The Gamble_ General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq Part 9

When the fight was over, of the 38 soldiers who had been in the outpost, 2 were dead and 29 others had been wounded. Those who weren't hospitalized moved back to their battalion headquarters at the big base at Taji, a few miles to the southwest. The next morning Wallace woke up and went to eat. "I didn't realize what had happened until I walked out of the chow hall," he said. "For some reason, that was the best breakfast I had ever tasted in my life."

But other feelings from the fight lingered. Looking back on it now from the United States, Wallace said, "I feel guilty. I keep thinking there were a hundred things I could have done to prevent it." He is scheduled to return to Iraq in November of 2009.

When Efflandt left the battalion in 2008, his officers memorialized his command tour in Iraq with a print of Gen. Meade at Gettysburg t.i.tled Stand and Fight It Out. Stand and Fight It Out. Sporadic fighting would continue in Tarmiyah through that year, at one point leading to a friendly fire shootout between American soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and police, killing 6 of the Iraqis. Sporadic fighting would continue in Tarmiyah through that year, at one point leading to a friendly fire shootout between American soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and police, killing 6 of the Iraqis.

BLACK THURSDAY.

As the surge intensified, with the majority of the additional brigades in country, the situation actually worsened. Thursday, April 12, stands as perhaps the toughest day of this period. The previous day, news had broken in Was.h.i.+ngton that three retired generals had turned town the job of coordinating Iraq policy for the White House. It was a stunning vote of lack of confidence in the new strategy in Iraq. One of those who refused the job, retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan, explained his decision by saying, "The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the h.e.l.l they're going. So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks.' "

On the same day, Defense Secretary Gates announced that all soldiers in Iraq, as well as those on their way, would serve 15 months there, rather than the one-year tour that had been the norm. Soldiers now had to tell their families to revise those homecoming plans, many of which involved long-planned trips to see family members or vacations at resorts. As the news spread among troops in Iraq, their reaction was expectable. "It flat out sucks, that's the only way I can think to describe it," said Pvt. Jeremy Perkins, a member of an engineering battalion in Baqubah.

On the morning of April 12 itself, a truck bomb dropped part of a key Baghdad river crossing, the Sarafiya bridge, dumping cars into the Tigris and killing 11 people. This appeared to be the first step in a campaign to prevent s.h.i.+te death squads from crossing the river into west Baghdad, or perhaps to limit the mobility of U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements. Several other bombs would hit major bridges in the following weeks. It was one more way to pull apart the carca.s.s of a once-great city.

That afternoon, a bomber managed to get past multiple checkpoints, bomb-sniffing dogs, and body searches, and into the Green Zone building where parliament was meeting, killing a member and seven other people.

Back in Was.h.i.+ngton on the same day, Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, p.r.o.nounced the surge doomed. The next day, Friday the 13th, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "I believe myself . . . that this war is lost. . . . The surge is not accomplis.h.i.+ng anything." Even some supporters of the war were beginning to talk about what "Plan C" might look like. Would it be, one hawk asked, a fallback to the core missions of attacking al Qaeda, protecting the emba.s.sy and providing air cover and other support to Iraqi forces?

The bad news seemed relentless. On April 14, a car bombing at the entrance to the main bus station in the s.h.i.+te holy city of Karbala killed 32. Four days later, bombings in mainly s.h.i.+te areas of Baghdad killed more than 150.

The a.s.saults against new outposts continued. On April 24, a U.S. patrol base in an old schoolhouse in Sadah, near Baqubah, came under complex attack, with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades from several directions. As the soldiers on the roof of the base returned fire, they saw two explosives-laden dump trucks coming at them. The drivers couldn't be shot because they were coc.o.o.ned in steel, with only a slit to see through. The first, carrying 1,500 pounds of explosives, blew up outside the gate, leveling the obstacles leading up to it. The second one barreled through the breach just made and detonated 2,000 pounds, collapsing a building. All told, 9 U.S. soldiers were killed, all of them from the 82nd Airborne Division; 20 more were wounded. "It was the worst day of my life, to have to literally dig with your hands and carry your kids out," recalled Col. Sutherland, commander of the 1st Cavalry brigade to which the 82nd Airborne unit was attached. "That was extremely hard." The Islamic State of Iraq, a group affiliated with al Qaeda, boasted in a subsequent statement that it had sent "two knights" to attack "the Crusader American base."

One day in April, a senior non-commissioned officer in the 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division allegedly led some soldiers in the execution of four Iraqi detainees. According to preliminary testimony by other soldiers, 1st Sgt. John Hatley, the top sergeant in the battalion's A Company, had four blindfolded and handcuffed Iraqis kneel by a ca.n.a.l. They had been captured after what Stars & Stripes, Stars & Stripes, the official U.S. military newspaper, termed "a brief exchange of fire" and a search that turned up "heavy weapons," which in Iraq usually means mortars or rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Hatley told his men that if they pa.s.sed along the Iraqis to a detention facility, they simply would be released, testified Pfc. Joshua Hartson. The Iraqis then were shot and their blindfolds and handcuffs were removed. "We then pushed the bodies into the ca.n.a.l and left," Sgt. Michael Leahy wrote in a statement given to Army investigators. Back at Combat Outpost Angry Dragon, Hatley gathered his troops and ordered them not to discuss the incident. He also told some soldiers to burn the blindfolds and the handcuffs, which were plastic, and to clean out the Bradley Fighting Vehicle in which the detainees had been moved. The incident only came to light in January 2008. Criminal proceedings began months later. Hatley, Leahy, and a third soldier eventually were charged with committing premeditated murder. At the time of publication of this book, they had not gone to trial, while two other soldiers pleaded guilty to lesser charges. the official U.S. military newspaper, termed "a brief exchange of fire" and a search that turned up "heavy weapons," which in Iraq usually means mortars or rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Hatley told his men that if they pa.s.sed along the Iraqis to a detention facility, they simply would be released, testified Pfc. Joshua Hartson. The Iraqis then were shot and their blindfolds and handcuffs were removed. "We then pushed the bodies into the ca.n.a.l and left," Sgt. Michael Leahy wrote in a statement given to Army investigators. Back at Combat Outpost Angry Dragon, Hatley gathered his troops and ordered them not to discuss the incident. He also told some soldiers to burn the blindfolds and the handcuffs, which were plastic, and to clean out the Bradley Fighting Vehicle in which the detainees had been moved. The incident only came to light in January 2008. Criminal proceedings began months later. Hatley, Leahy, and a third soldier eventually were charged with committing premeditated murder. At the time of publication of this book, they had not gone to trial, while two other soldiers pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

