CHAPTER 35

Mission Accomplished?

In the weeks after Iraq’s liberation, the Department of Defense was still pushing for an Iraqi Interim Authority with some independence. With Saddam’s forces defeated, the Iraqi people were wondering what would come next. Given the region’s pathologies and the propaganda aired on Al-Jazeera, I was concerned that people across the Muslim world would believe that the United States sought to establish a colonial-type occupation for the purpose of taking Iraq’s oil. We needed to put forward a group of Iraqis as the core of a new interim government in order to avoid that perception. We were losing valuable time.

On April 1, I sent a memorandum to the President and the members of the National Security Council saying that the time for trying to craft “the perfect plan” was over. “We have got to get moving on this,” I wrote. “This is now a matter of operational importance—it is not too much to say that time can cost lives.”¹ It wasn’t often that I wrote the President in such unequivocal terms, but I felt interagency deliberation needed to come to an end. Absent “a fundamental objection,” I wrote, I was going to have General Franks announce the first steps to create the Iraqi Interim Authority as soon as possible.²

State Department officials again objected. They argued that establishing the IIA so soon after the war would complicate things. They also contended that the situation in Iraq was different from Afghanistan, which is a poor country with little infrastructure in place, and therefore a new government could be established more readily. They believed that we needed to take some time to ensure we did it the right way.

An unequivocal order from the President resolving the differences was not forthcoming, so those of us in the Defense Department resigned ourselves to what we thought might be a delay of a month or two. Rice was pushing for a senior diplomat to head up the reconstruction effort, so I understood that it might make sense to wait until he was chosen and had a chance to assess the situation. As I would learn, a delay of a month or two was not what Powell and his colleagues had in mind.

At the end of April I traveled to the Gulf region. As I wrote to the President in a report summarizing my meetings, the leaders I met with unanimously believed that a quick transition to Iraqis would “help ease the apprehension of their people of a long-term U.S. occupation.” It was, I added, a good reason for us to move forward on the Interim Authority.³ I noted the remarkable consensus among our Arab partners of the threats posed by that perennial irritant in the Middle East, Syria. That regime’s behavior had not changed since I met with Syrian leaders in the 1980s. They were still aiding terrorists and still causing trouble.

The liberation of Iraq engendered a feeling uncharacteristic for the Syrian regime—fear. Their leaders appeared to be rattled by America’s ouster of Saddam Hussein. They might have been wondering if they would be next. When I arrived in Kuwait, the foreign minister said that a Syrian official had asked him to pass word to me that they were not harboring terrorists or facilitating the entry of jihadists into Iraq—the very things we knew they were doing. “We need to keep up the pressure,” I wrote the President.⁴

On April 28, I took off from Kuwait International Airport and in fifteen minutes was over newly liberated Iraq. Only eighty miles of arid desert and some of the densest oil fields in the world separate Kuwait City from the southern Iraqi city of Basra. But in another sense the two countries seemed a universe apart. Moving from Kuwait to Iraq reminded me of leaving democratic West Germany and entering totalitarian Eastern Europe back in the 1970s. The modern Kuwaiti cityscape gave way to dusty, one-story buildings barely discernible from the thousands of square miles of sand that surrounded the Euphrates and Tigris river valleys.

Saddam’s legacy to the Iraqi people was an economic system that combined the worst elements of Stalinist central planning with organized crime–style enrichment for the fortunate few. Iraq had billions of barrels of oil and one of the Arab world’s most educated populations. Yet the dictator had cut off the Iraqi people from the rest of the world, brutalized them, eviscerated their sense of trust in one another, and denied them the fruits of economic progress.

It had been just over nineteen years since I was last on Iraqi soil. The regime I had visited back then had been swept away: Saddam and his top lieutenants were on the run.

On my first stop, in Basra, I thanked the British forces who had once again proven the value of America’s special relationship with the United Kingdom. The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair had been one of the first to lend support to America after the 9/11 attacks. When the President delivered his historic speech to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, Blair had flown to Washington from London to express his country’s solidarity. Blair and his secretary of state for defense, Geoffrey Hoon, had sent more than forty thousand troops to help topple Saddam’s regime and to secure southern Iraq. I found Blair to be the most eloquent public voice explaining the rationale and sense of urgency for the coalition effort. Though he endured relentless domestic criticism, he stuck by his decision.

