Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [373]
Bush was not looking for some face-saving gesture that would allow America to bow out gracefully, as some in the administration were recommending. He did not want to “play for a tie” in Iraq, as he told us periodically. A tie would mean defeat in the long run.
In one of Zarqawi’s blustering audio tapes, the al-Qaida in Iraq leader vowed that “Bush will not enjoy peace of mind and that his army will not have a good life as long as our hearts are beating.”4 In another tape in April 2006, two months after the Samarra mosque bombing, Zarqawi confidently predicted, “The enemy is failing.”5
Six weeks later, the United States military begged to differ.
On June 7, I was in Brussels for NATO ministerial meetings when I was summoned by an aide for a secure call with General Casey. My first thought was to brace myself for more bad news from Iraq. As I sat in a small communications tent that kept conversations secure, Casey told me that the terrorist we had sought more than anyone else in Iraq was dead.
Two U.S. Air Force F-16s had dropped five-hundred-pound bombs on an al-Qaida safe house near Baqubah. Through a combination of special operations raids, a highly classified signals intelligence operation, and successful interrogations, our Special Forces had zeroed in on the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.6 We had been closing in on Zarqawi for weeks, and over the previous year had kept the President apprised of the latest developments in our hunt for him.7 Lieutenant General Stan McChrystal, the commander of our special operations forces in Iraq, personally went into the bombed-out building to verify that Zarqawi had in fact been killed.8 McChrystal saw the mortally wounded Zarqawi pulled out of the rubble before he died a short time later. My senior military assistant Vice Admiral Jim Stavridis informed me that we had confirmation of the kill through fingerprinting at the scene.
Zarqawi’s death coincided with another piece of good news. After five months of frustrating delays, the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had finally selected a minister of defense and a minister of the interior, the two most important cabinet posts. Zarqawi, perhaps more than anyone, had kept Iraqis from progressing toward a civil society. It was fitting that upon his death the new Iraqi political leadership had taken another key step forward.
With its leader now dead, al-Qaida in Iraq was thrown into a period of confusion as its lieutenants struggled to fill the empty leadership mantle. Attacks seemed to have come to a temporary lull, though we were not under the illusion that the insurgency had permanently abated.
On June 12, the President summoned members of the National Security Council to Camp David to discuss the Iraq strategy for the period ahead. He would be departing for meetings in Baghdad the next day. He properly projected determination in his public statements, but in his private meetings Bush was questioning and probing. It was clear he was concerned about the trend lines in Iraq. So was I.
We were joined in a secure videoconference by the new ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, who had succeeded John Negroponte in Baghdad. While we sorely missed his leadership in Afghanistan, I was pleased to have him in Iraq, where he forged an effective partnership with Casey. In regular videoconferences, Khalilzad kept us apprised of the coalescing government that would be our partner against the insurgency. In our private meetings, however, one could see that Khalilzad and Casey—two individuals not prone to pessimism—were growing weary. The daily cajoling and coaxing of Iraqi officials to take action as their capital city became the epicenter of what was approaching a campaign of ethnic cleansing had taken its toll. The new Iraqi leaders were not feckless or unconcerned about their country—they would agree to approve coalition military actions and robust security measures if prodded. But they weren’t George Washingtons