We also had a major training element with the mission, training and building up the Peshmerga as a regular infantry army. They were still a light infantry force, but they were going to have access to some captured T-72s and APCs. A number of Western arms firms had an interesting trick where they would take crappy Soviet era equipment, and refurbish it. They could take a T-72, yank out the Russian diesel engine and put in a decent German version, rip out all the electronics and fire control systems and put in American or British, chuck the Iraqi-made ammo and get much better quality Western versions, take off the appliqué reactive armor and bolt on some nice Israeli upgrades, and any number of other things. You end up with a tank that was two or three times the quality of what you started out with, for a fraction of the price. It was still a T-72, but it could take on any other T-72 in the world and probably beat it. (Western gear could still blow it away without getting a scratch.) Elsewhere around the world, similar events were taking place where Western firms would rebuild Soviet planes like MiG-21s and -23s and Hind helicopters, taking basically decent airframes, gutting them, and rebuilding them as fairly decent gear at a reasonable price. The Russians hated us for it, since it really showed how shitty their equipment really was. We generally thumbed our nose at them.
In November, Marilyn and I flew back to Forward Operating Base Thunderbolt to share Thanksgiving dinner with the troops still on duty in Kurdistan. We were at peace, but it was a watchful peace, where you patrolled the border with your weapons locked and cocked. The 82nd, 2nd Strykers, and 1st Brigade had all been sent home, but the 101st was still patrolling the new border, and the British 7th Armored was based in Erbil as an armored backup. General Buford’s 47th Brigade Combat Team was still being created and hadn’t shipped in yet, but was scheduled for sometime around February, at which time the 101st and the 7th would transfer back out.
Marilyn and I flew from Andrews to Aviano, Italy, on the regular Air Force One, the 747. Erbil was still too small to handle something that needed such a long runway, so this time we transferred to a cleaned up ‘VIP’ version of a C-17 for the flight to Erbil. Marilyn commented that it was a lot quieter than our last flight in and out, and I just smiled at that.
This was definitely not a ‘state visit’ type of flight. The 101st was not going to have the band playing, and there wasn’t going to be a lot of pomp and flash. I did expect to meet President Barzani, as well as the commanders of the 101st and 7th, and there were going to be reporters along and already present and set up for the landing. (That was in case we went down in flaming wreckage on the final approach; the reporters were all looking forward to that!) Mostly, though, it was to simply sit down with the troops in a combat zone and share dinner. We would be gone the next morning.
We actually had two dinners with everybody. The first was at Thunderbolt in Erbil, and of course we invited the Kurds and the British to join in. The Kurds weren’t quite sure what to make of this strange American ritual, but we made sure to have plenty of extras, and President Barzani and his family joined us, along with any Peshmerga who happened to be around. As soon as we were done, however, Marilyn and I hopped into a Blackhawk and flew with a flight of Blackhawks and Chinooks carrying food down to a base south of Kirkuk, where one of the 101st’s battalions was deployed. This was a fair bit rougher than back at HQ, but a good hot meal of turkey and stuffing was greeted with some real appreciation.
As always, you end up with two sets of conversations, one with the officers and commanders, and one with the troops. When you are talking to the commanders, it’s always discussions of the overall objectives, liberally laced with ‘What do you need me to do to make this work?’ With the troops it’s always personal stuff — ‘How’s the food?’, ‘Getting your mail?’, ‘Are you able to call home?’, and the like. Late November in Kurdistan gets definitely nippy, so I asked about the weather and how they were holding up and patrolling, that sort of thing. I had been in their shoes once, and I cared; not all politicians do, and the troops can tell the difference.
I refrained from a lot of speechifying during the visit, but I did make sure I thanked everybody. I did this before the meal.
“I’ve been where you guys are. I’ve missed holidays and birthdays and anniversaries because I had the duty, or I was on alert. My son was born while I was deployed to Honduras, and my wife…” (I pointed over at Marilyn.) “… wasn’t too happy about that. So I thank you for what you are doing. I wouldn’t ask this of you unless it was important, but I do ask you, because it is important. It has been said that we sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to fight those who would harm us. Today, you are those rough men, and I thank you, and your nation thanks you for the protection you provide.”
Both times I spoke I received a standing ovation from the troops. Great kids. How many had died because of the orders I gave them?
I had a few more Cabinet replacements coming up. Tom Ridge in Defense had had enough, and was leaving; He suggested Robert Gates, who had been a big wig in the CIA under Bush 41 and Reagan, and seemed a good choice. I sort of remembered him from my first trip through. Also leaving the Cabinet was Paul O’Neill, who had been Treasury Secretary for six years. I decided to ignore all the various suggestions and I plucked a woman named Elizabeth Warren from the depths of the FDIC. There were howls of protest at this, since she was an academic and pro-regulatory, and worst of all, a Democrat! It wasn’t unusual to have somebody from the other party in the Cabinet, but they were almost always in the who-gives-a-shit areas, like Commerce or Interior or Veterans Affairs. It shows you are fair and bipartisan, without actually having to put up with them telling you what to do. It is quite unusual to name one to the Core Four.
The one thing I didn’t want was a repeat of my first life, where one Goldman Sachs partner after another ran Treasury like it was a piggy bank for investment bankers. Those guys made Bonnie and Clyde look good by comparison! I managed to ram her name through the Senate, despite a rather rancorous confirmation process. Her fellow Dems loved her, but the Republicans didn’t, and everybody was worried that she would screw up their cozy relations with the finance industry. I smiled and told her to lie through her teeth as necessary, and then once she was in, to rampage through them as needed. That cozy relationship was more than a little too cozy. I wanted the finance industry clamped down on, hard, and I wanted names for every open regulatory slot who would go along with that.
I also was privately pushing the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, to tighten up on every banking regulation he could get his fingers on. When Greenspan had retired in 2006 I had named Bernanke as the Chairman, mostly out of a lack of anybody else I felt comfortable with. He was both an academic and a member of the Federal Reserve Board when I named him. With Congress constantly wrangling and generally bought and paid for by both K Street and Wall Street, I wanted as much financial regulation rammed back into the system as I could manage without getting Congress involved. I also gave both Bernanke and Warren standing orders to slow down the housing bubble, and ignore whatever Congress wanted to do with that mess.