At 4:40 on the morning of May 12, insurgents ambushed an American unit in the "Triangle of Death" area southwest of Baghdad, first bombing it and then raking the survivors with gunfire. Five soldiers died and another three were abducted, with two of the bodies discovered finally a year later. Nine more soldiers were killed on May 23. Another 10 died on the 28th, which was Memorial Day, most of them in an incident in which an OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter was shot down north of Baqubah and the mission sent to respond to the crash was. .h.i.t by big two roadside bombs.

Senator Gordon Smith, the Oregon Republican who had come out against the war so vigorously the previous December, traveled to Iraq in May. He believed his emotional speech on the floor of the Senate had helped push Bush toward the surge. A White House aide, he recalled, had told him, "We recognized with your speech that not only were we losing the war, we were losing the Republicans we needed." But after touring the country and talking to Petraeus, he was no more optimistic. After he and Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, left Petraeus's office, they were strapping into their seats in a Black Hawk helicopter for the short flight back to the Baghdad airport. "So what do you think?" Smith said to Hatch.

"We could lose this thing," Hatch glumly replied.

On June 25, a wave of bombings. .h.i.t Iraqi allies of the U.S. effort. Two car bombs targeted the police station in the refinery town of Bayji, killing 30. Another attack killed 8 policemen in Hilla. But the most politically significant incident of the day was a suicide attack on a group of Anbar Awakening sheikhs meeting at the Mansour Hotel, just a short walk from the northern entrance to the Green Zone. Six of the tribal leaders were killed, as well as 6 other people.

The last of the surge brigades and their support troops finished arriving in June, elevating the U.S. troop level in Iraq to 156,000-plus another 180,000 contractors performing functions that once were done by soldiers. (Most of these were cleaners, cooks, and so on, but about 20,000 were private security guards.) By July it was beginning to look to many that the surge was failing, adding to pressure to move to a withdrawal plan. The most precious commodity Petraeus and Odierno had was time. "Everything takes time," noted Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who was commanding the 3rd Infantry Division in the belt south of Baghdad. "And everything takes longer than you think it's going to take."

A growing chorus of voices was saying they had run out of time. Retired Gen. Sir Michael Rose, one of the most prominent British officers of recent years, called on the Americans to "admit defeat" and bring the troops home. Senator Smith predicted that "a dozen Republican senators . . . will be with me in September." And a poll found that nearly 60 percent of Americans thought the surge would not help restore civil order to Baghdad. Tom Donnelly remained a strong supporter of the surge that he had helped design, but conceded "it's the eleventh hour and the fifty-fourth minute."

Political support for the surge, never strong, appeared to be collapsing. Senator Reid, who in April had p.r.o.nounced the war lost, now attacked Petraeus personally, charging, somewhat oddly, that the general "isn't in touch with what's going on in Baghdad"-as if he could discern better from Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. Senior Republicans weren't far behind him in heading for the exits. Senator Richard Lugar, the centrist Indiana Republican, took to the floor of the Senate on June 25 to call for an end to the surge. "I believe that the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved by doing so," said Lugar, one of the most respected voices in Congress on foreign policy. "Persisting with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our interests over the long term." A week later he would be joined by Pete Domenici of New Mexico, who called for following the Iraq Study Group's recommendations and getting U.S. combat forces out of Iraq by early 2008. Senator George Voinovich of Ohio also was backing away from the president.

"The war in Iraq is approaching a kind of self-imposed climax," warned Henry Kissinger.

Al Qaeda was chortling. "Today, the wind-by grace of Allah-is blowing against Was.h.i.+ngton," Ayman al-Zawahiri, the terrorist organization's second in command, said in a video posted on a jihadist website.

DEAD MAN WITH AN IPOD.

The morale of American troops seemed to be waning as they doubted if their new mission was working. "We're tired of being lost," said Sgt. 1st Cla.s.s Michael Eaglin, who was operating from a small base in Sadr City. "Have you ever been lost and at the same time getting shot at? It's miserable. . . . I want to be here for a reason, not just a show of force."

In Yusifyah, a tough little town near the southern edge of Baghdad, Spec. Yvenson Tertulien told the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times that "I don't see any progress. Just us getting killed. . . . I don't want to be here anymore." that "I don't see any progress. Just us getting killed. . . . I don't want to be here anymore."

Lt. Gregory Weber, an infantry platoon leader in the 2nd Infantry Division, recalled responding to a bombing and RPG ambush of a U.S. patrol in southern Baghdad that summer: We pa.s.sed the top half of a HMMWV [Humvee] turret. 1st Squad was so focused on security and a.s.saulting/clearing up to the blast site that they didn't even see [in the turret] the KIA [killed in action] Soldier, covered in soot, ACH [helmet] blown off, IBA [body armor] barely on, but an iPod headphone still in his ear. On site, there were three HMMWV destroyed. One upside down from an 8 foot deep, 15-foot-wide blast crater, 25 meters away, burning with the remains of 4 soldiers left inside. Another HMMWV was in the blast crater, partially submerged in water from a water main rupturing, and the other HMMWV 25 meters the opposite direction with its back end blown off. It was the most horrific subsurface IED detonation I saw the entire deployment.

Five soldiers were killed in the incident, but the image that haunted Weber was the first thing he saw, the dead soldier in the blasted turret, "iPod still in his ear." He still wonders, "Did his leaders.h.i.+p know he was distracted by music; not being able to hear the battlefield?"

