BUSH AT WAR, PART TWO B: (Meanwhile, back in the White House)
This shows you how bad communications were from the SF Teams. I don't know why these guys were not carrying Satellite Phones.
washingtonpost.com
Doubts and Debate Before Victory Over Taliban
Bush Demanded Advisers Be Patient
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 18, 2002; Page A01
From the second of three days of excerpts from the book "Bush At War," by Bob Woodward, an inside account of the internal debate within the Bush administration that led to U.S. military action in Afghanistan and the decision to aggressively confront Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (Simon & Schuster, copyright 2002):
On the evening of Oct. 25, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice called President Bush's personal secretary, Ashley Estes, and asked whether it was all right with the president if she came and saw him for a few minutes in the White House residence. Rice, along with Vice President Cheney and a handful of senior advisers, could see Bush on the spur of the moment.
"What's up?" Bush asked when Rice joined him a few minutes later in the Treaty Room. It was the end of a normal working day for the president, about 6:30 p.m. Bush had just finished his daily physical fitness routine and was still in his exercise clothes. He was not dripping sweat but had cooled down -- perhaps the right time for such a conversation, if there ever was.
Just over two weeks after the commencement of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance -- a loose confederation of warlords who opposed the ruling Taliban militia -- was making little progress on the ground. At a National Security Council meeting two days earlier, Cheney had addressed the core issue. "Do we wait for the Northern Alliance, or do we have to go get involved ourselves, which is a wholly different proposition?" Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was secretly working on contingency plans for putting 50,000 U.S. troops on the ground -- if that was the only way to win.
Then, at a meeting of principals, they had discussed how disappointed they all were in Gen. Mohammed Fahim, the leader of the Northern Alliance, who was promising to move but failing to advance. The CIA had reported that the Taliban forces opposite Fahim's lines had increased by an astonishing 50 percent. Satellite and other intelligence only weeks ago had shown anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 Taliban fighters at the front. Now the count was 10,000 to 16,000 -- and no one seemed to know why.
Normally, Rice saw her job as twofold: first, to coordinate what Defense, State, the CIA and other departments or agencies were doing by making sure the president's orders were carried out; and second, to act as counselor -- to give her private assessment to the president, certainly when he asked, perhaps if he didn't. "She's a very thorough person," Bush said in an interview, "constantly mother-henning me."
In other words, she was the president's troubleshooter. And this was trouble.
The south of Afghanistan was dry, and the north was not moving, she told the president. "And we've bombed everything we can think of to bomb, and still nothing is happening."
Bush sat down.
"You know, Mr. President, the mood isn't very good among the principals, and people are concerned about what's going on," Rice said, referring to the principal war cabinet members. She said there was some hand-wringing.
The president jerked forward. Hand-wringing? He hated, absolutely hated, the very idea, especially in tough times. He was getting some reports from senior advisers Karen P. Hughes and Karl Rove about media stories, but not much more.
"I want to know if you're concerned about the fact that things are not moving," Rice said.
"Of course I'm concerned about the fact that things aren't moving!"
"Do you want to start looking at alternative strategies?"
"What alternative strategies would we be looking at?" he asked, as if the possibility had not crossed his mind. Bush's leadership style bordered on the hurried. He wanted action, solutions. Once on a course, he directed his energy at forging on, rarely looking back, scoffing at -- even ridiculing -- doubts and anything less than 100 percent commitment.
Careful reconsideration is a necessary part of any decision-making process. Rice felt it was her job to raise caution flags, even red lights if necessary, to urge the president to rethink.
Sometimes, the best decision is to overrule an earlier one. Now, events were their own caution flags. The static situation in Afghanistan might signal big problems. On top of that, the news media were raising questions about progress, strategy, timetables and expectations. Newsweek magazine had used the dreaded "Q" word -- quagmire -- evoking Vietnam.
"There always is the thought that you could use more Americans in this. You could Americanize this up front," Rice said. That could mean substantial ground forces -- several Army or Marine divisions. A division normally has about 15,000 to 20,000 troops.