The British had engaged in difficult close combat with the Fedayeen Saddam in the cities of the south. Some Fedayeen had climbed onto the advancing British tanks and had to be removed with bayonets in hand-to-hand fighting. The job of the American forces would have been infinitely harder without them. The British had the correct perspective about the postwar situation we faced. As the commander of the British 1st Armored Division told me, “There is no humanitarian crisis, except the one the regime caused by turning off the electricity and water.”⁵ The surprise and speed achieved by our invasion forces prevented the environmental and humanitarian catastrophes we had feared.

Coalition commanders had declared southern Iraq “permissive,” meaning that the enemy forces had been rooted out. Farther north, and in and around Baghdad, there was still resistance. For much of our C-130 flight into the capital, as we traced the path inscribed by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, we flew low over the riverbanks to reduce the risk from surface-to-air missiles.

In the polished marble rooms of one of Saddam’s many palaces, I met with General Jay Garner and his staff for a briefing on the activities of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Garner was optimistic about the progress being made and hopeful for Iraq’s future. As we drove through liberated Baghdad in the late afternoon traffic, cars raced forward to pull alongside and honk and wave. In one car the driver gave us the thumbs-up, but a passenger in the backseat gave a thumbs-down. I mused that in Iraq only Saddam won 100 percent approval.

At a power plant in southern Baghdad, Iraqi and American military engineers briefed us on the sorry state of the country’s infrastructure. The power grid, manufacturing base, water and sewer systems, and oil drilling and refining capacity all were on the verge of collapse. Pipes and wires in many facilities were literally being held together by duct tape and string. The Department of Defense had expected that there would be a need to fix what might be destroyed in the war, but our intelligence had not prepared CENTCOM and interagency planners for an entire infrastructure that was crumbling at its foundation from years of underinvestment and neglect. It was clear from those earliest days that it would take many hundreds of millions of dollars to reestablish basic services.

The Iraqis who were in charge of the Baghdad power plant, and those in the facilities and ministries, were Baathists; they had been privileged under Saddam Hussein. Retaining these professionals could be problematic, because many others were reluctant to work with anyone who had received favors from the regime. Ideally, senior Baathists would not be allowed to stay in place. But we did not have the luxury of being doctrinaire. The coalition and the Interim Authority that followed would need many skilled people to keep a dysfunctional country running, even if they were Baathists. With regard to the technocrats, at least, I wrote to the President, it would be best to find a way to work with them.⁶

My visit offered a sobering look at the challenges ahead. As I warned our troops at a meeting in a huge hangar at Baghdad Airport:

We still have to find and deal with the remaining elements of the former regime. We have to root out and eliminate terrorist networks operating in this country. We have to help Iraqis restore their basic services. And we have to help provide conditions of stability and security so that the Iraqi people can form an interim authority—an interim government—and then ultimately a free Iraqi government based on political freedom, individual liberty, and the rule of law.⁷

At General Franks’ request, President Bush would formally declare the end of major combat operations the following day, on May 1, 2003. This would mark the beginning of Phase IV—posthostilities stabilization and reconstruction. Franks had hoped that announcing the end of combat operations would encourage those of our allies who preferred not to be part of the invasion to now feel comfortable enough to support reconstruction.⁸ He had notified me in a cable that, after the President’s declaration, Army Lieutenant General David McKiernan would be the senior commander in Iraq for ninety days.⁹ McKiernan and the senior officers at his headquarters, dubbed “the dream team” in some Army circles, would be tasked with the command of the many thousands of American troops.

On my flight heading back to Kuwait City I was startled to see McKiernan onboard the C-130 aircraft. I asked him where he was going.

“To my headquarters back in Kuwait,” he said.

“Well, aren’t you in charge of what’s going on in Iraq?” I asked.

McKiernan told me he went in and out of Iraq once, sometimes twice a week to check on things. It struck me that in the crucial weeks following the fall of Saddam, McKiernan did not seem to think of himself as the commander in charge of the ground operations, and didn’t seem to be preparing to take over command of all coalition forces in the country, as Franks had indicated in his cable. That meant that the senior American military leadership in the country consisted of Army and Marine division commanders. To be sure, these were some of America’s most talented war fighters: Army Major Generals Ray Odierno and David Petraeus and Marine Major General James Mattis. They each reported to General McKiernan, but McKiernan seemed to have removed himself from the critical daily responsibilities in the country.

The following day—May 1, 2003—President Bush flew in a U.S. Navy S-3B Viking onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. He stood under a sign that said “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” and announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”¹⁰ Bush was correct, but those in charge of his public affairs team did not appreciate the sizable difference between the end of major combat operations and “mission accomplished.” The phrase would haunt his presidency until the day it ended.