Indeed, there were growing signs of such demoralization and indiscipline. In the hard-hit 1st Battalion of the 26th Infantry Regiment, which had lost five soldiers in one bombing in June, life got even worse in July. The first sergeant of its Alpha Company, while on patrol, said, "I can't take it anymore," put a weapon under his chin, and shot himself in front of his men. A few days later, members of a platoon in the battalion's Charlie Company refused to go out on a mission, saying they were afraid of becoming abusive with Iraqis.

In another unusual act that verged on insubordination, seven 82nd Airborne soldiers placed an opinion piece in the New York Times New York Times that called the surge a failure. "We see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side." Legally they were ent.i.tled to express their opinions, but for soldiers to write a newspaper piece on policy during a war is almost unprecedented. Three weeks later, two of the writers, Sgt. Yance Gray and Sgt. Omar Mora, would be killed after their truck veered off an elevated highway in western Baghdad and dropped about 30 feet. that called the surge a failure. "We see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side." Legally they were ent.i.tled to express their opinions, but for soldiers to write a newspaper piece on policy during a war is almost unprecedented. Three weeks later, two of the writers, Sgt. Yance Gray and Sgt. Omar Mora, would be killed after their truck veered off an elevated highway in western Baghdad and dropped about 30 feet.

The governor of Puerto Rico, Anibal Acevedo Vila, addressing the National Guard a.s.sociation's annual conference, called for a new strategy in Iraq that would lead to a withdrawal. He received a standing ovation.

"I have never seen in twenty years the sort of resigned att.i.tude I am hearing from my active-duty counterparts," reported one Army Reserve colonel. "They are conveying a 'game over' att.i.tude where they are going to continue saluting the flag and doing what the NCA [national command authority] wants, but not without realizing it is all horses.h.i.+t at this point." After the American military left Iraq, he added gloomily, the Iraqis will "turn on each other like a pack of weasels."

A SLOW TURNING.

In retrospect, it appears that the pattern of the battle of Baghdad from March to June resembles, on a vastly larger scale, that of the a.s.sault earlier in the year on the Tarmiyah outpost. In both places, the new U.S. strategy was pus.h.i.+ng into enemy strongholds and eliminating safe havens. The enemy reaction was to hit back as hard as it could. Indeed, the U.S. counteroffensive could be said to have triggered some of the bombings, as the enemy faced a "use it or lose it" prospect with its a.r.s.enal of prepared car bombs and stashed explosives. "They have previously been, you know, frankly, elusive when we actually got into an area and started to clear it, and we're seeing that in this area of east Ras.h.i.+d, they are standing and fighting," Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil Jr., commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, noted in June. Both sides were throwing everything they had into the fight.

Visiting Iraq at the beginning of April, Senator John McCain expressed "cautious, very cautious, optimism" about the effects of the new strategy. "We've made tremendous mistakes," he said in Baghdad on April Fool's Day, "but we're finally getting it right. And is it too little, too late? I don't know, but I don't think so."

His traveling companion, Senator Lindsey Graham, added another thought: "We're doing now what we should have done three years ago."

The two were mocked for citing a walk through a Baghdad market as evidence of improved security, but in fact they were right. There may have been soldiers protecting the market, but the market was there, with merchants and goods, because of that military presence.

As Kissinger had said, the war was approaching a climax-but not of the sort he envisioned. Quietly, in various corners of Baghdad and its environs, even as the high-profile bombings were escalating, the new strategy was beginning to show results in hundreds of ways. Every day, American troops found that more Iraqis were beginning to talk to them. Better intelligence was coming in, and was being acted on more quickly, by units that lived on the next block instead of on the outskirts of the city. A unit getting a tip on a house where enemy fighters were gathering would begin watching it, not necessarily to hit it immediately, but perhaps to see how it fit into a larger network. With that knowledge, it might then be able to cripple a gang that often had been intimidating and extorting area residents. Maj. James Allen learned this lesson in an odd way as the Iraqi troops he was advising ambushed an insurgent planting a roadside bomb. They aimed to kill the would-be bomber, but their weapons were so poorly maintained that they couldn't fire. "The dude who was emplacing the IED froze, though, so they walked over and bagged him," Allen recalled. "He rolled over on the supplier, the supplier rolled on someone else, and we essentially shut down IEDs on that stretch of road for eight weeks."

Also, having American troops in residence often dramatically improved the effectiveness of their Iraqi counterparts. Having Americans available to come to their aid-and perhaps to feed and outfit them-made Iraqi soldiers more comfortable about being out in the neighborhoods. "They feel as long as the Americans are there, they can pretty much handle anything that's going on," said Sgt. Maj. Michael Clemens, who served with the 82nd Airborne in Diyala Province from mid-2006 to mid-2007. Many of these new "partnered relations.h.i.+ps" would begin to show results by midsummer. Of course, the locals also generally found it easier to talk to the Iraqi troops, who often would pa.s.s along the information they gleaned to the Americans with whom they shared a post.

Familiarity bred knowledge. One squad of American troops living in a Sunni area began to examine what was being sold in the markets as an indicator of the mood of the population. For example, it noticed one day that heavy portable heaters were being offered in their local market, which they interpreted-correctly-to mean that people were planning on staying there, which in turn meant that the pressure on the population to move brought by s.h.i.+te militias must be declining.

Even the language that American leaders used was changing. "There's a lot less cowboy lingo in the force-'toss the compound,' 'take 'em down,' 'roll 'em up,' 'get the bad guys,"' observed Lt. Col. Yingling, on his third tour in Iraq. Col. Grigsby, commander of the third surge brigade, still introduced himself like a traditional armor officer as "Hammer Six," but his orientation was different. "The quality of life in Jisr Diuala, one nahiya nahiya in the in the qadha," qadha," was improving, he told reporters one day. He also was proud that "we worked out of eight patrol bases and four joint security sites in the middle of the population centers, [and so] we never commuted to work." was improving, he told reporters one day. He also was proud that "we worked out of eight patrol bases and four joint security sites in the middle of the population centers, [and so] we never commuted to work."

