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? :-)
