The Gamble_ General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq Part 13

The heavy use of these contractors long had been an anomaly in the Iraq war. When historians look back on the conflict, one aspect on which some are likely to focus is how American forces relied heavily on contractors to truck supplies, cook food, and provide technical support. But they probably will look most closely at the armed civilians hired to provide security to State Department personnel and other American officials, as well as to many of their fellow contractors engaged in reconstruction projects. This group of mercenaries by far const.i.tuted the second largest group in the "coalition," after U.S. forces. (Indeed, the so-called coalition continued to crumble, with the shrinking British contingent of 4,100 based at the Basra airport doing almost nothing, and the next largest troop contributor, the former Soviet state of Georgia, being forced in the summer of 2008 to precipitously withdraw its 2,000 soldiers from Iraq, where they had been operating checkpoints along the Iranian border, so they could help fight the Russians back home. Oddly, of the 24 nations in the group, some of which contributed just a handful of soldiers, 17 were former Communist states.) In the post-9/11 world, one security company, Blackwater, was paid around $1 billion by the U.S. government, much of it for work in Iraq.

Many of the private security contractors carried noticeable chips on their shoulders, the likely effect of really being responsible to no one for their behavior. One day in 2007, for example, a knot of about seven white American males stood in the airport in Amman, Jordan, waiting for one of the two daily Royal Jordanian Airlines flights to Baghdad. They were dressed in "mercenary casual"-short-sleeved shirts, multipocketed khaki cargo pants, and wraparound sungla.s.ses on their heads. Some sported tattoos on their biceps. Two carried daypacks that had B+ and A+ st.i.tched on them, denoting their blood types. They conversed in the distinctive acronym-heavy jargon of the U.S. military. One Kiplingesque story of desert intrigue began, "There was this TCN in the secondary QRF," referring to a Third Country National, who ranks low in hierarchy of status in the world of mercenaries, on a Quick Reaction Force, a group that is supposed to stand ready to aid elements in trouble.

A bedraggled Jordanian baggage handler in baggy blue overalls pushed his cart up to the point where the group of Americans blocked his way. "Ex-coo," he said deferentially, and too quietly. "Ex-coo."

The men gazed at him as he tried to ease his cart through them. They hadn't heard his soft voice, and they didn't move. "Be polite!" ordered one of the Americans. "Say, 'Excuse me'!"

The small Jordanian man looked up at the American and repeated, "Ex-coo."

"Okay, then," the mercenary said, and stepped aside.

"What's up?" asked one of his colleagues.

"I'm just telling this motherf.u.c.ker to be polite," he explained. This occurred not in Iraq, but in Jordan, where the group had no legal standing or protection.

Once in Iraq, security contractors behaved even more brusquely, leading Iraqis to loathe them. The bodyguards were notorious for moving around Baghdad without regard for other cars or even pedestrians, driving on the wrong side of the road and even on the sidewalks. Ann Exline Starr, a former adviser to the American occupation authority, recalled being told by her protectors, "Our mission is to protect the princ.i.p.al at all costs. If that means p.i.s.sing off the Iraqis, too bad." (The Washington Post' Washington Post's chief of security in Baghdad once asked me to change my shirt before going out because, he pointed out, the outfit of black polo shirt and light khakis that I was wearing resembled too much the typical dress of many security contractors.) For some, angering Iraqis was a sport as well as a business. One widely watched video showed some contractors firing from the back of their vehicle on an Iraqi highway, hitting cars behind them, apparently for fun. "The Iraqis despised them, because they were untouchable," Matthew Degn, an adviser at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, told the Washington Post' Washington Post's Steve Fainaru about the contractors. "They were above the law." He said that Blackwater's Little Bird helicopters, bristling with armed men, often buzzed the ministry, "almost like they were saying, 'Look, we can fly anywhere we want.'" (Fainaru, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the use of mercenaries in the Iraq war, also reported in his book Big Boy Rules Big Boy Rules that a Peruvian told him that among the Peruvian security guards in Iraq were former members of the Shining Path, the Maoist guerrilla organization that, Fainaru noted, in Peru "had ma.s.sacred thousands of peasants during the eighties and early nineties.") that a Peruvian told him that among the Peruvian security guards in Iraq were former members of the Shining Path, the Maoist guerrilla organization that, Fainaru noted, in Peru "had ma.s.sacred thousands of peasants during the eighties and early nineties.") On Christmas Eve in 2006, a Blackwater man while drunk shot and killed a bodyguard for Adel Abdul Mahdi, one of Iraq's two vice presidents. Two months later, a Blackwater sniper shot and killed three guards at the Iraqi Media Network, a state-funded television station. In May, a company team shot and killed a civilian at the gates of the Interior Ministry, provoking an armed confrontation with Iraqi police.

Few American commanders ever liked having armed men in their area who were ostensible allies yet who were not subject to American rules and laws. But in the first several years of the war, when commanders put "force protection" above all else, there wasn't much daylight between the approach taken by the U.S. military and the private trigger pullers. Then, in early 2007, as the top priority in the U.S. mission became protecting the people, there suddenly was a huge difference between how the two types of armed Americans were acting in Iraq.

