pete should end a distinguished career with flags flying, reputation intact, and the gratitude of the nation. Iraq had become so polarizing that the reconfirmation process would very likely take down this good man. My second concern was that a bitter confirmation fight in the middle of the surge could jeopardize our entire strategy, given how thin support was on the Hill. Senator McConnell’s warning had struck home.
I shared this thinking with Pete and with the president, and the latter reluctantly agreed with me. And so, in one of the hardest decisions I would make, I recommended to Bush that he not renominate Pete. Pete and I agreed that the new candidate should be Admiral Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations. In my announcement on June 8, I said, “I am no stranger to contentious confirmations, and I do not shrink from them. However, I have decided that at this moment in history, the nation, our men and women in uniform, and General Pace himself would not be well-served by a divisive ordeal in selecting the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” Although I never said as much to President Bush or anyone else, in my heart I knew I had, for all practical purposes, sacrificed Pete Pace to save the surge. I was not proud of that.
There would be stories later that I had fired Pete and the vice chairman, Admiral Ed Giambastiani. The Wall Street Journal editorialized that I had ceded the secretary’s job to Senator Levin. In truth, it was the lack of Republican support for Pace and their weakening support for the surge and the war that worried me most. I had asked Giambastiani to stay on as vice chairman for another year, on the assumption that Pace would be confirmed for a second term. When I had to turn to Mullen, Ed had to give up his job because by law the chairman and vice chairman cannot be from the same service. I hated to lose Ed from the team, so I asked him if he would be interested in becoming the commander of Strategic Command. He declined and proceeded to retire.
In my job interview, I had raised with the president the need for stronger coordination of the civilian and military efforts in the war, and for the empowerment of someone in Washington to identify bureaucratic obstacles to those efforts and force action. I saw this person as an overall coordinator on war-related issues, someone who could call a cabinet secretary in the name of the president if his or her department was not delivering what had been promised. I told the press on April 11, “This czar term is, I think, kind of silly. The person is better described as a coordinator and a facilitator… what Steve Hadley would do if Steve Hadley had the time—but he doesn’t have the time to do it full-time.”
Hadley had come to the same conclusion and agreed with me that a coordinator was needed. The president, Cheney, and Rice were initially quite skeptical, but Hadley was able to bring them around. He offered the job to several retired senior military officers. All of them turned him down, one saying publicly that the White House didn’t know what it was doing on Iraq. Steve then asked Pace and me for an active duty senior military officer to fill the role. Pete and I twisted the arm of Lieutenant General Doug Lute of the Joint Staff to take the job. I felt we owed him big-time when he reluctantly said yes. Doug would prove an important asset in the Bush administration (though a real problem for Mullen and me in the Obama administration).
During late May and early June, Fox Fallon began to make waves. I had heard indirectly that he and his staff were second-guessing and demanding detailed analyses of many of the requests coming in from Petraeus. Fox believed the drawdown could go faster than Dave was proposing. Fallon made the mistake of taking a reporter, Michael Gordon of The New York Times, into a meeting with Maliki. I thought it was bizarre; it made Condi furious. On June 11, I received the “upraised eyebrow” treatment from the president when the subject came up, which I always read as What in the hell is going on over there? He wanted to know what action was being taken with Fallon. Subsequently, the president read that Fallon was talking about reconciliation in Iraq, a matter he told me was only Crocker’s business. I asked Pace to have a cautionary conversation with Fallon. Bush—and Obama—were very open to candid, even critical comments in private from senior officers. Neither had much patience for admirals and generals speaking out in public, however, particularly on matters that were considerably broader than their responsibilities. This episode of public outspokenness by a senior officer provoking a White House response would be the first of many I would have to confront.