so much for listening to the "Commanders"

Outmaneuvered And Outranked, Military Chiefs Became Outsiders

By Bob Woodward, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 8, 2008; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/07/AR2008090702
426_pf.html

At the Joint Chiefs of Staff in late November 2006, Gen. Peter Pace was
facing every chairman's nightmare: a potential revolt of the other chiefs.
Two months earlier, the JCS had convened a special team of colonels to
recommend options for reversing the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Now, it
appeared that the chiefs' and colonels' advice was being marginalized, if
not ignored, by the White House.

During a JCS meeting with the colonels Nov. 20, Chairman Pace dropped a
bomb: The White House was considering a "surge" of additional troops to
quell the violence in Iraq. "Would it be a good idea?" Pace asked the group.
"If so, what would you do with five more brigades?" That amounted to 20,000
to 30,000 more troops, depending on the number of support personnel.

Pace's question caught the chiefs and colonels off guard. The JCS hadn't
recommended a surge, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Iraq commander, was
opposed to one of that magnitude. Where had this come from? Was it a serious
option? Was it already a done deal?

Pace said he had another White House meeting in two days. "I want to be able
to give the president a recommendation on what's doable," he said.

A rift had been growing between the country's military and civilian
leadership, and in several JCS meetings that November, the chiefs'
frustrations burst into the open. They had all but dismissed the surge
option, worried that the armed forces were already stretched to the breaking
point. They favored a renewed effort to train and build up the Iraqi
security forces so that U.S. troops could begin to leave.

"Why isn't this getting any traction over there, Pete?" Gen. Peter J.
Schoomaker, the Army chief, asked at one session inside the "tank," the
military's secure conference room for candid and secret debates. Was the
president being briefed?

"I can only get part of it before him," Pace said, "and I'm not getting any
feedback."

Pace, Schoomaker and Casey found themselves badly out of sync with the White
House in the fall of 2006, finally losing control of the war strategy
altogether after the midterm elections. Schoomaker was outraged when he saw
news coverage that retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of
staff, had briefed the president Dec. 11 about a new Iraq strategy being
proposed by the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank.

"When does AEI start trumping the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff?"
Schoomaker asked at the next chiefs' meeting.

Pace, normally given to concealing his opinions, let down the veil slightly
and gave a little sigh. But he didn't answer. Schoomaker thought Pace was
too much of a gentleman to be effective in a business where forcefulness and
a willingness to get in people's faces were survival skills. "They weren't
listening to what Pete [Pace] was saying," Schoomaker said later in private.
"Or Pete wasn't carrying the mail, or he was carrying it incompletely."

In several tank meetings, Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations,
voiced concern that the politicians were going to find a way to place the
blame for Iraq on the military. "They're orchestrating this to dump in our
laps," Mullen said. He raised the point so many times that Schoomaker
thought the Navy leader sounded "almost paranoid."

* * *

The atmosphere in the tank was tense Monday, Nov. 27, 2006, as Pace briefed
the chiefs and the colonels on a White House meeting about Iraq the day
before. J.D. Crouch, a deputy to national security adviser Stephen J.
Hadley, had presented the results of a secret strategy review on how to
respond to the escalating violence. "I walked out happy because I got my
views on the table," Pace said, making it clear that this was not always the
case.

The president, Pace told the group, is "leaning into announcing a new phase
in the war that will help us achieve our original end state. . . . By April
1, 2007, we would have five more brigades in Iraq."

Schoomaker was dismayed. Suppose the surge didn't work? "What is our
fallback plan?" he asked.

There was no fallback, Pace replied.

"Are people engaged on this," Schoomaker asked almost defiantly of the surge
proponents, "or is this politics?"

"They are engaged," Pace replied. But if progress is still lacking "after we
surge five brigades," Pace said, "then you are forced to conscription, which
no one wants to talk about." To mention a draft was to invite the ghosts of
Vietnam into the tank.