Bush was aware that in these very rooms 35 to 40 years earlier, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had confronted similar decisions. Vietnam was the precedent.
"It hasn't been that long," the president said, referring to when the military action had begun.
"That's right."
"Do you think it's working?"
Rice did not really answer.
"We have a good plan," the president said. "You're confident in it?"
Rice intentionally ducked. She was unwilling to take a firm position, worried it might tilt further discussion, close off options. Also, she was unsure. She felt most comfortable when she knew precisely what the president was thinking, so she was sounding him out. But the president was on his chosen course, and he had not really thought of shifting strategies.
The really important thing, she told the president, was for him to take the principals' pulse the next day, and if he was committed to the strategy, he had better let people know it. He didn't want people starting to fall off.
Starting to fall off? Who was nervous? Who was concerned? The president wanted to take names.
Everybody is concerned, she said. Nobody is very sanguine or comfortable. They all have concerns about what they are achieving and might be able to achieve. He had heard some; she had heard more. He was going to have to make some tough decisions pretty soon -- about whether they were just going to stay on course or whether they were going to try to make adjustments.
The National Security Council was going to meet the next morning, she mentioned, and that was the time to affirm the plan or consider changing it. Winter was coming to Afghanistan, the conditions would be brutal and military gains on the ground could become increasingly difficult.
"I think it would be good if you expressed confidence in this plan. Or if you don't feel that, then we need to do something else." Did they need an alternative strategy? The important thing, she said, was for him to think about it before the NSC meeting the next morning. Then, at the meeting, he could give his view. "You need to talk about this," she said at the end of their 15- to 20-minute talk.
"I'll take care of it," the president said.
'We Need to Be Patient'
The next morning, before the NSC meeting, Bush talked to Cheney about what Rice had brought to him.
"Dick," he asked, "do you have any -- is there any qualms in your mind about this strategy we've developed? We've spent a lot of time on it."
"No, Mr. President," Cheney replied.
When the meeting began in the White House Situation Room, Bush decided to let the meeting proceed with its routine presentations and updates before getting to the point.
"I just want to make sure that all of us did agree on this plan, right?" he said after the reports. He looked around the table from face to face.
There is an aspect of baseball-coach, even fraternity-brother, urgency in Bush at such moments. He leans his head forward and holds it still, makes eye contact, maintains it, saying, in effect: You're on board, you're with me, right?
Are we right, the president was asking. Are we still confident? He wanted a precise affirmation from each one -- Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Rumsfeld, CIA Director George J. Tenet and Rice -- even backbenchers Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. He was almost demanding they take an oath.
Each affirmed allegiance to the plan and strategy.
"Anybody have any ideas they want to put on the table?"
No's all around.
Rice believed the president would tolerate debate, would listen, but anyone who wanted debate had to have a good argument, and preferably a solution or at least a proposed fix. It was clear that no one at the table had a better idea.
In fact, the president had not really opened the door a crack for anyone to raise concerns or deal with any second thoughts. He was not really listening. He wanted to talk. He knew that he talked too much at times, just blowing off steam. It was not a good habit, he knew.
"You know what? We need to be patient," Bush said. "We've got a good plan."
"Look, we're entering a difficult phase. The press will seek to find divisions among us. They will try and force on us a strategy that is not consistent with victory."
In the secrecy of the room, the president had voiced one of his conclusions -- the news media, or at least some elements, did not want victory or at least acted as if they did not.
"We've been at this only 19 days. Be steady. Don't let the press panic us." The press would say they needed a new strategy, that the current strategy was a failed one. He disagreed. "Resist the second-guessing. Be confident but patient. We are going to continue this thing through Ramadan," the Muslim holy month. "We've got to be cool and steady. It's all going to work."
Hadley thought the tension suddenly drained from the room. The president was saying he had confidence and they should have confidence. In their souls, Hadley believed, some of them had to wonder whether the president might be losing confidence in them. Presidential confidence, once bestowed, was vital for all of them to function. Any hint of less than full confidence would be devastating. They served at his pleasure. They could be gone or sidelined in an instant. Not only had Bush declared confidence in their strategy, but more important, Hadley believed, he had declared confidence in them.