The improvements in American operations were technical as well as doctrinal, tactical, and cultural. One of the reasons that redeploying the troops into small outposts could work in 2007 better than it would have in previous years was that brigade commanders had far more aerial surveillance a.s.sets available and under their control. During 2007 the number of these drone reconnaissance aircraft operating in Iraq would increase tenfold, according to an after-action review by Odierno's headquarters. During his first tour in Iraq, in 2003-4, Odierno noted, the most that could be counted on was two drone reconnaissance aircraft available to him in all of Iraq, and they had to be shared with other divisions. In 2007 all 18 Army combat brigade commanders had their own RQ-7 Shadow UAVs, and could request more surveillance and strike aircraft as needed. This made it far easier, for example, for a commander to keep an eye on potential threats to his outposts.

In addition, in a highly cla.s.sified operation, new information about al Qaeda and insurgent leaders began to get distributed much more quickly to tactical units. The officer responsible for the change was a military intelligence specialist, Lt. Col. Jen Koch Easterly, who reorganized the collection and a.n.a.lysis of intercepted telephone and computer communications in order to coordinate it better with other intelligence operations and with what units were doing on the ground. She also focused more on going after the networks that were a.s.sembling, delivering, and detonating roadside bombs, which has been the single greatest killer of U.S. troops during the war. According to one senior officer, her military intelligence unit's successes became the undisclosed key to the success of the surge. Her work still remains largely unknown because so much of what was done remains highly cla.s.sified. But as one operations report by the 1st Cavalry Division put it, "synchronization of ISR/HUMINT/SIGINT [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance /human intelligence/signals intelligence] has significantly reduced IED cells and threat." Asked about that, Maj. Patrick Michaelis said, "It was a major factor. . . . Cryptological support from Colonel Easterly was critical." She declined to be interviewed, citing cla.s.sification issues.

In midsummer, intel people picked up some interesting indications that the insurgency was running out of steam. One smart U.S. Army intelligence officer in Baghdad said that he just didn't see the signs of a vibrant counterattack forming. "There's nothing that shows any kind of [enemy] surge in the making," he said. On intercepts of telephone conversations between insurgent leaders, he noted, "There's a lot of b.i.t.c.hing and moaning, 'What have you done today?"' The response, he said, was often along the lines of, "I haven't done anything, there are too many around, I can't move."

One of the emerging lessons was that the increase in regular U.S. troops on the streets of the city improved the effectiveness of the Special Operators who were targeting al Qaeda. It also helped that Odierno was an old friend of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the head of Special Operations in Iraq, whom he had known since their days together at West Point. Until that point, "We didn't see how essential conventional forces are in the counterterror fight," remembered Rapp. American commanders, he said, were surprised to see that having their troops moving around effectively sponged up the sea in which al Qaeda swam. As insurgents found it more difficult to move, they began to communicate more electronically, in part because as senior leaders were caught, they tended to be replaced by younger, less experienced men, which in turn made them more vulnerable to Lt. Col. Easterly's signals interception operation. "When you stay in the neighborhood, they have no place to stay, they have to talk more, because they're mobile, so we can catch them, " Rapp said.

Even as U.S. troop deaths increased, Iraqi civilian deaths appeared to be declining, decreasing steadily from January on. Essentially, by moving out into the population, the military had interposed itself between the attackers and the people. And some of the attacks on them that succeeded were not as bad as previous ones. For example, in March and April, the bombs that detonated were hitting more checkpoints and fewer of the markets and mosques those checkpoints were intended to protect. Roadside bombs also were becoming less effective, for two reasons. Partly, emplacers had less time to dig holes, and some bomb cells were resorting to the hasty method of simply lowering small pressure-detonated bombs through a hole in the floor of a car and then driving off. Soldiers comfortably dismissed those relatively ineffective devices as "drop 'n' pops." Even some of the bigger devices used low-grade homemade explosives, indicating that the bombmakers were running low on more lethal material.

COUNTERINSURGENCY INSIDE THE PRISON CAMPS.

Two other inst.i.tutional initiatives also were beginning to have an effect. These were how the Americans handled prisoners and how they raised Iraqi forces. Neither one held the excitement of combat operations, but improving them was essential if the American effort was to become more effective.

For years handling detainees had been the Achilles' heel of the American operation. Holding and treating prisoners decently didn't seem the hardest of tasks, but their abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib facility had been one of the biggest embarra.s.sments, and strategic setbacks, of the war. "We have learned an enormous amount, the very hard way," Petraeus said later. One hard lesson he listed was that "you cannot safeguard our values by violating them in another country in an endeavor like this."

Despite that, his counterinsurgency manual didn't offer much new on the way to deal with detainees. It advised that they should not be abused, but didn't really have much to say about what to do with them besides that.

Not long after Petraeus took command, he picked Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, a Marine reservist who had worked for Hewlett-Packard and IBM, to take over the detention operation. At first, there was some question about Stone, with a few officers recommending against him. Petraeus called Gen. James Mattis, a Marine who has had a kind of parallel career to his-first when they were both a.s.sistants to a top Pentagon official, then when they both commanded divisions during 2003 in Iraq, and finally overseeing their services' educational and training establishments. Most important, they are two of the most highly educated generals in today's military. "Jim, what's the deal?" Petraeus asked. "Some people advised not to take him."

"He is the kind of guy you need," Mattis rea.s.sured him. "There will be some degree of care and feeding required, but knowing you, Petraeus, and knowing him, you will be a great team."

Stone would rewrite the book on effective detention operations. His beginning insight was that there was an insurgency inside the prison camps, and that simply warehousing the prisoners only intensified the opposition there, creating more insurgents out of civilians and more dedicated ones out of existing insurgents. As Stone later put it, "by not emphasizing population protection and the exemplary treatment of detainees, our facilities became breeding grounds for extremist recruitment." In an official review, he termed U.S. detainment policies for the first several years of the war "an abject failure, a strategic risk to the MNF-I mission and a failure from a counterinsurgency perspective." In April 2007 alone, the month he took command, there were 10,178 acts of detainee violence inside U.S. prison camps in Iraq.