"Folks keep talking about the readiness of U.S. forces. Ready to do what?"
Schoomaker growled. "We need to look at our strategic depth for handling
other threats. How do we get bigger? And how do we make what we have today
more ready? This is not just about Iraq!"

Part of the chiefs' job was to figure out how to accelerate the military's
overall global readiness and capacity, Schoomaker said. "I sometimes feel
like it is hope against hope," he said. "I feel like Nero did when Rome was
burning. It just worries the hell out of me."

Several colonels wanted to applaud. It worried them, too. Others disagreed,
feeling it was more important to focus on the current war. But they all
maintained their poker faces.

"Look, no one is whistling 'Dixie' here," Pace told the group. "The
president and the White House understand the resource constraints."

It was not clear that anyone believed what the chairman was saying, or
whether even Pace believed it.

"We need to position ourselves properly for the decision likely to come,"
Pace said. "The sense of urgency is over Iraq, but not over the other
issues."

Mullen said the all-volunteer force might break under the strain of extended
and repeated deployments. "I am still searching for the grand strategy
here," Mullen said. "How does a five-brigade surge over the next few months
fit into the larger picture? We have so many other issues and challenges:
Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and places we are not even thinking about
today."

* * *

In Baghdad, Gen. Casey realized that he had lost a basic, necessary
ingredient for a commanding general in wartime. He had lost the confidence
of the president, a stunning and devastating realization.

He wasn't alone. The president was not listening to Casey's boss, Gen. John
P. Abizaid at Central Command, anymore, either.

"Yeah, I know," the president said to Abizaid at a National Security Council
session in December, "you're going to tell me you're against the surge."

Yes, Abizaid replied, and then presented his argument that U.S. forces
needed to get out of Iraq in order to win.

"The U.S. presence helps to keep a lid on," Bush responded. There were other
benefits. A surge would "also help here at home, since for many the measure
of success is reduction in violence," Bush said. "And it'll help [Iraq Prime
Minister Nouri al-] Maliki to get control of the situation. A heavier
presence will buy time for his government."

The rest of Iraq wasn't as tenuous as Baghdad, Abizaid said. "But it's the
capital city that looks chaotic," Bush said. "And when your capital city
looks chaotic, it's hard to sustain your position, whether at home or
abroad."

* * *

The chiefs' frustration grew so intense that Pace told Bush, "You need to
sit down with them, Mr. President, and hear from them directly."

Hadley saw it as an opportunity. He arranged for Bush and Vice President
Cheney to visit the JCS in the tank Dec. 13, 2006. The president would come
armed with what Hadley called "sweeteners" -- more budget money and a
promise to increase the size of the active-duty Army and Marine Corps. It
would also be a symbolic visit, important to the chiefs because the
president would be on their territory.

"Mr. President," Schoomaker began, "you know that five brigades is really
15."

Schoomaker was in charge of generating the force for the Army. Sending five
new brigades to Iraq meant another five would have to take their place in
line, and to sustain the surge, another five behind them. This could not be
done, Schoomaker said, without either calling up the National Guard and
Reserves or extending the 12-month tours in Iraq. The Army had hoped to go
in the other direction and cut tours to nine months.

Would a surge transform the situation? Schoomaker asked. If not, why do it?
"I don't think that you have the time to surge and generate enough forces
for this thing to continue to go," he said.

"Pete, I'm the president," Bush said. "And I've got the time."

"Fine, Mr. President," Schoomaker said. "You're the president."

Several of the chiefs noted that the five brigades were effectively the
strategic reserve of the U.S. military, the forces on hand in case of
flare-ups elsewhere in the world. Surprise was a way of international life,
the chiefs were saying. For years, Bush had been making the point that it
was a dangerous world. Did he want to leave the United States in the
position of not being able to deal with the next manifestation of that
danger?

Bush told the chiefs that they had to win the war at hand. He turned again
to Schoomaker. "Pete, you don't agree with me, do you?"