Tenet wanted to stand up and cheer. He went back to CIA headquarters and told his senior leadership what the president had said. What it meant, Tenet said, was simple: Keep going.
Rice believed it was one of the most important moments. If the president had opened up to alternatives, the war cabinet would have lost the focus of trying to make the strategy work and flitted off to think up alternatives. She hoped that the recommitment would cause everyone to redouble their efforts on the current strategy that he had just then fully blessed.
Rumsfeld reported to some of his senior aides that the president had been particularly strong that day. He didn't provide details.
Powell found the situation in Afghanistan troubling, but he didn't think they were in a quagmire, yet.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, their ally in the war in Afghanistan, was interviewed that evening by ABC anchor Peter Jennings, who asked him right off the bat whether the United States was facing a quagmire.
"Yes," the Pakistani president declared, "it may be a quagmire."
The Media and the 'Quagmire'
During the early morning secure phone conversation that Rumsfeld had with Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, on Saturday, Oct. 27, the secretary wanted to make sure they were planning and thinking way ahead -- to the worst-case scenario, if necessary.
Suppose the Afghan opposition, the Northern Alliance, the mercenary force that was being paid by the CIA, could not do the job? They were going to have to consider the possibility that they would have to send in large numbers of U.S. ground forces.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was taking notes in a white spiral notebook. He wrote, "Be prepared to go in -- major land war -- either on our own or with coalition partners. . . . Process of organizing for it would be very, very useful. . . . It would become visible and people would know that we're not kidding, we are coming, if you don't change sides now, we are going to continue the process."
Rumsfeld and Franks agreed to step up bombing of the Taliban front lines as the Northern Alliance wanted. With the first U.S. Special Forces A-teams now inside Afghanistan, that would be possible. But both the secretary and Franks were skeptical of the Alliance and Fahim, who seemed slow to move on their own.
Rice and the others were on edge as the administration was being murdered in the media.
On Tuesday morning, Oct. 30, two leading conservatives, Bush's usual allies, had blasted the war effort on the op-ed page of The Washington Post. William Kristol said, "It's a flawed plan," because of too many self-imposed constraints. Charles Krauthammer said the war was being fought with "half-measures."
On Wednesday, Oct. 31, some war cabinet members read a news analysis by R.W. Apple Jr. of the New York Times.
"Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not."
Earlier in the week, a military analyst on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" had leveled the unkindest cut of all, saying that Bush was practicing "the Bill Clinton approach to warfare . . . thinking small."
At his Wednesday morning meeting with senior staff, Bush expressed his pique at the media.
"They don't get it," the president said. "How many times do you have to tell them it's going to be a different type of war? And they don't believe it. They're looking for the conventional approach. That's not what they're going to see here. I've talked about patience. It's amazing how quickly people forget what you say, at least here in Washington." The quagmire stories made little sense to him. They had a good plan. They had agreed to it. "Why would we start second-guessing it this early into the plan?"
Rumsfeld had declared publicly that day that he was following the news commentary about the alleged stalemate or quagmire in Afghanistan. "I must say that I find those differences of views often helpful and interesting and informative and educational," he had said at his regular Pentagon briefing, trying to avoid a defensive tone.
To his senior staff, he had referred once to the authors and television talking heads as "K Street pundits," former government officials and hangers-on who occupied the downtown corridor of K Street that housed seemingly endless consultancies and think tanks. To Rumsfeld, K Street was a low-life refuge for those who couldn't get real jobs, or didn't have the independence of spirit to leave Washington once they were through.
"Of course that's what they are saying," he had said, "they've got the attention span of gnats." The news business manufactured urgency and expectation. He was convinced that the public was more realistic, more patient.
Planning for Boots on the Ground
"Well, there's buzzing in the press," Powell said at the beginning of the NSC meeting the next day, Friday, Nov. 2. "Buzzing" was an understatement that brought some half-chuckles around the table. "The countries in the coalition are still with us," he added, somewhat confidently.
