Plan of Attack, Part 8

On March 20, 2003, the first full day of war, Cheney and Scooter Libby met with Bush, Rice, and Andy Card at the White House. Rumsfeld called in and gave an assessment of the updated plan and the progress in the war. As a result of the strike on Dora Farm, Tommy Franks and Rumsfeld, with the president's approval, changed the plan so that the ground war actually started ahead of the "shock and awe" air campaign. Cheney said that it would be very important to win decisively. He remarked that after World War I, some Germans felt they had not truly been defeated because that war has been settled with an armistice. He may have also been thinking, again, about the first Gulf War.

April 9 was the end of Saddam's rule; Marines helped Iraqis topple a statue of Saddam in downtown Baghdad, and thousands rejoiced in the streets. Bush was happy but cautious. In a briefing that morning, he talked about postwar Iraq. "We still have a lot of work to do. Don't let the celebrations fool you." Later that afternoon, speaking to Aznar, he said, "The strategy is paying off, but you won't see us doing any victory dances or anything here because of the northern third of the country... We've still got work to do inside Baghdad."

On April 13, Cheney and his wife Lynne had Libby, Wolfowitz, and Ken Adelman and his wife Carol to dinner. Adelman is a formal aide of Rumsfeld's who had been the arms control director in the Reagan administration; he is also a guest commentator on Fox News and a regular writer of op-ed pieces. In particular, he wrote an op-ed supporting Cheney's August 26, 2002, statements about Saddam's imminent danger, another one on March 7, 2003, chastising the Administration for waiting for war as long as it had, and a pair in the Washington Post, in February 2002 and April 2003, stating that war with Iraq would be a "cakewalk" and chiding those who had believed that it would be disastrous.

Cheney said, at that dinner, that he had not appreciated at the time of the 1991 Gulf War the effects of abandoning the Shiites, and that the experience had made the Iraqis skeptical of the outcome of the new war. Of course, that lingering skepticism was a large component of why American intelligence was so shaky in Iraq before the war; no one believed the CIA could be trusted. Cheney also said that he knew, after 9/11, that regime change in Iraq really was going to happen. Bush had to go to Afghanistan first, but then, "soon thereafter," Bush knew he had to go to Iraq. He said that Bush's resolve on Iraq began in "the first minutes of the presidency." Finally, he stated that Colin Powell was a problem, because "Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do." In this Powell was in good company; Brent Scowcroft, Jim Baker, and Lawrence Eagleburger also had expressed reservations about the war publicly. Eagleburger had gone so far as to accuse Cheney of "chest thumping."

On May 1, Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, off the coast of San Diego, and addressed the nation to say that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Behind him hung a banner reading "Mission Accomplished." Though he did say that "we have difficult work to do in Iraq," Bush for the most part disregarded his own earlier cautions concerning premature declaration of victory. The speech was filled with clear statements that the war had ended in a victory for the coalition. "The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free." The war was "a noble cause" and "a great moral advance." "In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era." In the war on terror, "we have seen the turning of the tide."

General Tommy Franks retired in August 2003. Some people, including some of his subordinate generals, blamed him for the failure to stabilize postwar Iraq. This was unfair; Franks had consistently raised postwar stability concerns with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Myers. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld had remained focused on the war, not its consequences.

As 2003 progressed, Richard Armitage became more and more worried about the Administration's foreign-policy system. Eventually, Rice asked him about his apparent concerns. He told Rice that the NSC policy machine was dysfunctional, that policy was insufficiently coordinated and debated, and that she needed to be a stronger National Security Adviser. On October 12, a report appeared in the Washington Post that duplicated Armitage's criticism. Rice complained to Powell, Armitage's boss, who defended him, saying that "Rich had the guts to go talk to you directly about this, so I don't think he was the source." Powell thought Rice was more interested in blaming someone for telling the media about the problem than she was in fixing it.

I wanted to do one section on the Epilogue, but it'll be two. Stay tuned for Part 9.

See what I mean about the book being like the Iraq War itself? :-)

 
3:29 PM  0 comments

Plan of Attack, Part 7

In early March 2003, Tony Blair and his government were in trouble due to Blair's support of Bush in the push for war against Iraq. Bush recognized the necessity of continuing to work on diplomacy in order to preserve the support he was getting from his strongest ally, and he was worried that Blair might lose his job if Bush decided to go to war without the passage of a second UN resolution. He urged Blair to consider a lesser role in such a war, using British forces for "a second wave, peacekeepers or something. I would rather go alone than have your government fall." Blair appreciated the gesture, but was convinced that he and Bush were doing the right thing to act against Saddam, regardless of how the diplomacy went. "It's good of you to say that. But I'm there to the very end."