Matters came to a head on a Tuesday afternoon in September 2007, when employees of Blackwater who were guarding a convoy just outside the Green Zone shot and killed at least 17 Iraqis. The Blackwater men said they were responding to an ambush, and the company would back them up, saying they acted in self-defense. But several Iraqi eyewitnesses disputed that, and parallel investigations by the U.S. military and the Iraqi government would conclude that no one fired except the contractors. Iraqi police said the shootings occurred just outside the headquarters building of the Iraqi National Police, an area heavily protected by checkpoints in every direction, making it difficult for anyone to set up an ambush. Maliki would call the incident a cold-blooded crime. A U.S. military report, based upon interviews with soldiers who arrived on the scene and with Iraqi eyewitnesses reported that there was "no enemy activity involved," and that many of the Iraqi civilians were wounded as they tried to drive away from the American convoy. "It had every indication of an excessive shooting," said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, a battalion commander in the 1st Cavalry Division. Capt. Don Cherry concluded that "this was uncalled for." Five of the Blackwater guards involved in the incident were indicted in December 2008 by a federal grand jury on charges of manslaughter and a.s.sault.

FROM BERLIN TO BAGHDAD.

It was striking that the most thoughtful of those around Petraeus, the advisers who knew most about the region and took the longest view, also tended to be the most skeptical about political progress. Pundits back home began declaring victory in Iraq, but the closer one was to the country, the more one saw the potential problems. "There is a chance of this breaking down at a whole range of points," Crocker said in January 2008.

Emma Sky was optimistic about security but pessimistic about politics. She flew to Washington, D.C., to deliver the keynote speech to a CIA conference on Iraq. "The psychological impact of the surge has been huge," she said in that talk. "We have shown to ourselves and our critics that we are not defeated, and we have shown Iraqis that we are trying to help them. So there is a whole new psychological dynamic." But, she continued, "we also have created a whole new load of risks. We have created this huge bottom-up momentum on the Shia and Sunni street."

The purpose of the surge, she said, was to buy time and s.p.a.ce for the government of Iraq to reach accommodation. But she had concluded that wasn't going to happen. "What I came away thinking was, you could buy time and s.p.a.ce for the government of Iraq, and it wouldn't reach accommodation, because the system isn't capable of it." That is, the political structure of Iraq as it existed in early 2008 simply couldn't do what the Americans were asking it to do. The best thing the Americans might be able to get from it was time while waiting for a new generation of political leaders to emerge.

Likewise, Joel Rayburn, the savvy strategist on Petraeus's staff who had helped shape Fred Kagan's thinking about a surge and then came out to Baghdad to work on Iraqi affairs in the context of the region, said he saw little chance of political progress. "My own view, and it is at odds with the inst.i.tutional view, is I don't see us moving forward politically." He gave the surge "an incomplete." The test, he said, would be provincial elections, if and when they came-not only whether they would be held, but whether they would be fair enough to achieve balanced representation.

Retired Army Col. Joel Armstrong, who also had been involved in the planning that Gen. Keane took to the White House, agreed that the theory of the surge hadn't played out. "It hasn't worked as well as I hoped," he said in 2008. "There are lots of people in Iraq who want to put together a better life, but there are lots of people in power who don't seem to want that."

One way to understand Iraq in 2008 was through the prism of the Cold War. It took decades to be resolved, and during that time, Germany was divided, millions were deprived of their basic human rights for decades, and uprisings in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland were suppressed along the way. But full-scale war never erupted, and eventually Germany was reunited and the walls dividing people came down. The surge, said one White House aide involved in Iraqi affairs, pointed toward a similar minimal way forward. "It has shown Baghdad how a bare minimum modus vivendi can be had," he said. "They can have their own neighborhoods and live in peace, even if it's in Sunni ghettos." At some point, he said, they would start blending together again-perhaps, he ventured, three years in the future or perhaps in thirty.

The Americans first had been seen as liberators by Iraqis, Barbero said, and then as occupiers. But by the end of 2007, he continued, they were more trusted by the major factions than those groups trusted each other, and were beginning to be seen as protectors and intermediaries. "I think our presence is one of the moderating forces," agreed a senior U.S. Special Operations officer in Baghdad. "It provides a venue for discussion, dialogue." No longer the sand in the gears, they had become the glue in the situation, perhaps the only thing holding Iraq together. As in Europe after World War II, that amounted to a recipe for keeping U.S. forces in Iraq for a very long time.

Stephen Biddle, an astute defense expert and sometime adviser to Petraeus, argued that by cutting deals with dozens of local Sunni insurgent groups and Shiite militias, the U.S. military indeed had put itself on the hook for staying in Iraq for decades. "A continued presence by a substantial outside force would be essential for many years to keep a patchwork quilt of wary former enemies from turning on one another," he concluded.

In retrospect, the winter of 2007-8 appears to be a time of missed opportunity, when Iraqi leaders should have made great strides politically but didn't. It was at this point that the surge began to fracture: It was succeeding militarily but failing politically.

BIG WASTA WASTA.

(Spring 2008)

You know, we all feel much older than we did in 2003," Petraeus said one day early in 2008 after being asked about the impending fifth anniversary of the war. "And not just five years older, but vastly older. It seems like light-years ago, frankly." As he spoke he sat stiffly erect in a straight-backed chair, the better to ease the strain on his damaged pelvis. Despite being in phenomenal physical condition, the fatigue was evident on his face. He long had looked about a decade younger than his age, but now was beginning to look like what he was, a man in his midfifties carrying a heavy load.

