Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [282]
Abizaid didn’t back down. In response to my queries, he gave the reasons why he believed it was a guerrilla war: The resistance had some public support; the attacks were sustained and asymmetric; and it was beginning to demonstrate some organization. The growing momentum of the attacks, particularly in western, Sunni-populated areas, proved Abizaid’s point. He had done what I expected of all those who served in the U.S. military: When questioned by the Secretary of Defense, he marshaled the facts and arguments to support his position. He convinced me that we were indeed facing an insurgency. In November 2003, I asked for information and briefings on historical insurgencies and what the lessons learned of Britain’s successful counterinsurgency in Malaya (now Malaysia) during the 1950s were.55 There was no mistaking that there was a gaping blind spot where our government and intelligence community might have anticipated the possibility of an insurgency in Iraq.
As the months went on, it was clear that when I made suggestions to Bremer, he did not take them well. His formal direction from the President to report through me was being ignored. He was receiving guidance directly from many in the administration—the President, Rice, Powell—and choosing which guidance he preferred. After four months of what looked to me to be a series of unfortunate decisions, I felt a need to intervene.
I was onboard a military plane returning to the United States after a four-day trip to Iraq and Afghanistan on September 8, 2003, when I scanned the Pentagon’s “Early Bird,” a compilation of the top national security–related stories in major newspapers. One item that caught my attention was an op-ed by Bremer in the Washington Post entitled, “Iraq’s Path to Sovereignty.” This was the first I’d heard of the article’s existence. In fact, I had just spent two days in Baghdad with Bremer, and he had mentioned nothing about it, nor had he even hinted at the startling news it contained.
“[H]ow can we get Iraqis back in charge of Iraq?” Bremer asked in his article. “Elections are the obvious solution to restoring sovereignty to the Iraqi people. But at the present elections are simply not possible.”56 He outlined seven steps that Iraq would have to take on its path to self-government, including economic progress, ratification of a constitution, and then elections. Only after the completion of these steps, Bremer wrote, would the CPA relinquish control of the country. I thought to myself that a turnover could take years under Bremer’s policy—and if there were a stalemate at any step, it could take longer. This was quite a departure from our approach in Afghanistan. Afghans had had a sovereign interim government operating before their new constitution was drafted, let alone ratified, as a number of increasingly frustrated Iraqis noted.
I recognized, of course, that the plan Bremer was now outlining was similar to the approach long favored by the State Department, in which Iraq would regain sovereign power only after a multiyear period of U.S. administration. Indeed, Secretary Powell, at Bremer’s request, flew to Baghdad to insist that this plan was the only way to ensure a successful and stable Iraq.57 Bremer recounts Powell declaring to a meeting of the Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad that giving sovereignty to the Iraqi leaders at that time was “entirely unacceptable.”58 Bremer’s decision to publish his op-ed without informing me—and his apparent decision to follow the State Department’s view—ended even the pretense that he reported through the Department of Defense, or that I was in any way in Bremer’s line of authority.
Yet I was astonished to learn much later that Bremer had approached the President about moving out from under his theoretical reporting relationship through me, citing my “micromanagement.” “Don terrifies his civilian subordinates,” Bremer reportedly told the President.