"No," Schoomaker said. "I just don't see it. I just don't. But I know right
now that it's going to be 15 brigades. And how we're going to get those 15
brigades, I don't know. This is going to require more than we can generate.
You're stressing the force, Mr. President, and these kids just see
deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan for the indefinite future."

* * *

"The tank meeting was a very important meeting," Bush told me during a May
2008 interview. "In my own mind, I'm sure I didn't want to walk in with my
mind made up and not give these military leaders the benefit of a discussion
about a big decision."

The president said that if he were just pretending to be open-minded, "you
get sniffed out. . . . I might have been leaning, but my mind was open
enough to be able to absorb their advice."

I told him that, based on my reporting, some of the chiefs thought he had
already decided, that they had sniffed him out.

"They may have thought I was leaning, and I probably was," Bush said, noting
that the chiefs had felt free to express themselves. "But the door wasn't
shut."

Still, Bush fully understood the power of his office.

"Generally," he said, "when the commander-in-chief walks in and says, done
deal, they say, 'Yes sir, Mr. President.' "

* * *

Just after Christmas, while in the United States, Casey got an e-mail from
one of his contacts. "Hey, you need to know that the White House is throwing
you under the bus," it read.

A couple of days later, Abizaid phoned Casey with a warning. "Look," Abizaid
said, "the surge is coming. Get out of the way." Casey was soon offered a
promotion to Army chief of staff, and in February 2007, he left Iraq,
replaced by Gen. David H. Petraeus.

The president said later in an interview, "The military, I can remember
well, said, 'Okay, fine. More troops. Two brigades.' And I turned to Steve
[Hadley] and said, 'Steve, from your analysis, what do you think?' He, being
the cautious and thorough man he is, went back, checked, came back to me and
said, 'Mr. President, I would recommend that you consider five. Not two.'
And I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Because it is the considered judgment of people
who I trust and you trust that we need five in order to be able to clear,
hold and build.' "

The views of those trusted people came largely through back channels, rather
than through the president's established set of military advisers -- Casey's
deputy saying that a surge wouldn't work with fewer than five brigades and
Jack Keane making the same case to Hadley and Vice President Cheney.

Hadley maintained that the number "comes out of my discussions with Pete
Pace."

"Okay, I don't know this," Bush said, interrupting. "I'm not in these
meetings, you'll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do."

So the president did not know what his principal military adviser, Gen.
Pace, had recommended. Pace, however, had told the chiefs Nov. 20, 2006,
that the White House had asked what could be done with five extra brigades.

* * *

The president announced the surge decision Jan. 10, 2007. Five more brigades
would go to Baghdad; 4,000 Marines would head to Anbar province.

The next morning, he went to Fort Benning, Ga., to address military
personnel and their families. His decision had been opposed by Casey and
Abizaid, his military commanders in Iraq. Pace and the Joint Chiefs, his top
military advisers, had suggested a smaller increase, if any at all.
Schoomaker, the Army chief, had made it clear that the five brigades didn't
really exist under the Army's current policy of 12-month rotations. But on
this morning, the president delivered his own version of history.

"The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to -- by the way,
that's what you want your commander-in-chief to do. You don't want decisions
being made based upon politics or focus groups or political polls. You want
your military decisions being made by military experts. They analyzed the
plan, and they said to me and to the Iraqi government: 'This won't work
unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence.' "

Bush went on, "And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, 'Mr.
President, it's not going to work until -- unless we support -- provide more
troops.' "

Brady Dennis and Evelyn Duffy contributed to this report.



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"Keep on, Keepin' on"
Dan Cedusky, Champaign IL "Colonel Dan"
See my web site at:
http://www.angelfire.com/il2/VeteranIssues/
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When I was in the Army the Joint Chiefs of Staff were gods I don't remember AEI or anyone else telling Johnson and McNamara, Nixon and friends from how to run Vietnam so much for that book that was supposed to keep this generations of Generals from selling out like the Nam era Generals did......can we say "oops we did it again"?

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