"His patience level is much lower," noted Brig. Gen. Joe Anderson, who had commanded a brigade in the 101st Airborne under Petraeus. "His sense of humor is diminished. He's a bit disconnected, distant."

One day U.S. forces lost five troops in two different bombing attacks. Petraeus, like Col. MacFarland in Ramadi two years earlier, reminded his staff of Gen. Grant's prediction after being beaten on the first day of the Shiloh battle: "He is sitting there with a soggy cigar at the end of this terrible day, confused as all get out, and says, 'Yup, lick 'em tomorrow,'" Petraeus recalled. For him, Grant's terse comment symbolized the need for willpower: "I think it takes that kind of indomitable att.i.tude and sheer force of will at times in these kinds of endeavors." Gesturing at an aide, he said, "These guys have heard me say it a couple of times."

Petraeus's wasta wasta was growing. He couldn't know it then, but the following months would bring resolution in several areas that had been nagging him. was growing. He couldn't know it then, but the following months would bring resolution in several areas that had been nagging him.

FALLON OUT, PETRAEUS PEOPLE UP.

In March, Adm. Fallon finally went too far. The offended party wasn't Petraeus but, significantly, the White House, as the admiral shot his mouth off in a feature article in Esquire Esquire magazine that made him look like the only thing standing between President Bush and an American war with Iran. The profile, written by Thomas P. M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, portrayed Fallon as "brazenly challenging" President Bush on whether to attack Iran, pushing back "against what he saw as an ill-advised action." Barnett was clearly an admirer, praising the new Centcom chief as "a man of strategic brilliance" whose understanding of the tumultuous situation in Pakistan "is far more complex than anyone else's"-a questionable a.s.sertion, given that Fallon was new to the region, while some American officials, such as Ryan Crocker, had been dealing with it for decades. Fallon clearly had cooperated with Barnett, with the author accompanying him on trips to Egypt and Afghanistan over the previous year. The article quoted Fallon as saying one day in Cairo that "I'm in hot water again" with the White House, apparently for telling Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak that the United States would not attack Iran. magazine that made him look like the only thing standing between President Bush and an American war with Iran. The profile, written by Thomas P. M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, portrayed Fallon as "brazenly challenging" President Bush on whether to attack Iran, pushing back "against what he saw as an ill-advised action." Barnett was clearly an admirer, praising the new Centcom chief as "a man of strategic brilliance" whose understanding of the tumultuous situation in Pakistan "is far more complex than anyone else's"-a questionable a.s.sertion, given that Fallon was new to the region, while some American officials, such as Ryan Crocker, had been dealing with it for decades. Fallon clearly had cooperated with Barnett, with the author accompanying him on trips to Egypt and Afghanistan over the previous year. The article quoted Fallon as saying one day in Cairo that "I'm in hot water again" with the White House, apparently for telling Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak that the United States would not attack Iran.

But Barnett hadn't done Fallon any favors in return. Asked about the article by e-mail, the admiral confusingly called it "poison pen stuff " that is "really disrespectful and ugly." He did not cite specific objections. Nor did he seem to understand during the first few days after the article appeared how much trouble he was in. Some at the Pentagon saw the quotes simply as Fox Fallon being Fox Fallon. But the article was raising eyebrows elsewhere in the government, including the White House. He might have kept his job under Rumsfeld, who barked more than he bit, and under Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who just wanted everyone to get along. But Gates and his new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mullen, were a different team. Gates spoke softly but acted quickly. A few days later, Fallon began to understand it was time to go "when the SecDef stopped taking his calls," said a White House aide.

"Admiral Fallon reached this difficult decision entirely on his own," Gates said in an unscheduled news conference announcing the departure. "I believe it was the right thing to do, even though I do not believe there are, in fact, significant differences between his views and administration policy."

Not only would Fallon be pushed out of Central Command after barely a year in the job, he would be replaced by his erstwhile nemesis, Petraeus. Surprisingly, Petraeus wasn't happy about any of this. After Iraq he had wanted to go to European Command, not Centcom. And he felt that after months of wrangling, he and Fallon had worked out a way of living with each other. Indeed, when Petraeus had briefed Fallon on his plans for Iraq after the end of the surge, Fallon had been so agreeable that after the briefing, Pete Mansoor had turned to Petraeus and said, "You know, he couldn't be more supportive."

By the time Fallon was on the way out, Petraeus said, "Actually we had a very good relationship." He began the next morning's briefing by saying to his staff, "We're sorry to see this happen to Admiral Fallon. We want to thank him for his help to MNF-I."

Fallon, who had arrived in Baghdad a few hours earlier and was partic.i.p.ating in the briefing, then added, "I made a decision that it was an unnecessary distraction in a time of war, so it is time for me to move on."

Petraeus had hoped that at European Command his wife could join him as he rebuilt NATO to deal with Afghanistan and the future. Instead he was made Fallon's successor at Central Command, condemning him to several more years of wrestling with Iraq and the Middle East. His aides said that Petraeus actually had recommended several other officers to Gates for the Centcom post. Among the names floated, they said, were Marine Gen. James Mattis and Army Lt. Gen. Pete Chiarelli. But Petraeus insisted that he didn't bring up names with Gates, but simply had said, "You know, I think that there are certainly others who could do the job."

