Imperial Life in the Emerald City Read online

  The palace began to resemble a summer camp for adults. Mosquito nets were strung up over sleeping bags. Flashlights and pocket knives became must-carry accessories. Hot food, no matter how greasy or overcooked, was regarded as a luxury after the army’s constipating field rations.

  Carney was the wise older scout, the guy who knew what to bring that wasn’t on the official packing list. He had a box of powdered detergent to wash his own clothes. He had a car charger for his satellite phone so he could make calls when he was driving around the city. A roll of super-strong duct tape and a can of industrial-strength mosquito repellent were always at hand. And he’d brought his own laptop and printer.

  Every night before turning out the lights, Carney wrote a few lines in a spiral-bound notebook he had purchased in Kuwait. Some of the entries were prosaic: “Went to ministry for meetings today and then did laundry.” When he wanted to note something private or sensitive, he scribbled in Khmer, a language he had learned in Cambodia and was sure nobody else in the palace read or spoke. “Are we in teething problems or fatally flawed in concept?” he wrote soon after arriving.

  As the weeks wore on, his assessment became ever more pessimistic. “Military and OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] cannot make the transition from military to political-military mission,” he wrote.

  He kept thinking back to lessons he’d drawn from his experiences in Cambodia: “You had to have a plan. You had to have a lot of money. You had to have really good staff.”

  ORHA didn’t lack just military support. The organization was rudderless. The mission plan still had not been completed. And even if it had been, it would not have guided Carney in dealing with Baathists in his ministry. By then, he had just two people on his staff, both army reservists, to manage a ministry with more than one hundred thousand employees. And he had no budget. ORHA, he realized, was an organization built on a false premise. Had there been no looting, had the police stayed on the streets, had Iraq’s infrastructure not been whittled to incapacitation by Saddam’s government, then perhaps an outfit such as ORHA, with no plan, no money, and a skeletal staff, would have been appropriate.

  While ORHA’s overall agenda was still a work in progress, Garner did have a plan to address the most important dilemma he faced: how much power to give the Iraqis and when to hand it over. The problem was that the Pentagon, the State Department, and, most significant, the White House, had not signed off on it.

  Exiled Iraqi political leaders wanted to form a transitional government that would take over control of the country from the Americans. The government would be led by a small council comprised of the most prominent exiled politicians: Ahmed Chalabi and Ayad Allawi, Shiite leaders Ibrahim al-Jafari and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and Kurdish chieftains Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. To Garner, the group seemed to represent Iraq’s diverse society. Chalabi and Allawi, who hated each other, were both secular Shiites. Al-Jafari and al-Hakim were far more religious. The group promised to bring on board at least one Sunni Arab and a few “internals”—Iraqis who had never gone into exile.

  Garner thought it was a great idea. The exiled leaders were people the U.S. government had worked with before, all of whom had impeccable anti-Saddam credentials. All of them, except Chalabi, represented large blocs of Iraqis. And they were willing to assume the responsibility of leadership. To Garner, they were the “takeover guys.”

  Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith did not tell Garner how to manage the political transition. Garner assumed that all three favored a dominant role for the exiled leaders, particularly Chalabi, in a transitional government. But the Pentagon trio worried that an order to Garner to hand over authority to the exiles would have made its way back to the State Department and sparked new debate within the Bush administration. State didn’t want the exiles in charge. It believed that authority should rest with the United States, either through a military commander or a civilian governor, until a representative group of Iraqis, internals as well as exiles, formed a government. In State’s view, there would have to be elections and perhaps even a new constitution written before the Americans handed over the keys. Although Cheney and his staff were strong backers of Chalabi, the rest of the White House, specifically President Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, had not articulated a clear view of how the transition should unfold. If the issue were forced, Pentagon leaders feared that Bush and Rice might choose elements of the State plan. But if Garner were not given orders, and events on the ground were allowed to run their course, Pentagon officials hoped the exiles would simply form a transitional government. Once that happened, the officials thought, it would obviate the need for State’s transition plan.

  “I never knew what our plans were,” Garner said. “But I did know that what I believed, and what the plans were, were probably two different things.”

  By the time he left Kuwait for Baghdad, Garner had concluded that elections should be held within ninety days. When he made that view known to reporters, it infuriated his bosses at the Pentagon, who feared that an election would not be in the best interests of the exiles. Once Garner got to Iraq and met with Kurdish leaders Talabani and Barzani, both of whom he had known from running relief operations in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, his plans evolved. He still wanted elections, but he also threw his support behind the exiles’ plan to form a transitional government. That pleased the Pentagon but irritated State. Before long, Colin Powell and Richard Armitage voiced objections to Garner’s plan at the White House.

  In Baghdad, efforts to get the exiles to broaden their ranks with internals soon ran into trouble. The exile leaders could not agree on whom to invite. As a sign of reconciliation, Allawi wanted to include someone who had been in the Iraqi army or in Saddam’s government. Chalabi and the Shiite religious leaders regarded such people as too compromised. Chalabi also expressed concern that anything more than a small expansion of their ranks would dilute the exiles’ power. The not-so-subtle message was that he didn’t want to loosen his hold on the nascent government.