What was needed, Stone thought, was a campaign that paralleled the larger counterinsurgency effort overseen by Petraeus. He dubbed it "COIN inside the wire." Stone told his guards to secure the prison population, and especially isolate the roughly 1,000 extremists who had been intimidating the 20,000 other inmates, to the point of holding "trials" of inmates who refused to join them. The first step in separating out the hard core was to learn more about the prisoners, who until that point had been separated by sect but not by ideology. (The sectarian split was about 80 percent Sunni, 20 percent s.h.i.+te.) Despite Western perceptions, only a tiny percentage were foreigners. Who were they? What motivated them? The answers they gave in surveys surprised their captors. They were tribally oriented, with 78 percent reporting that they would use their tribal leaders to solve problems. They were not strikingly religious-only 28 percent reported attending services at their mosque on most Fridays. More than 10 percent had been police, soldiers, or security guards at the time of arrest. Most important, only about 4 percent were deemed to be hard-core cases. The vast majority, it seemed, were motivated not by ideology or a sense of grievance, but by minor economic necessity. They planted bombs not to feed their families, but for the cash al Qaeda would pay them, so they could buy small luxuries such as air conditioners or DVD players.

The second move was to begin providing services to the prison population. Basic literacy courses were offered. A civics course was made mandatory. Some 160 Muslim clerics were hired to begin teaching moderate Islam, in courses offered on a voluntary basis. Other courses were given in Arabic, English, history, science, geography, and math. "There is a danger that the insurgency is becoming a vocation," warned a briefing prepared by Stone's headquarters, so vocational training was begun in carpentry, textiles, and masonry. The notion was to provide a pathway back to a life in the civilian world where they would not seek to benefit from violence. Stone even proposed giving released detainees a stipend of $200 a month for six months, just to get them on their feet and keep them away from temptation, but that idea died for lack of sufficient support. Instead, he opened a brick factory inside one prison, Camp Bucca, and paid the prisoners for their work, enabling them to build small nest eggs. Typically, the flamboyant Stone had each brick stamped in Arabic, "Rebuilding the nation brick by brick." After concluding that prisoners who saw their families were less likely to become violent, he set out to enable family visits, running regular bus trips from the cities to the camps.

Stone also urged his subordinates to recognize their own cultural limitations. "Our own individual view of the world tends to limit our perceptions," he wrote in an overview doc.u.ment, "creating risk when we make the mistake of judging a detainee's actions in the context of our own culture rather than his own. This is one of the most significant challenges we face in detainee operations." One of the best ways to defuse a confrontation with guards, they found, was to turn on the large-screen television and play a video of a recent soccer match. And, in another move to reduce tensions and also improve understanding, a pamphlet in Arabic was created to explain the detention process to new arrivals, with a comic book version created for those who were illiterate.

American commanders also seemed to be getting the word. Preparing to lead a brigade of the 10th Mountain Division into Iraq, Col. David Paschal made a point during a training exercise by wearing a dishdasha dishdasha-the Arab robe that most Iraqi men wear-and playing the role of "an uncooperative detainee." He threw food and insults at his guards until he finally was tackled and handcuffed. "By partic.i.p.ating in the training I was able to experience the level of professionalism and proficiency of my soldiers while at the same time see how they are maintaining our detainees' safety as well as dignity," he explained.

Such training continued to be important, because there continued to be a hard core of such uncooperative Iraqis. Even after all of Stone's improvements were implemented, incidents still occurred. One day many months later, six Navy personnel working as prison camp guards grew tired of having inmates' feces hurled at them and locked the offenders in a room, then set off pepper spray and turned off the ventilation.

But the strategic view of how to handle detainees had changed, probably irretrievably, as had the atmosphere in most parts of the camps. In April 2008, there were 178 acts of violence recorded in the prison camps, about one-tenth the figure a year earlier. At his farewell ceremony in June, Gen. Stone commented: "History has shown us that leaders often rise from the most difficult of times and circ.u.mstances, and we should not be surprised if Iraq's future leaders are today being held in coalition force custody." The way they were treated today might shape the country's policies in the future, he warned.

SURGING THE IRAQIS.

An old military aphorism holds that amateurs talk tactics, but professionals talk logistics. In fact, real military insiders often focus on larger personnel issues-raising, training, and equipping the force-because that is the key to long-term, sustainable success.

The U.S. effort to create a new Iraqi military had never gone particularly well. Part of that grew out of the political obstacles facing Iraq: A member of the Mahdi Army, for example, might not be well equipped or trained, but he knew what he was fighting for. By contrast, a member of the Iraqi army, despite having reliable American gear, didn't know if the government for which he fought would even exist a year later. Even under Petraeus in 2004-5, the training effort had a slow, haphazard feel to it. This was one reason he seemed to shy away from discussing that tour of duty. He maintains that he succeeded then. "It was a ma.s.sive task and what we inherited was a pretty modest effort," he said. But still that tour carries about it a whiff of something inconsistent with the rest of his stellar military career.

Years later there was still plenty of room for improvement. In April 2007 a platoon of American soldiers was pinned down outside a mosque in western Baghdad's Kadhimiyah neighborhood and looked around for some help from Iraqi soldiers. "Of the twenty-seven hundred Iraqi security forces that are in Kadhimiyah, no Iraqi unit would respond," said Lt. Col. Steven Miska, deputy commander of a U.S. brigade.

Early in 2007, Petraeus asked for Lt. Gen. James Dubik to come out and take over the program to train, equip, and advise Iraqi army and police units. Dubik is an unusual figure, lower key than Petraeus, but like him a light-infantry intellectual. He had spent about half his military career in infantry and paratroop units, and the other half studying and teaching at military schools such as West Point and Fort Leavenworth School of Advanced Military Studies, and civilian universities, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology. Before joining the Army he had intended to become a priest and had spent a year at seminary.