Interestingly, the officer chosen to be Petraeus's deputy at Central Command was John Allen, the Marine general who reached out to the sheikhs of Anbar, following in the footsteps of his beloved Gertrude Bell.

Odierno had gone home in February to become vice chief of the army. He left Iraq with his reputation redeemed. "General Odierno has experienced an awakening," said retired Army Col. Stuart Herrington, who in 2003 had written the intelligence report critical of Odierno. "I've now completely revised my impression of him." Two months later, when Fallon's departure created an opening, Odierno was told instead to succeed Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

The advice Odierno prepared for his subordinates underscored just how much he had changed. His "key message" at an April 2008 conference, according to an internal Army doc.u.ment, was that "planners must understand the environment and develop plans from an environmental perspective vice an enemy situation perspective." This was cla.s.sic counterinsurgency thinking-that is, focus on the overall situation, and seek to make the enemy irrelevant to it. This was what David Kilcullen, the Australian counterinsurgent, had been advocating for some time, but it was almost the opposite of the approach that Odierno and most of the rest of the U.S. Army had taken in Iraq in 2003-4, when they emphasized a "kill and capture" approach.

Emma Sky, Odierno's political adviser, had planned to put Iraq behind her as a chapter in her life. She left in February and went hiking in New Zealand to mull her future. She was thinking about settling back in London and becoming a consultant. But a few months later, after Odierno was tapped to replace Petraeus, he called her. "What possessed you to take the job?" she asked.

"You know that flag you make fun of?" he responded, referring to the American colors he and all other Army soldiers wear just below the right shoulder. He also told her with amazement that he had been at a birthday party in Texas for a ten-year-old, and the entertainment had been target practice with rifles. She thought that meant he was looking at his own country differently. "He wouldn't have noticed that before," she thought.

He asked her to come back for a third tour in Iraq, advising him in his new position. "I will never again do anything like this without having someone like that," he has said of Sky. "I have a lot of respect for MI [military intelligence], but you have to have someone with a different view. It is very helpful." She agreed to return to Baghdad, joking that if she was going to serve the U.S. military so much, someone should grant her American citizenship.

A major personnel move led by Petraeus a few months earlier also began to leak out about this time. In November he had left Iraq to come back to the Pentagon to run a promotion board to select the Army's new brigadier generals. It was unprecedented for a commander to leave the war zone to do that, but it showed how influential he had become. Among the 40 new generals his board tapped were H. R. McMaster, Sean MacFarland, and Steve Townsend, who had commanded a highly mobile Stryker brigade that Odierno had employed as a quick reaction force in 2007. The board also was notably heavy in veterans of Special Operations, including Kenneth Tovo, who had lead a task force in Iraq; Austin Miller, a former commander of the secretive Delta Force; and Kevin Magnum, a former commander of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. One of the signs of an effective military is rewarding battlefield success, and Petraeus's board, which was widely watched inside the military, did just that. For more than a decade, the Army had been led by post-Cold War officers-the group that did the Gulf War, the invasion of Panama, and the peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Now, a new generation of generals was emerging, the leaders of the post-9/11 Army.

"MARCH MADNESS"

At almost the same time that Fallon was defenestrated, Prime Minister Maliki surprised the Americans with an unexpected move that would alter the relationship between the U.S. and Iraqi governments. He had been watching and learning many things from the Americans. One of those things was how to roll the dice and take risks. He was ready to gamble.

The occupation of Basra, the biggest city in southern Iraq, had been a miserable experience for the British, the only major European government to stand with the Bush administration through five years of war in Iraq. At the outset, the British military had felt rather superior to the clumsy Americans. Not only did they have more experience in the Middle East, they also seemed to have a better feel for how to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign, reaching back to operations in Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus.

But as one crusty defense expert, Anthony Cordesman, put it, "By late 2007, the British position in Basra had eroded to the point of hiding in the airport." Daniel Marston, an American who taught counterinsurgency at Sandhurst, the British military academy, noted that it had been a humiliating experience for British officers, especially as they watched Petraeus and Odierno regain the initiative in Baghdad. "I'm not going to go into details, but the frustration . . . when I've been with commanders, to see how bad they were doing things, and that the Americans turned it around, was incredible," Marston said. "There was a lot of upset, and honor was a problem in the army." (Underscoring that unhappiness, British military commentary, so vocal at the beginning of the war in grading the American performance, fell almost silent in 2007.) Islamic extremists and thugs were running Basra, siphoning off oil revenue and inventing new ways to impose their religious rules, not just banning the sale of alcohol but also shutting down a plastic surgeon's practice on the reasoning that he was altering what G.o.d had made.

On the evening of Friday, March 21, 2008, as the sixth year of the war began, and just before the U.S. military death toll hit 4,000, Petraeus was being briefed on a very deliberate plan to take Basra. Developed by Iraqi Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Furaiji, the Iraqi commander there, it would take months to carry out and called for the United States to provide money, machine guns, tanks, and concrete barriers. It probably would begin in September or maybe October. It certainly was seen as something that would happen in the distant future and last for months.

But Maliki had a different idea. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser to the prime minister, interrupted the briefing with an urgent message: The prime minister wanted to see Petraeus the next morning at eleven, he said. "It's about doing Basra," Rubaie explained.

