Dave recommended that in December 2007, we begin to transition from surge operations and gradually transfer responsibility for population security to the Iraqi forces. Specifically, Petraeus said he expected to redeploy U.S. forces from Iraq beginning in September 2007, bringing out the Marine Expeditionary Unit by September 16 and a total of five brigade combat teams (BCTs) and two Marine battalions between December 2007 and July 2008, and withdrawing combat support and service units as soon as feasible. That would bring U.S. forces in Iraq down to the presurge fifteen BCTs. He called for the United States to exploit progress in security with aggressive action on the diplomatic, political, and economic fronts. He proposed providing, no later than mid-March 2008, another assessment of mission progress and his recommendation for further force reductions beyond July 2008.
Petraeus said that a decision on going from fifteen to twelve BCTs would need to be made no later than March 2008. He went on to say that further drawdowns past July 2008 “will happen” but at a pace determined by assessments of factors “similar to those considered in developing these recommendations.”
So there it was. I met with the Joint Chiefs in the Tank on the twenty-ninth, and then Pace and I met the next day in the Oval Office with the president, vice president, White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, Steve Hadley, and Doug Lute. Pace presented Petraeus’s plan, as well as the views of Fallon and the chiefs. He said there was consensus among the military commanders and advisers on Petraeus’s recommendations, carefully noting that the chiefs and Fallon leaned toward more emphasis on speeding the transition to Iraqi security forces while Petraeus was still leaning more toward continued U.S. military emphasis on providing security for the Iraqi population.
I had organized the meeting to “prepare the ground” for the president’s meetings with Petraeus, Fallon, and others the next day. I wanted him to know beforehand what he would hear so he wouldn’t have to react on the spur of the moment; particularly on a subject as important as this, no president should ever have to do that, except in a dire emergency. I also wanted the president to be able to ask questions, including political ones, that might be less convenient (or inappropriate) to ask in the larger forum the next day. And as so often, he had a lot of questions. Was this recommendation driven by stress on the forces? Did this represent a change of mission? He was unhappy with the so-called “action-forcing” pressures on the Iraqis that suggested they could be “driven” to reconciliation, measures intended to bring pressure on the Iraqis to pass laws we (and Congress) believed necessary for reconciling the Shia, Kurds, and Sunnis. He thought the troop reductions must be explicitly “conditions-based.” He embraced the idea that a shift in strategy had been made possible by the success of the surge and conditions on the ground—not because of pressure from Congress, not because of stress on the fighting force, not as an effort to pressure the Iraqi government. I said that the changed situation on the ground enabled the beginning of a transition and noted that the surge brigades would not be the first to come out. Those would come from areas where the security situation was better, and the surge around Baghdad would be prolonged for a number of months. The vice president asked whether these steps put us on a path where we could not succeed. Pace responded, “No. They put us on a path where we can.” In the end, the president was comfortable with Petraeus’s recommendations. I think Cheney was reconciled but skeptical; I do not believe he would have approved the general’s recommendations had he been president.
On August 31, Condi and Fallon were to join the same group that had assembled the previous day in the White House. There was a hiccup before the meeting. Pace and I got calls from the White House about six-thirty a.m. raising hell over Fallon’s slides, which had been provided in advance and which stated that our presence in Iraq was a big part of the security problem there and created additional antagonism toward us in the region. He was focused strongly on the transition to Iraqi security control. Pace called Fallon and told him some of his slides didn’t square with views he had earlier expressed to us. Fallon removed a couple of slides, the tempest was quelled, and the meeting went forward at 8:35.
Bush spent nearly two hours in a Situation Room videoconference with Crocker and Petraeus in Baghdad. Petraeus again gave his overall assessment of the situation, including a number of encouraging political and economic developments not reflected in the Iraqis’ failure to pass key legislation advancing internal reconciliation. He went through his recommendations. Again, the president objected to what he called the “action-forcing” aspects. He said he didn’t believe the United States could force Iraqis to reconcile their long-standing internal hatreds. There was a lot of candid give-and-take. Crocker, Petraeus, and Fallon all directly disagreed with the president, saying that without U.S. pressure the Iraqis “just can’t act”; there wasn’t enough trust or confidence or experience. I said there was a difference between real reconciliation and making progress on issues. I thought our role was more like a mediator between a union and a company—we could help make them deal with issues and reach agreements; we didn’t need them to love one another. On troop levels, and particularly drawdowns between December and July, the president wanted to make sure that we couched them in terms of what we “expect” to happen versus what “will” happen, and that our decisions would be based on conditions on the ground. He wanted to proceed cautiously. Ironically, he was willing to be more aggressive with drawdowns after July. Fallon’s remarks were helpful, and he endorsed Petraeus’s recommendations.
That same afternoon the president met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pace reviewed the chiefs’ assessment of nine different options on the way ahead in Iraq, from a further increase in troops to a faster drawdown. Pete told the president that the chiefs had independently come out where Petraeus and Fallon were.
The president asked the chiefs if they had been driven to those recommendations by strains on the force, about which there was considerable discussion. Pace said no, that the recommendations were “resource-informed” but not “resource-driven.” Bush asked, “Why do people join the military if they don’t want to fight and defend the country?” The vice president chimed in, “Are we close to a time when we have to make a choice between winning in Iraq and breaking the force?” And the president said, “Somebody has got to be risk averse in this process, and it better be you, because I’m sure not.” At the end, the president said, “I will do what Petraeus has recommended.”
The president made a brief statement to the press after the meeting. I had talked with Hadley and Ed Gillespie, the president’s counselor and communications guru, and suggested that a less strident tone than usual and more of an outstretched hand to the critics would be useful for the upcoming congressional hearings. They agreed and drafted such a statement. But the president got wound up and made a very tough statement, engaging his critics. Afterward I turned to Hadley and Gillespie and asked, “So this is his happy face?”
The Iraq process came out pretty much as I had planned—and hoped for—early in the year and as the president and I had discussed privately months before. We would not finish drawing down to presurge troop levels until the summer of 2008. The president would continue to speak of “winning.” I was satisfied that our chances of failure and humiliating retreat had been vastly reduced. After all the earlier mistakes and miscalculations, maybe we would get the endgame right after all.