I had seen an early draft of the President’s speech while flying to the Gulf. It seemed too optimistic to me.¹¹ As I discussed my thoughts with Bush over the phone, I suggested edits to tone down any triumphalist rhetoric. He was receptive to my concerns. From the transcript I read of the delivered remarks, it was clear the speech had been muted. It was not the words in the President’s speech that left the public perplexed when tough fighting in Iraq continued, but the unforgettable banner behind him.

The next day, when asked about the President’s speech, I tried to strike a note of caution:

[I]t would be a terrible mistake to think that Iraq is a fully secure, fully pacified environment. It is not. It is dangerous. There are people who are rolling hand grenades into compounds. There are people that are shooting people. And it’s not finished. So we ought not to leave the world with the impression that it is.¹²

I had another issue with the President’s remarks. “The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort,” Bush had said. “Our coalition will stay until our work is done.” That was not the way I understood our plan. A nation that had suffered under decades of dictatorial rule was unlikely to quickly reorganize itself into a stable, modern, democratic state. Deep sectarian and ethnic divisions, concealed by a culture of repression and forced submission to Saddam, lurked just below the surface of Iraqi society.

I hoped Iraq would turn toward some form of representative government, but I thought we needed to be clear-eyed about democracy’s prospects in the country. Even the United States, though it had been the heir of hundreds of years of British democratic political development, did not evolve smoothly or quickly into the liberal democracy that we benefit from today. Millions of African Americans were considered property for more than seventy-five years after our country’s founding. Women couldn’t vote until nearly one hundred and fifty years after independence from England. I was concerned that the President’s remarks suggested that the United States might remain until Iraq had achieved democratic self-sufficiency which might take decades. I doubted whether the American people would have the patience for a protracted, multiyear occupation as Iraqis fumbled their way along the road toward something approximating a free, nondictatorial government. And I assumed the Iraqi people would be even less willing to put up with a long American occupation, which could become a rallying point for rebellion.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “[T]he central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.”¹³ A millennia-old culture dating to the very beginnings of civilization would have to work its way toward adopting practices we considered democratic gradually. The art of compromise, which is central to a successful democracy, is not something that people learn overnight. If we hurried to create Iraqi democracy through quick elections, before key institutions—a free press, private property rights, political parties, an independent judiciary—began to develop organically, we “could end up with a permanent mistake—one vote, one time—and another Iran-like theocracy,” as I wrote in a May 2003 memo.¹⁴

I conveyed these thoughts to the President and to Rice, suggesting the administration soften the democracy rhetoric. I proposed that we talk more about freedom and less about democracy, lest the Iraqis and other countries in the region think we intended to impose our own political system on them, rather than their developing one better suited to their history and culture.¹⁵

I wondered as well how we would define democracy if that became our goal. If Iraq never created an American-style system of government, would that mean that our mission had been a failure or that the troops would have to stay indefinitely? Emphasis on Iraqi democracy invited critics of the war to find the innumerable instances in which Iraq would inevitably fall short. Further, Iraq’s neighbors, our regional partners, who would be important to our efforts to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq, were less than enthusiastic about our emerging posture. In fact, the reason so many countries supported us, and the reason two successive U.S. presidents and the Congress of the United States supported regime change in Iraq, was because of the consistent emphasis on the security threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Bringing democracy to Iraq had not been among the primary rationales.

It was hard to know exactly where the President’s far-reaching language about democracy originated. It was not a large part of his original calculus in toppling Saddam’s regime, at least from what I gleaned in private conversations and NSC meetings. I didn’t hear rhetoric about democracy from Colin Powell or State Department officials. I know it did not come from those of us in the Department of Defense. Condoleezza Rice seemed to be the one top adviser who spoke that way, but it was not clear to me whether she was encouraging the President to use rhetoric about democracy or whether it was originating with the President.

Bush often expressed his belief that freedom was the gift of the Almighty. He seemed to feel almost duty-bound to help expand the frontiers of freedom in the Middle East. I certainly sympathized with his desire to see free systems of government spread around the globe. I had met and greatly admired Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident, whose ideas on democracy had deeply influenced Bush. As much as I agreed with both Sharansky and Bush that we would all be better off if the world had more democracies, I thought we needed to be careful about how we pursued it. I believed in expanding the frontiers of freedom where possible, but that goal had to be tempered by our limited ability to achieve it.