"Mosul, you mean," responded Maj. Gen. Barbero, Petraeus's chief strategist, thinking the aide had intended to refer to the largest city in the north. American intelligence had reported that some Iraqi brigades were being moved by Maliki, but the word was that they were heading north. you mean," responded Maj. Gen. Barbero, Petraeus's chief strategist, thinking the aide had intended to refer to the largest city in the north. American intelligence had reported that some Iraqi brigades were being moved by Maliki, but the word was that they were heading north.

"No," Rubaie said, "He means Basra. Basra. He is tired of the lawlessness there." He is tired of the lawlessness there."

So began a major turning point in the war, and even more in the course of relations between the Iraqi government and the U.S. occupation force.

The next morning Maliki told Petraeus, "I'm going to go in there forcefully, now. We've got to clean these people out." He had been briefed that criminals and militias were running and looting the city, killing anyone who stood in their way and raping many women they encountered. He presented the general his plan, frequently employing the term "lines of operations," which he had heard incessantly in briefings by American officers. "He laid out, there is going to be a tribal engagement line of operations, a political engagement line of operations, an economic/humanitarian a.s.sistance line and a security line of course," Petraeus said. "And he talked about how he was going to go down personally with a number of the ministers-Interior, Defense, Justice-the commander of the National Police, commander of the Iraqi ground forces, and a number of others, and they were going to work these different lines of operations."

His question for Petraeus: "Will you support me?"

In Petraeus's mind, there was no question about that. Of course he would.

The general had worked, he recalled later, "very hard to build what I think now is a relationship of mutual trust, respect, and confidence, informed by an awareness of the demands of our different positions and the context in which we perform our different responsibilities." He sometimes had spoken bluntly to Maliki, but, he thought, never disrespectfully. "Occasionally guys think I just went in there and had it out with him a couple of times-you don't do that with a prime minister of a sovereign country." Nor would it fit Petraeus's style. Even when his relationship with Fallon was on the rocks, for example, it always remained correct.

Maliki's decision to move precipitously was especially a shock because Petraeus and his staff had just gone through interminable briefings on Mohan's cautious plan for Basra. Also, the Americans had understood that consideration of retaking Basra would commence only after Mosul was quiet. "I was planning to defeat al Qaeda in the north, hold the center, and not pick a fight in the south," recalled Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, who had replaced Odierno as the corps commander, in charge of day-to-day operations in Iraq.

Instead, Maliki said, the operation would begin on Monday, March 24-that is, two days later. "He thought it would be quick and easy," said Sadi Othman, who attended the Sat.u.r.day meeting. "That's what his commanders told him." Petraeus was a bit uneasy, but didn't try to talk him out of it. Instead he gave him advice about how to operate, how to set conditions for the a.s.sault.

On Easter Sunday, the day before the hasty offensive was to commence, powerful rockets began to rain down on the Green Zone. From that day through mid-May, more than 1,000 rockets would be fired at the Zone, mainly from the Sadr City area, making a mockery of the truce Sadr supposedly was following. By the U.S. military's count, the attacks killed or wounded 269 people. Looking back, some officials came to believe that word had leaked inside the Iraqi government of Maliki's intent to crack down on his erstwhile allies in the Sadrist movement. Others, such as Maj. Rayburn, a regional strategist for Petraeus, argued that such a barrage takes many days to prepare and coordinate, with stockpiling and planning, and that both Maliki's decision and the rocket attacks from Sadr's turf simply reflected the growing tension between the two. Rayburn's a.n.a.lysis was that the Sadrists were moving to oust Maliki, not really caring who replaced him, so long as they were able to show themselves to be the kingmakers who could remove a sitting prime minister. If they succeeded, he said, "They would have looked like they have veto power, like Hezbollah in Lebanon."

It was an unsettling moment. "I called it 'March madness,'" Barbero said a few months later in his Green Zone office, which faces east, toward the Sadr City rocket launching sites. "Basra was going on. We had rockets coming in here. The worst case was that all of southern Iraq would go up in flames with the Mahdi Army." The U.S. military had seen what that might look like back in 2004, when as the first battle of Fallujah got under way, Sadr's followers began attacking U.S. and allied forces in central and southern Iraq. For several weeks the American fought a two-front war, and grew seriously concerned that the Shiite militias would cut their major supply line that stretched across the south to Kuwait. For a short period, Baghdad was entirely isolated, with every road leading into it deemed too dangerous for travel.

a.s.saulting Basra piled gamble upon gamble. Maliki was betting that his security forces could do it. Other political parties calculated, after some hesitation, that they should back Maliki. It was clear that the Iranians were active in Basra, which is not only the biggest city in the south but the key to Iraq's only seaport, and so the lucrative home of much of its export trade. The Americans crossed their fingers, hoped for the best, and prepared to bail out Maliki if necessary.

The attack didn't begin well. Iraqi troops moved surprisingly quickly, but upon arrival simply were thrown into the city, often without supplies and with the barest of orders, such as, Go take that area. Some commanders were handed bags of cash and told to buy food after they settled into the city, Petraeus said. "It was difficult to understand for a wee while whether it was a work of genius or folly," said Lt. Gen. John Cooper, a British deputy to Petraeus who was on his second Iraq tour. "For the first few days, we were badly concerned about it-to that extent, had the prime minister bitten off more than he could chew?"

Or, as Col. Bell put it, American-style, "It was a huge mess."