These considerations of Blair's future were necessary because of the continuing uncertainty over whether the UN Security Council would pass a second resolution explicitly authorizing war. Only the US, Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria were committed, though three African nations were on the fence. The final effort was to try to get the support of Mexico and Chile. Vicente Fox refused to answer whether he would support such a resolution; Ricardo Lagos, the President of Chile, said that Chile would not. At this point it became clear to the Bush Administration that no resolution explicitly authorizing force could win passage. At the very least, France, which remained committed to the idea that war was unnecessary, would veto such a resolution, and even if they did not, it was questionable whether the coalition could gain a majority.

But war, and war soon, had become a political and foreign-policy necessity for Bush, regardless of what the UN decided. American conservatives both in Congress and in the press were pushing for an end to diplomacy. They believed Saddam was dangerous and that stalling only made him bolder. American business leaders and the stock market were suffering because of uncertainty over whether war would really happen. Leaders in the Middle East were starting to complain. The seeming indecision was causing problems throughout the region, especially in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Covert operations inside Iraq had already begun, including sabotage which caused a train derailment between Mosul and Baghdad on March 15. And with over 200,000 troops in the Middle East, Bush was in a position where to back down would be, he thought, politically disastrous.

Bush, Blair, Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, and Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, the prime minister of Portugal, met in the Azores on March 16. There was some discussion of postwar planning. In speaking about the international context of postwar Iraq, Bush said, "The UN can help with many issues but should not run the country." The key point of discussion, however, was the continuing diplomatic situation. With the clear failure of the coalition to get a second resolution, the diplomatic efforts of the coalition nations had switched to preventing the introduction of a Security Council counter-resolution to delay the "serious consequences" promised in Resolution 1441. Such a resolution would take away any legitimacy granted by Resolution 1441 to a war effort.

The potential counter-resolution was headed off by working closely with Chile and Russia to maintain a Security Council stalemate. On March 17, at 8:55 am Bush met with the National Security Council, and Colin Powell reported that the diplomatic situation remained unchanged. Bush therefore decided to go ahead, withdraw the second resolution, and deliver an ultimatum that evening to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face invasion. The next day, Tuesday, March 18, Blair gave his own speech, which was widely acclaimed even by his critics. The Parliament ended up voting 396-217 for war.

The ultimatum expired after 48 hours. Therefore, the next day, March 19, after one final meeting with the National Security Council and a consultation with the field commanders in the Middle East, Bush gave the order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. The final war plan called for 48 hours of stealth operations. This was changed after the launch of the operation because of intelligence that Saddam would be in a specific location called Dora Farm. Bush decided that the intelligence was good enough to change the plans and openly strike at Saddam. This made it necessary to inform not only coalition members but also neighboring governments including Saudi Arabia. Prince Bandar was told at 8:28 pm, a little over an hour after Bush had made the decision to launch the F-117s that would attack Saddam. Upon leaving the White House, he immediately called Crown Prince Abdullah, speaking in a prearranged code to let him know that open warfare was imminent. Abdullah asked Bandar, "Do you know how soon the storm is going to hit?" Bandar replied, potentially blowing operational security if anyone was listening in on the call, "Sir, I don't know, but watch TV."

...

Good news! The only thing left is the Epilogue, which is covered in Part 8 and Part 9. Maybe I'll be done with this before I'm old enough for Medicare.

 
11:06 PM  0 comments

Plan of Attack, Part 6

The morning of Colin Powell's presentation to the UN, 5 February 2003, Bush and Rice met with 20 members of Congress, including several important Democrats. The Democrats were concerned. They thought Powell's forthcoming case was strong but saw no immediate threat to the US. They were worried about the inconsistency of American policies in Iraq and North Korea. They wondered how long American troops would have to remain in Iraq should war come, and they wanted, in particular, to be assured that WMD would be found in Iraq after an invasion. On the whole, though, Rice was able to convince them of the necessity of war, due to Saddam's continuing inspection-site shenanigans and Blix's unreliability.