As the unsuccessful search for WMD stockpiles dragged on, the administration’s communications strategy seemed to shift further toward democracy as a reason for America’s presence in Iraq. This intensified during the 2004 presidential campaign. Instead of explaining the WMD failure within the context of imperfect intelligence, and emphasizing Saddam’s intent and ability to restart his WMD programs if given the chance, as the Iraq Survey Group, led by former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, had definitively concluded, the shift to democracy seemed to some as a way to change the subject.¹⁶

My concerns about the military’s management of Iraq in the first days of the critical postwar period were abated somewhat when I learned that there finally would be a full-time military commander. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez assumed command of ground forces in June 2003. The child of a Mexican American family, Sanchez had grown up along the Texas side of the Rio Grande in a one-bedroom house without plumbing. The future three-star Army general earned his commission in the early 1970s through ROTC. Sanchez had an admirable record of performance in the 1990s in the Balkans, where he had demonstrated the blend of military professionalism and political sensitivity that is needed when commanding coalition forces in another country. He had glowing recommendations from the Army leadership, particularly Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, who had taken an interest in Sanchez’s advancement. Sanchez had been serving in Germany as a two-star division commander and had deployed into Iraq with his division after most major combat operations were over. His was an important assignment, involving command of some fifteen thousand troops. However, as commander of all coalition forces in Iraq, Sanchez would have to lead a force more than ten times that size, work with numerous coalition nations, and command a headquarters that he had never been trained or prepared to assume.

The reality—which should have been clear to the senior Army leadership, CENTCOM, and to the Joint Chiefs of Staff—was that Sanchez was not only the most junior three-star general in Iraq, but the most junior three-star in the entire U.S. Army. I can only speculate that part of the logic behind an otherwise inexplicable selection was that CENTCOM and the Army staff believed that with the emergence of an Iraqi Interim Authority and a reconstitution of Iraqi security forces, we could begin a drawdown of coalition forces. This would have left Sanchez commanding significantly fewer than the 170,000 coalition troops there in mid-2003. It may also have been assumed that Sanchez would be operating in a postwar environment, in which an international peacekeeping force could maintain security if needed.

Whatever the rationale behind the decision, it later became clear that Sanchez had been put in a terrible position. The establishment of a government, the long-term care of detainees, the training and equipping of security forces, and, ultimately, the engagement of an increasingly deadly terrorist threat called for a senior military official with far more experience. That the Army leadership, with the agreement or acquiescence of CENTCOM and the Joint Staff, slotted him for the top command post was a serious misassessment. Further, the assignment required a large, fully staffed supporting headquarters that the U.S. Army, CENTCOM, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington failed to provide Sanchez with for months. I later learned that Sanchez was operating with well less than half—37 percent—of the staff he required for his headquarters. “It seems to me we have a real problem,” I wrote to General Myers when in 2004 I first discovered the scope of the failure to properly staff Sanchez’s headquarters. These deficiencies were brought to light by investigations into the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. “A combatant commander asks for something. The Joint Staff agrees to it. You recommend it to me. Then the Services never fulfill it.”¹⁷

I do not recall being made aware of the Army’s decision to move General Sanchez into the top position. He had been assigned to Iraq during ongoing force rotations that took place in the aftermath of major combat operations. During this time, divisions and other units that had deployed as part of the force buildup as early as late 2002 were being rotated out, and new units were being rotated in. As a component of those changes, the Army and CENTCOM developed the structure for the command elements. To my recollection, the chief of staff of the Army and CENTCOM leadership did not bring the relevant plans to my attention. But even as the situation in Iraq deteriorated, and Sanchez and his minimal staff were becoming overwhelmed, no senior official in the Army, CENTCOM, or the Joint Staff recommended a change. The problem of the McKiernan to Sanchez transition caused me to change the nature of my involvement in assigning officers to senior positions. Previously, the chairman and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the deputy, and I had been principally involved in promotions at the four-star level. Now we decided to increase our involvement in decisions regarding key service appointments.

In my view, much of the blame that later fell on Sanchez was misplaced. To be sure, there were failures on his watch, but much of the responsibility belonged to his superiors in the Army and the senior leadership of the Department.

In late April 2003, we also faced an unexpected personnel move at CENTCOM headquarters: General Franks announced his plans to retire. For the past two of his three years at the post, Franks had spent his days and nights planning two demanding military campaigns, and he was anxious to step down. I asked him to stay to oversee the transition of power to an Iraqi authority, but he insisted on departing. I was disappointed to have a leadership transition at such a critical time.