There were very few Americans in Basra, and almost none with the Iraqi units, so the American headquarters in Baghdad was almost blind. What it did hear didn't sound good. Some 883 soldiers in the Iraqi army's 52nd Brigade, which numbered only about 2,500, refused to fight, along with about 500 members of the Basra police. Sadr's Mahdi Army launched counterattacks in Baghdad and in towns across southern Iraq, but not a full-scale a.s.sault that would mean the truce was entirely dead. "There were some very tenuous moments during the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours," recalled Lt. Col. Nielsen. She began to worry that it ultimately would be a tactical victory but a strategic setback-that is, so expensive a win that it would undercut Maliki and make the United States look inept as well.

The early conclusion was that Maliki had gambled and lost. "It was ill advised and ill timed," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish politician. "I think Maliki had a setback and America had a setback because Iran and Moqtada al-Sadr were victorious."

On Thursday, March 27, Gen. Austin, Odierno's successor as the commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, flew south to take a look. "The smell of fear [in Iraqi officials there] was palpable," said a senior Army intelligence officer who accompanied him. That night Austin ordered one of his deputies, Marine Maj. Gen. George Flynn, to go to Basra to help the Iraqi army, especially with planning and coordinating support, such as supplies, aerial reconnaissance, and air strikes. Flynn flew down the following morning and soon was joined by a group of planners. As he arrived, he recalled, "the situation on the ground was tense and uncertain." The British were at the airport, outside of town. Maliki was downtown in a government complex that was being sh.e.l.led steadily by mortars. The chief of his personal security force was killed at about this time by mortar shrapnel. Soldiers inside the compound, including Americans, hesitated even to go outside to another office because of the incessant fire, which made it difficult to communicate inside the headquarters.

The first step, Flynn decided, was to get armed Predator drones in the air to begin finding and destroying the mortar emplacements and killing the mortar teams, to get the sh.e.l.ling off the back of headquarters so they could begin to operate normally. The second was to get U.S. liaison troops embedded with Iraqi units, so they could report back and call on U.S. resources to help out.

By the fourth day, the hastiness of the operation began to impede Iraqi units, as nearly every unit in the fight ran low on fuel, food, water, ammunition, and money, recalled Marine Sgt. Alexander Lemons, who was deployed to Basra. The Iraqi troops to whom he was attached fed themselves by dropping hand grenades into a ca.n.a.l and collecting and cooking the fish that floated to the surface.

On March 30, the sixth day of the battle, Sadr ordered his followers to stand down, apparently after receiving rea.s.surances from Maliki that the attacks on his loyalists would cease. Many of his fighters did lay down their arms. But the statement he issued was hardly conciliatory, calling the Americans and their Iraqi allies the "armies of darkness." Word seeped out that the cease-fire had been brokered by the Iranian government, which apparently was alarmed to see the Shiite-led Baghdad government crack down on the Shiite militias that dominated Basra. "JAM [Jayash al-Mahdi, Sadr's Mahdi Army] wasn't really broken so much as they were chased underground," Lemons concluded. But they were clearly on the wrong foot: Sadr's organization began to threaten to hold a "million-man march" to protest the offensive, a tactical retreat for an outfit that a few days earlier had been willing to fight Maliki and the Americans for control of a major city. A few days later, Sadr took another step back from confrontation and cancelled the march-only to issue a bl.u.s.tery statement later in the month threatening "open war until liberation."

The militias in Basra that had continued to fight began to show signs of weakness. A series of raids by Iraqi special operations troops killed or captured about two dozen of their commanders, as well as some top criminal gang leaders. Other militia captains began to flee the city, leaving behind a headless force. Then the air strikes began to kick in, shutting down most of the remaining mortar sites. Supplies began to flow into the city. Sadi Othman received anguished telephone calls from his Sadrist contacts, saying, he said, "This is crazy, we need to talk to Maliki, this is unnecessary bloodshed." But, he said, the prime minister wasn't in the mood to negotiate. Still in Basra, Maliki received calls from some erstwhile political opponents saying, "We are with you."

"As those factors acc.u.mulated you could sense the shift," Petraeus said. "The targeted operations started to really bear fruit, the Iraqi SOF [Special Operations Forces] really got some traction. You also have the negotiations ongoing, Iran realizing that they don't want to bring the government down, so they are starting to pull on the reins. And frankly the leaders of these organizations typically do not stay and fight, and so they were starting to exfiltrate to Iran and so you have them, the Iranians and presumably Sadr, realizing that their forces are getting beaten up pretty badly, realizing that the people are frustrated with them."

By mid-April, the crisis had pa.s.sed. "We were beginning to feel pretty good," said Flynn, the Marine general, who was still in Basra, coordinating American support. In a symbolic move, an Iraqi army battalion occupied the building that had housed Sadr's headquarters in the city. Maliki felt so vindicated that he fired Gen. Mohan, who had developed the more deliberate plan that would have taken months. On April 19, Iraqi forces went into the "flats" on Basra's southern side that were considered to be the Sadr City of the south, deemed hostile and nearly impregnable. They were unopposed. The battle was over, and Maliki had won it, more or less.

"Basra was a colossal failure in execution, but the decision to attack was a key step forward for the government of Iraq," concluded Brig. Gen. Dan Allyn, Gen. Austin's chief of staff at the American military headquarters for day-to-day operations in Iraq. "They chose to take on Shia militias for the first time. That was a courageous decision not properly prepared for."