Powell's presentation itself was a success. He used every scrap of intelligence that he found at all reliable, and he added his personal interpretations, making the potential danger underlying every intercept and photograph obvious to the audience. He was extremely persuasive; the presentation convinced most Americans that Saddam was a menace. Opinion on the world stage, of course, was not so favorable; on February 10, Jacques Chirac, Vladimir Putin, and Gerhard Schroeder issued a statement calling for continuing inspections. Furthermore, Blix's report of February 14 was, in part, a rebuke to Powell and to the US. Blix admitted that there were many remaining Iraqi accounting discrepancies, but he took pains to point out that the Iraqis by and large had been cooperative, and that there was no hard intelligence that they were playing games. He still believed that Iraq could be disarmed through inspections. Of course, the Bush Administration, by this point, was already committed to war.

The delays caused by the diplomatic situation were not without benefit to the Administration. Although the Iraq war plan update had been complete since late January, postwar planning was continuing in the Office of Special Plans headed by Douglas Feith. The postwar planning was done without significant input from other portions of the Defense Department, because communication between different parts of DoD was nonexistent. The budget office, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of Special Plans, and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) all acted as independent entities with no coordination. The Joint Chiefs, in particular, were left out in the cold. Franks and the rest of CENTCOM had little respect for them, and they were afraid of Rumsfeld and Feith. Rumsfeld was unable or unwilling to do anything about the problem; instead an NSC official, Frank Miller, uncovered communications issues and escalated them to Condoleeza Rice, who in turn would talk to Rumsfeld.

On March 4, Douglas Feith briefed Bush and the NSC on postwar objectives. These are the bullet points from his PowerPoint presentation (I quote Plan of Attack directly for these):

• Iraq's territorial integrity is maintained and the quality of life in Iraq is improved visibly.
• Iraq is seen to be moving towards democratic institutions and serves as a model for the region.
• The U.S. and coalition maintain freedom of action to carry out the global war on terrorism and WMD capture and destruction activities.
• Obtain international participation in the reconstruction effort.
• Obtain the support of the Iraqi people.
• Obtain the political support of the international community, including the regional states, preferably through a U.N. Security Council resolution.
• Place as many Iraqi faces in positions of physical authority as quickly as possible.
• Accomplish the above urgently.

As of today, well over a year after the end of major combat operations, none of these bullet points have been unambiguously achieved.

Read about the final days before war in Part 7.

 
10:36 PM  0 comments

Plan of Attack, Part 5

I know, at the end of Part 3 I thought there'd be only one more part. I was wrong. I suck. I'm sorry. I'll keep the data flowing as quickly as I can, though. I'm feeling motivated again.

Bush and Rice asked the CIA to put together a written document detailing George Tenet's "slam dunk" case for WMD, since they had been unimpressed by John McLaughlin's presentation. The document was sent to the White House on 22 January 2003. Bush handed it over to two senior officials who were also experienced lawyers: Steve Hadley, the Deputy National Security Adviser, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. Libby, in particular, had already been convinced both by Tenet's "slam dunk" language and by the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from October. However, as I wrote in Part 3 of this series, lack of confidence in the intelligence that went into this NIE was deliberately kept out of the NIE's Key Judgments, since the CIA had wanted to avoid ambiguity. It is therefore questionable whether Libby was aware of the CIA's concerns.

On January 25, Libby presented his lawyer's case against Saddam to a group including Rice, Hadley, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Armitage, and Karen Hughes (even though Hughes had formally left the White House staff by this time). Libby's presentation contained numerous strong, unequivocal statements: Saddam had WMD. Saddam was continuing to produce and conceal WMD. Saddam had many strong ties to al-Qaeda. Libby used many pieces of intelligence that McLaughlin had discarded for his own presentation because he felt they were unreliable, including unsubstantiated intelligence about meetings between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague.

Dick Armitage found the presentation appalling because of its exaggeration and willful ignorance of the quality of CIA intelligence. The other attendees, however, found the case convincing, although they wanted to weaken Libby's unequivocal statements in order to allow people to make up their own minds about the information. Since any public case was going to be made to the UN, Rice and Hadley chose Colin Powell to make it, for two primary reasons: Powell was the chief diplomat in the administration, and Powell had the credibility to make the case believable, since everyone knew that Powell was softer on Iraq than any other member of Bush's war cabinet.