After a long presentation by Franks, Cheney said to him and Rumsfeld, "We may need to think about giving you more resources, a different timeline, more forces and a higher tempo of operations."
Franks and his staff and the Joint Chiefs were forcing themselves to face the possibility that a large ground force of U.S. troops would have to be sent to Afghanistan. The numbers 50,000 to 55,000 were being mentioned. These were staggering numbers, suggesting the kind of land war that military history dictated should be avoided in Asia, at all costs.
The president was aware of the figure under consideration. In a later interview, he recalled dealing with "the scenario where we may need to put the 55,000 troops in there."
"What's the capability of the opposition forces?" Powell asked. "Do we need to train them?" In his 35 years in the military, he had found that good training could go a long way. Neither Powell nor anyone was prepared for Franks's answer.
"I don't place any confidence in the opposition," the commander said. On the question of whether the Alliance could be trained, he said, "I don't know." He was depressed about Fahim, who had the advantage and was not really moving. In contrast, Abdurrashid Dostum, another Alliance general who commanded cavalry, was aggressive, a General George Patton. "Dostum rides 10 to 15 miles a day in windstorms or snowstorms with guys lacking a leg. They go to blow up a Taliban outpost and take casualties knowing they had no medical assistance."
So even though he had lost confidence in the opposition forces, Franks said he would continue with the current strategy "while at the same time doing some planning to see if we need to be able to do the kind of things the vice president described."
The president had not known that Cheney was going to raise these issues, but he had found that when Cheney asked questions, it was worth listening to them. He wanted Franks to take them seriously. "When can you give me some options," Bush asked Franks, "along the lines of what the vice president talks about?"
"In one week," Franks said, "to a very small group."
Bush had previously asked Franks what response would be possible if al Qaeda struck the United States at home again in a major way, and he wanted to order an escalation.
"And I also owe you options of what we do if we get hit again," Franks said.
"We might take Mazar in 24 to 48 hours," Tenet told skeptical colleagues at a principals' meeting on Thursday, Nov. 8, six days later. Dostum and another commander were engaged in an envelopment of Mazar-e Sharif, the major city in northern Afghanistan. "One is seven and one is 15 kilometers from the town."
At the Friday, Nov. 9, NSC meeting, Franks reported, "We're doing 90 to 120 sorties a day; 80 or 90 percent are going to support the opposition. We're focusing on Mazar." He said they were supplying five of the 10 main tribal leaders. "We're doing cold-weather gear and ammunition. We assemble the packages in Texas, they're staged in Germany. It takes two days to get them into Germany, and then we distribute them two or three days thereafter." They were starting to get a reliable logistics chain.
"By the end of the month, we're going to have it in good shape around Mazar. And we're working on Fahim Khan to get him to move."
"We've got to keep our expectations low," he concluded.
Well after lunch, Army Lt. Col. Tony Crawford, an intelligence specialist and executive assistant to Rice, walked into her corner West Wing office.
"Mazar has fallen," he said. "We're getting reports that Mazar has fallen."
"What does that mean?" Rice asked skeptically. "Are they in the center of the city? What does 'Mazar has fallen' mean?"
Crawford said he would find out what it meant.
He was back shortly to report that Dostum's troops were indeed in the center of the city. The locals were throwing off their Taliban clothing. They were celebrating. Sheep were being sacrificed. Women were waving, cheering and clapping.
What does the national security adviser do in such a situation? She turned on CNN, which confirmed the reports, and called Rumsfeld to tell him the news.
"Well," he replied, "we'll see."
His view was that first reports are almost always wrong, and this sounded like one that was. Maybe it fell today, and maybe it won't have fallen tomorrow.
Rice walked down to tell the president. He had already heard. "That's good," he said, controlling his enthusiasm.
She noticed that he didn't get out a cigar to chew -- a standard sign of genuine celebration.
Instead, Bush asked Rice, "Well, what next?"
At a meeting later in the afternoon, the president did not conceal his astonishment at the shift of events. "It's amazing how fast the situation has changed. It is a stunner, isn't it?"
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