In an echo of Petraeus's "Mesopotamian Stampede," Dubik called his training effort "Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch." That is, he explained, "We all feel we're the part of the movie where the spotlight isn't. The posse is going after the rustlers, rescuing the stagecoach, and running the bad guys out of town." Meanwhile, Dubik was trying to create a more effective Iraqi security force. In some ways, this was a key counterinsurgency move, because it is axiomatic that it is indigenous forces that finally put down insurgencies, not foreign militaries. Dubik wasn't particularly taking a page out of the new counterinsurgency manual, but he was consistent with the new strategy in another, larger way: He increased the risk taking in his part of the effort.

First, he deemphasized the transition to Iraqi control. "It's the indirect approach," Dubik said. "It's right out of Aristotle: If you want a happy life, don't aim for happiness, aim for virtue." In other words, create an effective Iraqi force, and the transition will follow naturally, without being forced. In Maoist terms, Iraqi forces would not be given power, they would take it.

Second, rather than downplay the infiltration of Iraqi forces by s.h.i.+te militias, especially in the National Police, Dubik confronted it, purging its ranks. This wasn't just a matter of personalities and personal connections, but also of the politics of the country. As Stephen Biddle, who advised Petraeus on the issue, put it, "The problem is, in a country at war, the same pressures will exist against the next commander. The guys in the black baklavas will visit him at midnight." So the issue was not how to go after individual commanders but how to reduce sectarian influence-again, an instance of the indirect approach. The key, Biddle said, was to initiate a "virtuous cycle" where militias were weakened, so their pressures were less, so Iraqi commanders acted in less sectarian ways, and so the Iraqi population's opinion of Iraqi forces improved, making those forces stronger.

But there also plainly were some commanders who had to go. "We have gradually cleaned them up," Petraeus later said. In the National Police, he said, "They replaced the overall commander, both division commanders, all of the brigade commanders, and about seventy to eighty percent of the battalion commanders-and in some cases did it twice." In the course of those removals, Dubik noted, some 15 internal affairs investigators at the Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police, were killed, and another 14 were wounded.

Third, and probably most important, Dubik accelerated the growth of Iraqi forces, knowing that they might not be as effective at the outset. His goal was "sufficient quant.i.ty of sufficiently capable." He halved the time dedicated to basic training. This was essentially a step away from the professional U.S. military approach of the last 20 years and toward the World War II approach of churning out troops and letting quality show itself and rise up. Under Dubik, the size of the Iraqi security forces increased from 400,000 in June 2007 to 560,000 a year later-actually becoming larger than the active-duty United States Army.

FINISHED BUSINESS.

There was also one more American commander who had to go. In June, just as the surge was about to take full effect, Defense Secretary Gates effectively fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Pace, who was the last member of the old Rumsfeld team still in place, having been vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs starting in October 2001 and then chairman since October 2005. Gates blamed the removal on Congress, saying he decided not to renominate Pace for the customary second term because "the focus of his confirmation process would have been on the past, rather than the future, and further, there was the very real prospect that the process would be quite contentious." That may be so, but Gates was also effective at ridding himself of unneeded trouble. Pace became the first chairman in more than 40 years to serve such a short term. With him went the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Edmund Giambiastiani, who had been seen as even closer to Rumsfeld than Pace.

SIGNS OF LIFE IN BAGHDAD.

(Summer 2007)

Like a summer thunderstorm tapering off, American losses began to drop sharply in July. From a distance it all still looked like a solid wall of thunder and lightning, but those underneath it began to see patches of blue. In some neighborhoods, the streets were growing more crowded. More shops were open. Parents were allowing their children to play outside. The biggest change was the general absence of the clatter of gunfire and the roar of bomb blasts, which a year earlier had been common in Baghdad. There were five major reasons for this change. First, and most obvious, was the new force posture of putting troops out among the people and giving them the mission of protecting those people. Eventually there were some 75 outposts established across the city, and their presence was beginning to produce benefits. Much of the city was beginning to feel safer.

Second was that by the time they got there, the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad had been largely completed, with some neighborhoods that once were heavily Sunni becoming overwhelming s.h.i.+a. s.h.i.+te militias patrolled their streets and sometimes rented out the houses from which Sunnis had been driven. "Now that the Sunnis are all gone, murders have dropped off," said Capt. Jay Wink, the intelligence officer for a 1st Infantry Division battalion that was operating in one newly s.h.i.+te neighborhood in southwest Baghdad. "One way to put it is they ran out of people to kill."

Third, and later in the year, came the declaration of a cease-fire with the Americans by Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American s.h.i.+te cleric.

There was also a less noticed fourth reason: For the first time since the invasion, U.S. forces were all pursuing the same goal in the same way. Putting out an official doc.u.ment is one thing; getting commanders and their troops to actually implement it is another. For example, when Gen. Kinnard surveyed his peers who had served in Vietnam for The War Managers, The War Managers, one senior general, asked about how a newly issued campaign plan had affected his operations, responded, "I never read them, it would only confuse me." one senior general, asked about how a newly issued campaign plan had affected his operations, responded, "I never read them, it would only confuse me."

Odierno's great accomplishment may have been making sure that all his forces were dancing to the same tune and at the same time. Rather than permit each of his subordinate units-divisions or brigades-to carry out their own operations independently, he coordinated and even synchronized them, especially after the last surge brigade arrived as summer began, so that insurgents and terrorists couldn't just s.h.i.+ft to quieter areas where there was less pressure. "In July, Odierno had all his forces, and he was able to put down the hammer, keep the squeeze on, everywhere," said Keane. "He just kept hammering and hammering and hammering."

Unity of effort radically increases the effectiveness of military operations. The new counterinsurgency manual was officially issued only in December 2006, but within months it was being implemented on the streets of Baghdad. That was a sharp contrast to the first years of the war, when every unit pursued its own fight, often in very different ways, said Col. James Rainey, who had been a major in Iraq during the 2003 invasion, then commanded a battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq in 2004-5, and then returned in 2008 as the G-3, or director of operations, for the 4th Infantry Division. "The biggest difference is, we have doctrine now," he said, "Everyone's doing it now, protecting the population." That was also a much more concrete mission than "stop the insurgency," an order that only raised a series of additional definitional questions, such as what the insurgency was and what tactics were appropriate in countering it.