  To make the process appear participatory and to identify promising internals, ORHA convened a conference of about three hundred Iraqis in the Convention Center to discuss the country’s future. There were tribal sheiks in gold-fringed robes, men in business suits, and even a few women. They gathered in the cavernous auditorium where, six months earlier, Saddam’s deputy had announced that the Iraqi leader had been reelected with 100 percent of the vote and 100 percent turnout. For the first time in more than three decades, Iraqis were now free to speak their minds. Some called for elections to be held within weeks. Some said it was important for religious leaders to weigh in on the formation of a government. Some wanted Iraq’s tribes to play a dominant role. Many simply vented about Saddam and the abuses of his henchmen. (The meeting occurred on Saddam’s birthday, an irony mentioned by several of the attendees.)

  As the meeting wore on, it became clear that most of the internals didn’t want the exiles to be in charge. But beyond that, there was little agreement on how to form a government. There was talk of holding another meeting in a month’s time to hash out the composition of a transitional government. But the Iraqis were clearly looking for guidance. Garner sat in front of the room with Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House’s point man in dealing with Iraqi exiles. Neither man said much beyond his platitude-filled opening remarks. They listened impassively as their interpreters whispered what the Iraqis were saying. Finally, a sheik rose and asked Garner who would be in charge of forming a government.

  “You’re in charge!” Garner replied.

  The crowd gasped. How could it be, they wondered, that the Americans would cede involvement in such an important question?

  What Garner meant, but what he couldn’t say at the time, was not that Iraqis were in charge. It was that he was no longer in charge.

  In Washington, the White House had finally focused on the lack of a political transition plan. Garner’s desire to hold elections in ninety days a
larmed Rice. The State Department’s reservations about putting the exiles in charge also began to resonate inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The plan all along was to have a “man of stature” take charge in Baghdad. But what would his role be? Would he be an ambassador-like figure supporting an exile-led transitional government? Or would he be more of a viceroy who would administer the country until elections or some other participatory process identified representative leaders?

  Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld batted around names. Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the hero of September 11, was felt out, but the aftermath of the attacks on his city was grueling enough, and he had just opened a consulting firm. Former Massachusetts governor William Weld and former senator William Cohen were on an informal list, but the Pentagon and the vice president’s office expressed concern over whether the two men, both moderate Republicans, were the “right kind of Republican.” Would they support the neoconservatives’ plans for Iraq’s political and economic transformation? Elder statesmen, including former secretary of state James Baker III and former Senate majority leader Bob Dole, were rejected because of their age. The list also contained several people who were not widely known but were regarded as skilled managers and loyal Republicans.

  Among them was L. Paul Bremer III, who had been suggested by Cheney’s office. Known to friends as Jerry—after his patron saint, Jerome—Bremer was a seasoned diplomat with strong ties to the Republican foreign-policy establishment. He had worked closely in government with two former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, and been ambassador to the Netherlands and the State Department’s counter-terrorism czar. After leaving government in the late 1980s, he worked for Kissinger’s consulting firm and an insurance company, but he remained in the Washington orbit. In 2000, he headed a congressionally appointed commission on terrorism that issued a series of prescient recommendations. After the September 11 attacks, he was named to a presidential commission on homeland security. He was a sixty-one-year-old workaholic who had a reputation as a can-do, take-charge guy—just the sort of person the White House wanted in Iraq.

  The night before the conference in which Garner told the Iraqis that they were in charge, Rumsfeld called Garner with the news that Bremer had been selected by the president to head a new organization, the Coalition Provisional Authority, that would supplant ORHA. Garner kept it to himself for a week, not wanting to be seen as a lame duck. But when word began leaking out in Washington, he had to inform the rest of ORHA that he was on the way out, after less than a month in Iraq. He warned ORHA personnel that some of them also would be replaced by Bremer’s new team. In the following days, he told at least three of his subordinates in private meetings that he thought he had failed. Each of them said roughly the same thing: Jay, it’s not your fault. You were set up to fail.

  THE GREEN ZONE, SCENE II

  General Order 1 prohibited military personnel from consuming alcohol in Iraq, but it didn’t apply to CPA staffers.

  Drinking quickly became the most popular after-work activity. The Green Zone had no fewer than seven watering holes: the Halliburton-run sports bar in the basement of the al-Rasheed Hotel, which had a big-screen television along with its Foosball table; the CIA’s rattan-furnished bar—by invitation only—which had a mirrored disco ball and a game room; the pub in the British housing complex where the beer was served warm and graffiti mocked the Americans; the rooftop bar for General Electric contractors; a trailer tavern operated by Bechtel, the engineering firm; the Green Zone Café, where you could smoke a water pipe and listen to a live Arab drummer as you drank; and the al-Rasheed’s disco, which was the place to be seen on Thursday nights. A sign at the door requested patrons not to bring firearms inside. Scores of CPA staffers, including women who had had the foresight to pack hot pants and four-inch heels, danced on an illuminated Baath Party star embedded in the floor.