Franks’ position as combatant commander at CENTCOM was assumed by his deputy, General John Abizaid. The son of an Arab American Navy veteran of World War II, Abizaid graduated from West Point, earned a scholarship that allowed him to study Arabic in Jordan, and later completed a master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies at Harvard. Cerebral in demeanor and strategic in thinking, Abizaid embodied military, regional, and linguistic expertise.

As commander of CENTCOM, Franks had established and assumed responsibility for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), with Jay Garner reporting to him. I had advised Garner before he took the post at ORHA that, as circumstances evolved, the top civilian post in Iraq would likely be assumed by a senior official from the State Department.

In early May, the President announced the selection of former Ambassador L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer to replace Garner. Though Garner was disappointed that his tour was ending sooner than expected, he had done his job well and had formed a good working relationship with emerging Iraqi leaders, who he had assured would soon be leading the Iraqi Interim Authority.^* Garner was pushing for a swift transition to the Iraqis—a policy I agreed with but about which Rice and perhaps the President himself seemed to have developed second thoughts. The interdepartmental policy differences that had not been decisively resolved came to the surface. The way the Bremer selection was handled added another layer of difficulty.

“The choice of Mr. Bremer is a victory for the State Department over the Pentagon,” the New York Times promptly announced.¹⁹ “Some administration officials were so concerned that the move not look like a setback for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that they were considering having him announce it upon his return from Baghdad on Friday night, to make it look like a Pentagon initiative.”²⁰

I didn’t know who “some administration officials” were, but from the Pentagon it looked like Deputy Secretary of State Armitage was again feeding the press his version of events. His leaks were so brazen that I finally mentioned them to Powell. “Colin, we have a problem,” I said in one such conversation on March 31, 2003. “Rich Armitage has been badmouthing the Pentagon all over town. It’s been going on for some time and it’s only gotten worse.”²¹

I asked Powell to try to manage his deputy. The President was facing rearguard disloyalty from a small band of “senior State Department officials” who were attacking the administration and the effort in Iraq in the press as anonymous sources.^*

“I don’t know what the hell is in Armitage’s craw,” I told Powell, “but I’m tired of it.”²³ Powell told me he would look into it. He expressed concerns about Wolfowitz, whom Powell claimed was leaking against him. I didn’t believe that was true. I made a point of repeatedly telling those I worked with at the Pentagon not to speak to the press against State, the CIA, the White House, or any members of the administration—no matter how strong the temptation. “If you’ve got a problem,” I told senior Pentagon staff, “come and see me.”²⁴

Several months later the subject of leaking came up in a meeting with the President and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card in the Oval Office. Most of it was routine business—senior military nominations, an update on operations in Iraq, and preparations for our meeting later that morning with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. As the meeting closed, Bush raised the issues between the State and Defense Departments that were being leaked to the media.

“The controversy between DoD and State is hurting. It needs to stop,” the President said.²⁵ I couldn’t have agreed more. It was what I had been counseling for over a year. The problem was that he was talking to the wrong person.

“Mr. President, I have repeatedly told my folks never to leak or trash their colleagues. All the evidence suggests that it is State that is trashing us. If anyone has any information that my folks at DoD are leaking anything or trashing anyone, tell me.”

Card interjected, “That’s what they say at State.”

“Look Andy, if it’s going both ways, I need to see evidence,” I responded.

The meeting left a sour taste in my mouth. The truth was that there weren’t stories in the newspapers about Defense officials anonymously criticizing their counterparts in the State Department.

The next day the President called me. “I’ve got great confidence in you and what your team at DoD is doing. I didn’t mean to send the wrong signal. You’re doing a fabulous job.”

“I appreciate the call, Mr. President. I may have taken yesterday’s meeting amiss, but if you feel there’s a war between the State and Defense Departments, it takes two to fight, and DoD isn’t fighting. What is happening is hurting you. If it gets to a point where the solution is for me to leave, I will do so in a second.”

“That’s a crappy solution,” Bush responded.

“It’s certainly not my first choice, but we need you in the White House, and if my leaving would help, I’m ready.”