Listening to Rainey, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, the division commander, added, "Petraeus's view of counterinsurgency changed the way we all look at it." That was an overstatement, as Petraeus was not alone in developing the new manual on counterinsurgency. Yet Hammond's basic point was correct: It is rare for a single person to have as dramatic effect as Petraeus did on how a large inst.i.tution operates, and especially in how the U.S. Army wages war.

Ill.u.s.trating how the new view permeated the force, Craig Coppock, who led an infantry platoon in Iraq in 2006-7, compiled a "Counterinsurgency Cliff Notes" for his peers. In this seven-page essay, lessons from the Vietnam War, from the French campaign in Algeria in the 1950s, and, most of all, from earlier in the Iraq war are woven together. The innovations of past years that had been considered only by dissidents now were becoming common sense. Once Army commanders had thought shows of force were the way to impress the locals and so prevail. Now Coppock admonished, "Use minimum force. Basically, try not to break stuff or kill anyone you don't have to." While top American officials had let the lynching of four U.S. contractors provoke them into ordering an attack on Fallujah in the spring of 2004, the young officer warned, "Avoid emotional responses to an operational event. . . . Knee-jerk reactions waste energy, effort, and are in most cases counterproductive to COIN strategy." And while the Army had spent years improving the anti-bomb properties of Humvees, Coppock instructed soldiers instead to get out of their rolling coc.o.o.ns: "You should be out on foot in your AO [area of operations] every time you roll out of the wire." (Coppock also spoke with the tone of hard-won wisdom: "Never leave your AO the same way you went in.") A SEPARATE PEACE.

The fifth-and by far the most controversial-reason for the decline in violence was the turning of parts of the Sunni insurgency. This may have been the biggest gamble Petraeus took as the commander of the war in Iraq. He was going behind the back of the Baghdad government to put its enemies on the American payroll. Strikingly, he didn't seem to think he needed to get clearance from the American government, either. When asked about how he had gotten the president to agree to the program, he indicated that he hadn't asked Bush about it. "I don't think it was something that we needed to ask permission for. We had the authority to conduct what are called security contracts, and that was how we saw these." But, he added, "to be truthful we didn't see it growing to 103,000"-its peak in 2008, and a huge addition to the firepower the U.S. military could bring to bear in and around Baghdad. At its height, the monthly payroll was $30 million, which sounds like a lot but amounts to a few hours of what the war costs the American taxpayer twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year.

Some experts, such as retired Gen. Abizaid and Stephen Biddle, a sometime adviser to Petraeus, argue that the change in the loyalties of Sunni fighters was the single most important cause of the improvement in security in 2007. It had begun before the surge, in the fall of '06, with the deals Col. MacFarland was cutting in al Anbar Province.

"It reached critical ma.s.s in Ramadi, and set off a chain reaction up the Euphrates River Valley," Petraeus said. The turning accelerated during the winter and spring of 2007. The members.h.i.+p rolls of these new neighborhood militias exploded later in the year, going from a few thousand to more than 60,000 by the winter, and then to 103,000, the majority of them Sunni and many of them former insurgents. They were not supporters of the Baghdad government, but they were allies of the American effort-at least, most of the time.

In simple manpower terms, this was a huge bonus to the Americans. As Gen. Keane put it, tens of thousands of fighters who had been trying to kill Americans now "were not shooting at you. That helps a lot when you only have thirty thousand of your own additional troops to address the problem."

It was effectively a second marriage for both sides, which had become estranged from their original partners. The Americans weren't quite divorced from their allies in the s.h.i.+te-dominated government in Baghdad, which wasn't interested in a program of centrally driven reconciliation, but there was a new distance between the two. The Sunnis had split from al Qaeda in Iraq, rejecting its program of violent religious extremism. "The possibility of forming a de facto alliance with the tribes emerged only once the Sunnis had themselves become disenchanted with AQI, and once the United States had also grown equally disillusioned with the prospects of achieving a 'top down' process of reconciliation through the auspices of the al-Maliki government," commented Australian political scientist Andrew Phillips.

The turned insurgents at first tended to refer to themselves as "the Sunni Awakening." Tellingly, Petraeus and other American officials used a variety of euphemisms, as if not to face head-on the sensitive reality that they were negotiating cease-fires with the enemy. Some units initially used terms such as "security contractors," "neighborhood watches," and "provisional security forces." Then the official name became "Concerned Local Citizens," until that Orwellian term was dropped for something marginally more realistic, "Sons of Iraq." There was a small irony in this last term, because until Petraeus and Odierno took command, American officials often had labeled insurgents "Anti-Iraqi Forces," even using the acronym "AIF" in briefings. Now those fighters had gone from being deemed to be against Iraq to being its progeny.

The cease-fires didn't quite amount to an amnesty, because there was no explicit forgiveness. But there was an implied one. Nor were they surrenders, because the fighters remained armed, and in some cases were given new and better weapons. They also went on the American payroll at about $10 a day per man, hardly a punitive step. The CIA paid bonuses to favored sheikhs. In reality these were paid truces of an uncertain duration and with a limited writ. The insurgents hadn't come over to the American side or even necessarily endorsed American goals. Maj. Mark Brady, a reconciliation specialist with the 1st Cavalry Division, noted that one Sunni leader said to him, "As soon as we finish with al Qaeda, we start with the s.h.i.+te extremists."

But the turning proved the answer to the sticky problem seen in Baghdad in 2006 of U.S. forces being able to clear but Iraqi forces being unable to hold. That was especially true in Sunni areas, where Iraqi forces tended to be seen as tools of the s.h.i.+te-dominated government in Baghdad. The answer: Have the Sunnis do it themselves.

At first, this new policy of paying off a former enemy was largely being done without informing the Baghdad government about it. "In the initial months, we weren't even telling them [Iraqi government officials], we were just doing it," said Emma Sky. Upon learning of the talks, she added, officials in the Baghdad government "accused us of creating a Sunni army that could lead to warlordism and possibly to a civil war." These were concerns that would remain alive for years.