MALIKI: FROM OVERWHELMED TO OVERCONFIDENT?.

One of the harsh lessons of the Iraq war, as well as earlier ones such as Vietnam, has been that a military victory doesn't necessarily translate into a political gain-which is one reason that military operations can't be judged just in tactical terms. The reverse can also be true, that a military stalemate can be a victory for one side. That is what happened to Maliki in Basra. In military terms, the outcome was ambiguous. "It was totally unclear who won or lost on the ground," said Lemons, the Marine sergeant. But in political terms, Basra was a clear victory for Maliki and his army, he and others said. "Every Iraqi I have spoken to since then about how the prime minister did claims Maliki proved he is a strong leader willing to crack JAM."

Cooper, the British deputy to Petraeus, was more optimistic. "It was nip and tuck up" to the cease-fire, he said, but after that, "we got the sense that JAM had taken a pounding, and had their own logistical problems."

The operation's political effects were clearer. "Iraqi politics were just muddling along," said Maj. Rayburn. "Then there was this watershed: They were forced to make a choice between the prime minister and the Sadrists. After some quick deliberation, they all decided against the Sadrists." Also, the quality of life improved for more than a million Iraqis who lived in Basra, which effectively rejoined Iraq.

American officials came to see the operation as a psychological tipping point for both Maliki and his army. "He went into Basra an uncertain political leader with an uncertain future," said Bell, the head of Petraeus's think tank. "I think he emerged very different."

"It wasn't tactically pretty but it was a decisive and strategic move," concluded Col. Richard Daum, a top military planner in Iraq in 2008. Sitting in his blue cubbyhole amid an ocean of cubbyholes in the headquarters complex at Camp Victory, he said, "I think Basra will be looked at as an enormous turning point. It signaled that the government isn't going after only Sunni insurgents, but also Shias. It also signaled to the Iranians that they needed to stop meddling. And it sent a signal to the moderate Arab states. The prime minister emerged with a lot more wasta." wasta." In the wake of Basra, several Arab nations announced they would open emba.s.sies in Baghdad, after years of resisting American pressure to take that step. A few months later, King Abdullah of Jordan would become the first head of a Sunni Arab state to visit Iraq since the American invasion. Of course, what he was looking for was the kind of breaks on oil prices that Saddam Hussein had given Jordan. But that would be a small price for Maliki to be recognized as a peer by the Sunni Arab world. In September, Syria sent an amba.s.sador to Iraq. In October, the Egyptian foreign minister visited, along with his country's oil minister. In the wake of Basra, several Arab nations announced they would open emba.s.sies in Baghdad, after years of resisting American pressure to take that step. A few months later, King Abdullah of Jordan would become the first head of a Sunni Arab state to visit Iraq since the American invasion. Of course, what he was looking for was the kind of breaks on oil prices that Saddam Hussein had given Jordan. But that would be a small price for Maliki to be recognized as a peer by the Sunni Arab world. In September, Syria sent an amba.s.sador to Iraq. In October, the Egyptian foreign minister visited, along with his country's oil minister.

"Six months ago, people were saying about Maliki, 'He is a Shiite prime minister, he is an Iranian guy,"' said Othman, who spent hours a day talking to Iraqi politicians. "Now, after Basra and Mosul, he is looked upon much more as an Iraqi." The Americans were also pleased that upon his return to Baghdad, Maliki established a new government committee to gather intelligence on Iranian influence in Iraq.

The Iraqi army had surprised the Americans and gained new respect, even deference. "The lesson of Basra is that the Iraqi army has come a long way," said Flynn, who spent a total of six weeks in Basra a.s.sisting the operation. "I don't think they could have done this a year ago. But they also have a long way to go."

Hammond, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, described the battle of Basra as a transformative event for Iraqi troops. "Until then, they were a checkpoint-based security force, and that was kind of hit and miss," he said. "It's kind of like they found a whole new level of confidence. Even the checkpoints are different than they were a month ago-higher level of professionalism, greater pride, greater sense of purpose. I think they've tasted success, and they like it."

On the American side, this led to a new readiness to defer to Iraqi officers. "I do think there is more of a willingness to engage Iraqi counterparts in a serious way, a greater willingness to see problems through Iraqi eyes, to take their advice even if it doesn't seem to make sense," said Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, who in 2008 was on his third tour in Iraq.

When Emma Sky, Odierno's erstwhile politcal adviser, got back to Iraq to prepare for the change of command from Petraeus to Odierno, she headed down to Basra, where she went on patrol with Iraqi troops. "They had a terrific esprit de corps-'This is where we fought this battle.' It was like a glimpse into the future. It's not the way we'd do it, but it is an Iraqi way." She also was impressed by the new confidence she saw in the way Maliki talked and moved. "I've not seen him for four months, and he's a different man. He's growing into power."

Other American advisers agreed that Basra fight illuminated the pathway for Iraqi forces and their American allies. Iraqi forces would lead the way, and their generals would make the big decisions-but the Americans would stand ready to provide support in key areas, such as close air support, medical evacuation, intelligence and surveillance, and communications. That was a recipe, the Americans believed, for big U.S. troop drawdowns in 2009-but also for a smaller, long-term presence built around those advisory and enabling missions. "To me, the big lesson learned is, that's the way forward," said Barbero.