  The atmosphere was thick with sexual tension. At the bar, there were usually ten men to every woman. With tours of duty that sometimes stretched to six months without a home leave, some with wedding rings began to refer to themselves as “operationally single.”

  The guys did whatever they could to gain the attention of the gals. Before heading to the disco, soldiers changed out of their camouflage fatigues, and CPA staffers slipped off their khakis and polo shirts. The Texans wore cowboy hats and jeans. Others put on dress shirts or baggy hip-hop duds with whatever bling-bling they could find in the Green Zone Bazaar.

  There were prostitutes in Baghdad, but you couldn’t drive into town to get laid like in Saigon. There was a persistent rumor of a whorehouse in the Green Zone, but CPA staffers said it was a military thing. Only the soldiers knew the location, and they weren’t talking.

  CPA staffers were forced to do the mating dance with one another. The women led. In an e-mail to her friends back home, a staffer wrote,

  The men, faced with a shortage of women, are eager to find a girlfriend, so that they have a reliable source of, um, companionship. The women, on the other hand, have every incentive to refuse to commit to any one man, given the vast array available to them. Some of the women clearly enjoy the attention. Others think it’s skeezy (and aren’t too flattered knowing that the attention is more a result of scarcity than anything else). But it is kind of fun to watch if you can keep from getting depressed.

  The men joked about it too. They claimed to know someone who knew someone who was on a British Royal Air Force flight to Kuwait where the pilot announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re exiting Iraqi airspace. Ladies, you are no longer beautiful.”

  The most attractive women received discomfiting attention. When one fetching CPA staffer introduced herself to a man she’d never met, he smiled and said, “I know who you are. Everyone knows who all the pretty women are.”

  If staffers were lucky enough to find love, or more likely, lust, finding a place to canoodle wasn’t easy. Those who lived in a trailer or at the al-Rasheed had at least one roommate. Residents of the palace chapel had two hundred. Would-be lovers drove or walked to secluded parts of the Green Zone and hoped they wouldn’t get caught by a military patrol. Some soldiers claimed that the safest, but perhaps least romantic, place to hook up was in the portable toilets.

  4

  Control Freak

  OUR MOTORCADE ROARED AWAY from the Republican Palace while most CPA staffers were still eating breakfast. In front were two tan Humvees, one with a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on the roof, the other with a Mark-19 grenade launcher. Each had four soldiers armed with M16 rifles and nine-millimeter pistols. Two more Humvees outfitted the same way brought up the rear. In the middle rolled three GMC Suburbans. The first carried five men with arms as thick as a tank’s turret, all wearing tight black T-shirts, lightweight khaki trousers, and wraparound sunglasses. They were equipped with Secret Service–style earpieces, M4 automatic rifles, and Kevlar flak vests with ceramic plates strong enough to stop a bullet from an AK-47. They bore no insignia and kept their identification badges tucked into their flak vests. All of them were ex–Navy SEALs working for a private security contractor called Blackwater USA. They had but one job: protect the viceroy.

  I rode with Jerry Bremer in the second Suburban, a custom-built, twelve-cylinder version of the popular American sport utility vehicle, with half-inch-thick bulletproof windows and steel-plated doors that could withstand even a rocket-propelled grenade. Bremer sat in the middle row, next to Dorothy Mazaka, the senior adviser for primary and secondary schools. Two Blackwater guards were up front. I was in the rear, with Bremer’s press adviser. The third Suburban contained three television cameramen and two still photographers meant to record Bremer’s foray out of the Green Zone.

  Bremer was pressed and peppy. Every steel gray hair on his head was in place. He had awoken at five that morning to jog three miles in the palace garden. After showering and donning his uniform—a navy pinstripe suit with a pocket square, a crisp white shirt, a red tie, and tan combat boots—he droppe
d into the mess hall for a quick breakfast before going to his office to read the overnight cable traffic, the morning news clippings, and the day’s agenda. At eight, he met with his staff in one of Saddam’s gilded conference rooms. It was a no-nonsense affair. Participants were encouraged to make their points in thirty seconds or less. Decisions were made as swiftly.

  Our first stop of the morning was at an elementary school in southwestern Baghdad. It was June 2003. Bremer had arrived less than a month earlier, and he was keen to demonstrate to Iraqis and Americans that he was no Jay Garner. The way to do that, Bremer and his advisers figured, was to be out and about, in front of the cameras, with the air of a head of state. There were daily photo opportunities and weekly press conferences. There were barnstorming visits across the country in his Black Hawk helicopter. A United Nations Security Council resolution had granted the United States broad occupation power, and President Bush had delegated much of that power to Bremer. He was the boss.

  The school visit was another photo op, but it was also a chance to show Iraqis that the occupation authority cared about their needs. Iraqis value education more than almost anything else, and Bremer hoped that a pledge to help fix decrepit schools would persuade ambivalent Iraqis to support the CPA.