How We Got Here (4/13/07)

I started this in March, and to follow up, here's more from Bob Woodward’s “State Of Denial,” the third book in his "Bush At War" series.

And to make it easier to go back and read prior posts related to Woodward's book, I set up an index page of sorts here.

Like you, I’ve read and heard the mea culpas from Paul Bremer, the former head of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority, saying that we could have accomplished what we set out to do had more troops been deployed at the beginning of the war (though Bremer, as noted here, almost immediately backpedaled on that when he uttered those words in 2004).

Well, instead of providing the excerpt where Bremer faced off with Jay Garner, I thought I’d include the following, where Frank Miller, an intelligence official contacted by Condoleezza Rice to oversee security issues and find out what was going on, traveled to Iraq in March before Bremer left to give you an idea of the confusion that seemed to be everywhere.

(pp. 289-292)

Rice was hungry for data and intelligence. She wanted to know what was really happening Over There. She kept telling Frank Miller, “Get me more. Bring me more.”

In March 2004, she sent Miller to Iraq to find out what things were really like. He went as her representative, but he tried to downplay his NSC credentials. Not helpful, he thought. He wanted to avoid polished-up presentations calibrated to impress and perhaps mislead visitors from Washington. He never asked to meet with (Paul) Bremer (head of the Coalition Provisional Authority). He didn’t think it would be useful, but he also didn’t want to risk being turned down. Such was Bremer’s perceived independence from NSC oversight.

Miller was struck by how the CPA had become a hermit city, ensconced in the Green Zone. He explained to one CPA official how he planned to fly around the country to visit with the U.S. military division commanders who were in charge of the tens of thousands of U.S. troops.

“Wow,” the CPA official said. “I wish we could do that. I wish we could see the country.”

It was telling, Miller thought. There was a sense of lethargy, like a bunch of basketball players passing a ball back and forth, back and forth, all reluctant to take a shot. It’s March and the turnover (to Iraqi leadership) is set for June, he thought. Quit passing and launch one at the basket.

Miller and the two people he’d brought with him – retired Army colonel Jeff Jones from the NSC, and an active-duty Army colonel from the Joint Staff – linked up with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad where the deputy commander, a one-star general named Mark Hertling, was an old friend of Miller’s from his Pentagon days. The group joined a Humvee patrol through an area just south of the notorious Shi’ite Baghdad slum, Sadr City. Screaming poverty, Miller thought – no fresh water, few working sewers. People were living in hovels and throwing trash and human waste in their front yards.

American soldiers in Sadr City and elsewhere now seemed to be acting as much as engineers as infantrymen, setting up water distribution points and improving some roads. But the only money to fund these ad hoc projects came from the military’s emergency funds, called the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP). Miller made a note that they would need to expand and expedite these CERP funds - walking around money for the battalion and brigade commanders – as they were the only expenditures that seemed to have a visible impact on the population.

Woodward then describes how Miller came across Iraqi kids who gave him the thumbs-up sign and he was glad that they seemed grateful, not realizing that it is the Iraqi equivalent of our middle finger.

Everywhere, Miller found that the Iraqi units suffered from a desperate shortage of vehicles and communications equipment. And the Civil Defense Corps – whose first mission was to guard valuable infrastructure like banks and other buildings, thus freeing up better-trained forces for more difficult duties – was a creature of the individual U.S. military divisions that parented them. One division had a one-week training program, another a two-week program, and a third had extended it to three weeks. It was ridiculous. Earlier that year, Miller learned, a two-star general had sent a report to Defense practically begging for national standards for the new Iraqi corps, but it hadn’t happened.

Miller recorded in his notes the comment of one division commander: “What’s wrong with Baghdad?” the commander said, meaning Bremer’s CPA. “Why won’t they give us the money to do this, and to do the reconstruction projects that need to be done?” Building Iraqi units, both police and military, and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure were prerequisites to an exit strategy for the U.S. But there was too little coordination to do the job right.

Iraq looked and felt like a war zone. Attacks had climbed again, to about 1,000 a month. Every soldier Miller saw carried a weapon. A mess hall Miller was eating in was attacked with mortars. When he flew in helicopters, the door gunners flew with weapons pointed down at potential targets. Miller wore a flak jacket, and he and his two aides traveled under the watchful eye of an earnest young lieutenant of field artillery from Kansas who was assigned as his escort officer. When they moved on the ground, it was in convoys with Humvees and big sport utility vehicles, a machine gunner on top of the Humvees and the escort officer with his M-16 pointed out the window. It was good on the one hand – Miller felt pretty safe – but then he thought, “We ain’t winning any hearts and minds this way.”

The rest of the chapter describes how Miller traveled to multinational units and found situations such as the one in Basra, where the British forces were teaching the Iraqis how to patrol; the problem was that they had English maps, so they told the Iraqis to memorize patrol routes instead (walk 10 blocks to a marketplace and turn right, 5 blocks to a mosque and turn left, then turn left again to return to the station. etc.).

Also, I’m sure we remember how Faux News and other propaganda sources continually fed us the Bushco line about how the U.S. was part of a multinational force once called “the coalition of the willing.” Well, keep that in mind when you read this…

Miller moved on to meet with the Polish commander of the Multinational Force, made up of troops from 23 nations. This was the shakiest part of the coalition, but an important fig leaf to suggest that the war was a broad international effort.

The Polish division commander told Miller, “I’ve got 23 separate national units. They have 23 separate rules of engagement. I pick up the phone. I tell the colonel in charge of the Spanish brigade what to do. He picks up his phone, calls Madrid and says, “I’ve been told to do this. Is it OK?”

Miller understood that this meant the Multinational division had little or no fighting capability.

Woodward also notes the discussion between Miller and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was the ground commander at the time of Miller’s visit, about the non-communication between Sanchez and Bremer (this book is a case study of avoidance behavior by people in government). Bremer, for his part, warmed himself up to Dubya directly to the point where he barely dealt with Rumsfeld at all towards the end of his time in Iraq.

And as I read this, I can’t help but wonder why Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry didn’t exploit all of this confusion more thoroughly for political reasons during the year of the presidential election (not primarily important versus the safety of our people, I know, though). I can assure you that, has the shoe been on the other foot, Dubya and Karl Rove would have done no less.