Then Bush added, “I’m working hard on Powell and Armitage. I’ve seen the recent articles and I know what’s going on.”²⁶

In fact, the selection of Bremer was not a triumph of State over Defense. I believe I may have been one of the first to include his name on a list of possible candidates for the post.^* Bremer came to my attention for a possible senior diplomatic job in a discussion I had with George Shultz soon after I returned to the Pentagon in 2001. He recommended Bremer along with several others for presidential envoy slots, if and when the need arose, in much the same way Shultz had recommended me to President Reagan as an envoy on the Law of the Sea Treaty and later to the Middle East. I liked the idea of having the presidential envoy in Iraq be one with ties to the State Department, since State’s involvement was badly needed. The Defense Department could not perform all or even most of the nonmilitary tasks that needed to be done. For postwar stabilization and reconstruction to be successful, it would take leadership and resources from State and other cabinet departments, as well as from coalition nations. I also liked that Bremer was considered an action-oriented executive, able to get things done.

Because Bush had placed the Defense Department in charge of Bremer and postcombat stability operations, Bremer met with me prior to his departure to discuss a rough road map and guidelines. Our discussion was based on a DoD memo titled “Principles for Iraq—Policy Guidelines,” which had twenty-six guidelines I had vetted with others in the Pentagon, the State Department, and the NSC. Our May 13 memo did not lay out the details or exact timing of the way forward. I understood that Bremer would need flexibility to respond to the circumstances he found. But I had no reason to think that Bremer had any doubts about the advisability of the policy that President Bush had approved before the war: the development of the Iraqi Interim Authority, with the goal that it would exercise substantial authority as soon as possible.

Bremer’s mandate was to make the memo’s twenty-six principles operational. We had no illusions that the coalition would be able to withdraw if Iraq collapsed into chaos. “Without security for the Iraqi people,” I wrote, “none of their goals will be achievable.” But, I stressed the importance of handing over responsibilities to the Iraqis.

In staffing ministries and positioning Iraqis in ways that will increase their influence, the Coalition will work to have acceptable Iraqis involved as early as possible, so Iraqi voices can explain the goals and direction to the Iraqi people. Only if Iraqis are seen as being engaged in, responsible for, and explaining and leading their fellow citizens will broad public support develop that is essential for security.²⁸

At the Department of Defense we recognized that some of the aspiring Iraqi leaders would fail to meet our standards for good governance and efficiency. There were precious few Mr. Smiths (as in the Jimmy Stewart movie) in the world. But it was of paramount importance that U.S. officials should take advantage of every opportunity to increase the influence of well-intentioned Iraqi leaders and begin to give them control of their country.

Bremer and I discussed the need to work closely together. I had decided I would give him considerable latitude for decision making, since he was the man on the ground. Bremer, however, had a robust definition of the term “latitude.” When I was a special envoy for President Reagan, I only reported through Secretary of State Shultz. It seemed appropriate that I report directly through the cabinet officer who had the day-to-day responsibility to manage the issues on which I was focused. Even with the title of “presidential” envoy, I never sought and rarely had direct interactions with the President. It did not occur to me to try to bypass the secretary of state and go directly to President Reagan, nor would I deal directly with any other cabinet officials without first engaging my direct supervisor, who, in my case, was Shultz.

Bremer had a totally different approach. He assumed that he had direct access to President Bush from the start. The President and Rice both not only accepted but facilitated Bremer’s unfiltered contact with them. On the same day that Bush announced Bremer’s appointment, May 6, 2003, they had a private lunch. I made a note to myself at the time: “POTUS had lunch with him alone—shouldn’t have done so. POTUS linked him to the White House instead of to DoD or DoS [State].”²⁹

The President could of course have lunch with whomever he wanted. But in Bremer’s case, such actions contributed to a confused chain of command. This imprecision damaged Washington’s communications with the CPA throughout the period of Bremer’s tenure.

It became clear that Bremer intended to not be exclusively connected to any cabinet official. Bremer later wrote that after one of his private meetings with President Bush, “[Bush’s] message was clear. I was neither Rumsfeld’s nor Powell’s man. I was the president’s man.”³⁰ He quickly established active relationships with Rice, Powell, and, as a career Foreign Service officer, his former colleagues in the State Department. Certainly it was desirable that the CPA have good ties to the political and diplomatic apparatus of the Bush administration, given the nature of its responsibilities in Iraq. I did not discourage that. What developed, though, was something I had not anticipated. Bremer was able to pick and choose the members of the NSC he would deal with on any particular issue, the result often being that the other members were left in the dark. The muddled lines of authority meant that there was no single individual in control of or responsible for Bremer’s work. There were far too many hands on the steering wheel, which, in my view, was a formula for running the truck into a ditch.