On January 27, Hans Blix gave a report to the UN Security Council. He said that cooperation by Iraq was good on the whole, but that there were still problems. "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance -- not even today -- of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace." A few Administration officials, including Condoleeza Rice, thought that inspections might end up working after all, if Blix was going to be this tough on the Iraqis. Cheney, on the other hand, didn't believe it for a moment. The intelligence on Blix's activities showed that he was at best disguising and at worst lying about what the inspectors were doing, which in turn meant that inspections and the UN process were wasting time while Saddam continued to consolidate his position. Cheney's opinion carried the day with Bush, who became even more determined to go to war.

It proved to be politically necessary ask the UN for a second resolution in order to retain the support of Tony Blair, who had promised it to his party. So Powell got to work, using Scooter Libby's case as well as additional data from the CIA, the NSC, and Cheney's office. The evidence for WMD was sketchy, but Powell, like others in the Administration, was influenced by Saddam's past behavior. Cheney and Libby wanted Powell to present information on the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda connection as well. For the most part, Powell thought the evidence was too weak to make such a presentation. He did, however, include information concerning Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had been operating in Iraq since 2002 with Saddam's knowledge.

Will the UN resolution pass? Find out in Part 6!
 
9:01 PM  0 comments

Plan of Attack, Part 4

Administration members concluded, one at a time, throughout January 2003, that the president had decided to go to war, even though Bush himself was still questioning his advisors as to when he truly had to make a final decision. The advisors themselves each came to the conclusion through observing Bush's comments, actions, and priorities.

Dick Cheney made his decision by 11 January, when he invited Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar to his office. He wanted to communicate go ahead and communicate a decision to the Saudis; Bush's continuing interest in future points of no return was of no consequence to him. Also in Cheney's office were Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In order to convince Bandar of the necessity of Saudi operational support for an invasion of Iraq, Myers showed him a large map labeled TOP SECRET NOFORN -- top secret classified material that was not to be seen by any foreign national. Bandar, who was a former fighter pilot, asked for a copy and was refused, although Rumsfeld assured him that "we'll give you all the information you want."

Bandar needed certainty of war as a price for Saudi cooperation. He believed that Saddam, if he was allowed to remain in power as he was in 1991, would kill all high-level personnel involved in that war, including Bandar himself. However, if the US was truly intent on removing Saddam, the Saudis would support the war effort with direct involvement. Cheney told Bandar, therefore, that war was certain and "Saddam is toast." Rumsfeld did not contradict him, even though Bush had asked him about a forthcoming final decision poit less than two weeks prior.

Bandar wanted confirmation from Bush, so Rice invited him to meet with the president on Monday, January 13. Bush asked Bandar whether he had been briefed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Myers, and whether he had any questions. Bush said, "That is the message I want you to carry for me to the crown prince. The message you're taking is mine, Bandar." The message, of course, had originated with Cheney, but Bandar believed Cheney had told Bush to say that it was Bush's own message, in order to have Bush sign off on whatever Cheney had said.

Note that other staff members still did not believe the decision had been made, including Andy Card, the White House Chief of Staff, and, more seriously, Colin Powell. Bush rectified this before Powell heard it secondhand from Prince Bandar by informing him on 13 January 2003 that he had made up his mind.

At about the same time (early January 2003) Defense suggested taking control of postwar activity from State. This was logical, but it was very late in the game. The NSC staff had only about a week to prepare the document setting up the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in DoD. The office was both planning and implementation, and its resources were further strained by turf wars. Powell sent two State Department Arab experts to ORHA, but Rumsfeld kicked them out of the Pentagon. Why? Rumsfeld said that the postwar planning work had to be done by people truly committed to the war and supportive of regime change. Powell also wanted to assign seven other senior officials to ORHA but Douglas Feith wanted outsiders, because neither he and Cheney trusted the State Department insiders. People at the State Department were apt to argue that achieving democracy in Iraq was not feasible, and Cheney and Feith therefore thought that such people would not be sufficiently supportive of the president's stated policy of a democratic Iraq. Instead, they sought greater ideological purity in the postwar planning office.

Keep reading in Part 5.
 
6:31 PM  0 comments

More Posting Soon

I've been back from vacation in Ohio since August 31 (a good time was had; thanks, Rob and Adrienne), but immediately upon return I embarked upon a good week's worth of panicked studying for the GMAT. I took it on September 4, so at least it's over, but I've been feeling unmotivated since then. Plan of Attack is intimidating just to look at, much less to contemplate re-opening. I will, though. Expect something no later than the end of this weekend. It should be the last part of the summary, too. Feel the excitement!
 
6:20 PM  1 comments