Later in the spring, the fighting in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad was resolved in a similar way to Basra. Iraqi officials did it their way, and despite American apprehensions, it worked. At first U.S. forces were intensely involved as they bit off an arc of southern Sadr City, targeting the portion that had been the launching point for most of the rockets and mortar sh.e.l.ls that were raining down on the Green Zone. In several weeks of combat, at least 200 Mahdi Army fighters were killed, many of them members of the launching teams. But in mid-May, Maliki's government cut another deal with Sadr. Rather than conduct a joint U.S.-Iraq a.s.sault on the heart of Sadr City, the Iraqi forces negotiated their entry, and went in alone, slowly and with permission. It was a sharp contrast to 2006, when Maliki had ordered the Americans to stop raiding into Sadr City or even to put up checkpoints at its entryways. Apparently under orders from Sadr, residents greeted them with flowers and Korans-an ironic echo of the Bush administration's view that American troops would be met with bouquets in 2003. Hammond, the division commander, said he wasn't entirely comfortable with the negotiated entry, but said, "They're doing it their way. They're not looking for my approval." He said he wasn't issuing orders to Iraqi commanders, but instead advising them-and often seeing his advice rejected. "More often, I have to fight for my point of view," he said. His forces played an overwatch role, establishing Joint Security Stations on all four sides of the city. Two aerostat balloons were lofted alongside the city to provide 24-hour surveillance. In addition, said Hammond, at any given time, five Predator and Shadow drone aircraft and four Apache attack helicopters were orbiting above the city, ready to fire missiles at any rocket or mortar teams that emerged.

By June a new Sons of Iraq program began in the huge slum. But Sadr's men continued to fight in quiet ways. In June Brig. Gen. Jabar Musaid, who had been head of Basra's military intelligence operations during the crackdown there, was shot to death in east Baghdad.

In June 2008, Austin, the new corps commander, noted that, "For the first time, the government has positive control of the three strategic nodes-Basra, Mosul, and Baghdad." It was indeed an accomplishment, even if it came during the sixth year of the war. At Umm Qasr, Iraq's only port, just south of Basra, the amount of cargo arriving daily tripled from the spring to the summer.

By the summer of 2008, the American military actually was ahead of its schedule. "Where we are now is where we thought we'd be in January of next year," said Col. Bell. That is, the security situation was about what they had hoped to be able to turn over to the next American president. Petraeus winced when he heard such open talk of timetables, but others confirmed that they were indeed ahead of their secret plan at that point.

By June a new worry began to grow about Maliki: that he was overconfident and didn't fathom just how much essential support he was getting from the Americans, especially from the nightly Special Operations raids that were keeping al Qaeda in Iraq from reforming and being able to launch a new wave of attacks in Baghdad. During June and July 2008, the terrorist organization, still on its heels, suffered a new round of losses from a series of raids along the Tigris River Valley. In one operation near Tikrit, U.S. forces not only captured several people but also found suicide vests and a readied car bomb. In nearby Bayji they captured the man who housed incoming foreign fighters. In Mosul, they killed a leading figure and captured more than $100,000 and more suicide vests.

Maliki, feeling his oats, began to distance himself from the Americans, and especially from the Bush administration. In midsummer he appeared to endorse Senator Obama's plan to get American combat forces out of Iraq within a year or two.

"It's been a good thing and a bad thing," Gen. Odierno said later in 2008 of Maliki's victory in Basra. The benefit, of course, was that the side allied with the Americans won. "The bad point is, it's a bit of an overestimation by Maliki of how it happened." Odierno eventually put together a briefing for the prime minister to teach him just how much the United States had helped win the battle of Basra and continued to support Maliki in hundreds of ways every day.

ROUND II WITH CONGRESS: NO WAY OUT.

"Nothing succeeds with the American public like success," Petraeus had written in his 1987 doctoral dissertation at Princeton, about the influence of the Vietnam War on the thinking of the U.S. military leaders about how to use force.

But in his second round of congressional testimony, in April 2008, he would find that limited success doesn't sell as well. In September 2007, he had been able to testify that the war was being turned around, and so had stymied Democrats advocating a swift pullout. Seven months later, as far as Washington was concerned, the tactical gains of the surge were old news. Now it would be the turn of congressional Republicans to feel frustrated. They had given him time, and now they wanted to hear more about how that success was going to get the United States out of Iraq. He had little for them in that regard. Instead, he was looking to freeze the U.S. military presence near the level of 130,000, where it had been in 2006, before the surge began. On top of that, he was telling Republicans that the light at the end of the tunnel wouldn't be the bright beacon of democracy that the Bush administration originally envisioned as the payoff for invading Iraq. Reflecting the lowered goals of the U.S. effort in Iraq, Petraeus pointedly called himself a "minimalist."

Unlike the previous September, this time members of Congress knew from the outset what they would be getting. Even before the hearings began, Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, posed the basic question: "How do we get out of this mess?" The answer, of course, was: We don't. This was not something they wanted to hear.

Lawmakers must have sensed Petraeus wasn't going to be of much help in a.s.suring them that the American commitment to Iraq wasn't open-ended, because they gnawed at the issue throughout the hearings. "I still have a hard time seeing the big picture and what const.i.tutes success," fretted Republican Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona. "That's not just one side of the aisle with those kind of concerns. Many on this side of the aisle have that as well."

"The people of the United States have paid an awful price," noted Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California. "It's time for the Iraqis to pay that price for their own protection."