During the spring many Iraqi commanders resisted meeting with the former insurgents who were volunteering to turn sides, said Col. Green, chief of operations for the 1st Cavalry Division. "They hadn't received any orders from the Iraqi government," he said. But soon, he said, many Iraqi battalion and brigade commanders began to work with the groups, even without direction from Baghdad. "They were finding ways to accommodate it, to share information, to deconflict the battles.p.a.ce, even though they hadn't had orders," he said.

Nor were the front-line troops being asked to work with their former enemies told much about the changeover. Cpl. David Goldich, a smart young Marine in al Anbar Province, recalled simply seeing local guys showing up with weapons and setting up a rudimentary checkpoint on a main road. To a Marine eye, they didn't look impressive-"unshaven men wearing civilian clothes carrying rusty AK-47s milling about," he wrote. But he soon concluded that "they are worth their weight in gold. . . . an amazing force multiplier that denied the enemy freedom of movement in a manner we could not." They spoke the language, they knew the area, and they knew who wasn't from it. Higher-ups wouldn't approve giving supplies to the new guards, so Goldich's unit decided to help them out and scrounged weapons and food for the men and bullet-proof gla.s.s and concertina wire for their checkpoints. "What we gave them we stole from base, and probably would have been punished if caught," he recalled. (Goldich, who graduated from the University of Virginia before enlisting, also showed a far greater understanding of counterinsurgency than the Marine chain of command had after the Haditha incident. He took more risks, such as sometimes approaching Iraqis without carrying a weapon, because he thought it would help his unit achieve its mission. "My job is to defeat the enemy, not protect myself," he reasoned.) Later in the spring, the process became more formalized. Odierno established a "reconciliation cell" in his headquarters to track the turnings and to advise commanders on how to do it. This was partly because commanders were asking for guidance about who they were allowed to talk to, whether they should treat with insurgent leaders, and how to respond to those leaders' requests for money, weapons, and official support. Odierno laid down some informal guidelines: Don't talk to war criminals. Don't give them ammunition. And if they ask you to stop doing raids in their area, tell them you can't promise that. Powell, the planner, recalled that "General Odierno's guidance was, 'We are going to be striking deals with people who have killed American soldiers. That may turn your stomach, but that's the way forward.' "

Once brigade and battalion commanders grew comfortable with the process, "it really started to catch on," said Brig. Gen. Mark McDonald, who was overseeing the new cell. The new opening with the Americans offered the Sunnis a way out from their unhappy alliance with al Qaeda. It is probably no coincidence that in April, as the top American commanders threw their weight behind the turning, the Islamic Army, a group of Sunni insurgent militias, posted on jihad websites a nine-page letter denouncing al Qaeda. It complained that al Qaeda had killed more than 30 of its fighters that spring. Abu Mohammed al-Salmani, a member of the group, said that the terrorist organization was killing far more Sunnis than the Americans were. "People are tired of this torture," he told a reporter. "We cannot keep silent anymore."

But as the turning edged closer to Baghdad, the central government grew more vocal about the deals being made. Maliki began sending alarmed messages asking exactly what the Americans thought they were doing. "They are trusting terrorists," charged Ali al-Adeeb, a prominent s.h.i.+te politician. "They are trusting people who have previously attacked American forces and innocent people. They are trusting people who are loyal to the regime of Saddam Hussein."

"It's like raising a crocodile," Saad Yousef al-Muttalibi, a member of the Maliki cabinet, told the Was.h.i.+ngton Times. Was.h.i.+ngton Times. "It is fine when it is a baby, but when it is big, you can't keep it in the house." The Baghdad government feared that the American government was going to feed baby crocodiles for its own purposes and then leave Iraq-just as the reptiles were beginning to snap at Baghdad. Later in the year, Maliki's s.h.i.+te bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, would issue a statement condemning the American embrace of "those terrorist elements which committed the most hideous crimes against our people" and demanding "that the American administration stop this adventure." Other s.h.i.+tes charged that after the Americans left, there would be two armies in central Iraq-one loyal to Baghdad, and one not. "It is fine when it is a baby, but when it is big, you can't keep it in the house." The Baghdad government feared that the American government was going to feed baby crocodiles for its own purposes and then leave Iraq-just as the reptiles were beginning to snap at Baghdad. Later in the year, Maliki's s.h.i.+te bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, would issue a statement condemning the American embrace of "those terrorist elements which committed the most hideous crimes against our people" and demanding "that the American administration stop this adventure." Other s.h.i.+tes charged that after the Americans left, there would be two armies in central Iraq-one loyal to Baghdad, and one not.

There also was some suspicion that that was precisely the American plan-that is, create a balancing force of Sunnis to deter the s.h.i.+tes from wholesale suppression of the Sunnis once the Americans were out of the way. Petraeus flatly denied that the new groups were a helpful counterweight to the Baghdad government, but planners below him were perhaps more candid. "As their growth grows, the national government will be in jeopardy," said Lt. Col. Jeff McDougall, one of Odierno's senior planners. "So it's a forcing mechanism," he said, posing a useful "or else" to the s.h.i.+te political leaders in Baghdad.

Even neutral observers had some qualms. Patrick Porter, an Australian military historian, later would call the new American allies in Iraq "a coalition of gangsters, tribal leaders and opportunists."

Not all American military officials were comfortable with the approach, worrying that the short-term security gain obtained would create long-term political problems. "What we're doing is creating a secessionist state out west," said a senior U.S. military intelligence official. "The Anbar tribes will be capable of keeping order, and also of keeping a s.h.i.+te-dominated army out of Anbar." In other words, argued retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, the Americans were avoiding military defeat by embracing political failure.

Some American troops were antsy about working alongside men who had fought them, and probably killed some of their comrades. "If Jack Bauer doesn't negotiate with terrorists, why does the American army?" asked Spec. Alex Horton, a young Texan who served in Baghdad and Baqubah in late 2006 and early 2007.