(explosions)
>> NARRATOR: Tonight on
Frontline, Iraq: the inside
story of the war we left behind.
>> ISIS began moving through
places where so many Americans
had given their lives to liberate.
>> NARRATOR: A story over a decade in the making.
>> August 2003 is when the real
war for the future of Iraq began.
The Jordanian embassy gets blown
up, and a few days later, the U.N. gets blown up.
>> Bring them on.
We've got the force necessary
to deal with the security situation.
>> NARRATOR: Through two American presidencies.
>> I've come to speak to you
about how the war in Iraq will end.
>> The president decided he wanted this behind us.
He wanted to normalize Iraq
when it's a country that's not normal.
>> The war was over.
We were out.
Let the chips fall where they may.
>> When the last American troops
leave, Maliki begins a pretty
concerted crackdown on the Sunni population.
>> NARRATOR: Tonight, Frontline
investigates "Losing Iraq."
>> Frontline is made possible
by contributions to your PBS
station from viewers like you.
Thank you.
And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Major support for Frontline is
provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation, committed to
building a more just, verdant and peaceful world.
More information is available at macfound.org.
Additional support is provided
by the Park Foundation,
dedicated to heightening public
awareness of critical issues.
The Ford Foundation, working
with visionaries on the front
lines of social change worldwide.
At FordFoundation.org.
The Wyncote Foundation.
And by the Frontline Journalism
Fund, with major support from
Jon and Jo Ann Hagler, and
additional support from Bill and Cile Hicks.
>> The Iraqis had gathered
around the statue and were
throwing their shoes at it.
>> What struck me was the Iraqis
couldn't pull it down themselves.
>> It was obvious it wasn't going to happen.
It would be a pretty anticlimactic moment if we
didn't help.
>> It was a dramatic moment.
It was an American flag that went on it first.
That's almost a metaphor for what's happened since.
You know, then, ultimately,
well, an Iraqi flag was put on
it, and enough photographs were
taken of Iraqis cheering.
>> By the way, that statue was very heavy.
The problem was much more
involved than I think anyone thought of.
>> It made me worry.
Something told me, you know,
this isn't going to be quite as easy as we thought.
>> NARRATOR: In those early
days, there was great optimism.
>> People were just in pure exhilaration.
At that point in time, you
think, "This might just work."
And I remember seeing a guy
carrying a huge couch on his
back, and he turns and says, "Yay, America!"
You know?
>> Thank you very much!
>> There were flowers, there were shouts of joy.
There were people clambering on
the tanks and kissing the tank crews.
But by the time this happened,
and within a matter of an hour
of the Marine tanks coming up
the Canal Expressway, of course,
the looting had begun.
>> All of a sudden, the Iraqi
people started looting, attacked
the ministries, basically
created a series of events
which didn't stop with that.
Less than two U.S. brigades were
in isolated positions in a city
of more than five million
people, having no idea of what might come next.
>> Iraqis are looting on a grand scale.
It is a clear sign that while
the war might be ending, there is trouble ahead...
>> NARRATOR: In Washington, the
Bush administration brushed aside the bad news.
>> I picked up a newspaper
today, and I couldn't believe it.
I read eight headlines that talked about "Chaos!"
"Violence!"
"Unrest!"
And it just was, "Henny Penny, the sky is falling."
I've never seen anything like it!
It's just unbelievable how
people can take that away from
what is happening in that country.
>> NARRATOR: But behind closed
doors, some of Rumsfeld's generals were worried.
>> In '03, from a military
perspective, from the time we
took the regime down, we never
made a commitment to secure the
population, and we never had
enough resources to do it.
>> NARRATOR: General Jack Keane
was acting Army chief of staff.
>> General Keane is really
highly admired across the Army.
He's kind of a soldier's soldier.
And he had argued in the tank
before the invasion of Iraq, "Don't invade Iraq."
>> NARRATOR: Looking back, Keane
says that the war plans drafted
by Secretary Rumsfeld and
Commanding General Tommy Franks
did not include adequate plans
for securing the country.
>> I think it's driven, in part,
by my own failures when I was
there as a senior military
leader contributing to General
Franks's plan that we never
even considered an insurgency
as a reasonable option.
>> NARRATOR: On the ground,
even as tensions were rising,
General Franks had a surprise announcement.
>> A very striking thing happened.
General Franks gave guidance
that his commanders should be
prepared to withdraw all
American forces, except for
a little more than a division,
which would remain, by September 2003.
>> NARRATOR: More than 110,000
troops were told to prepare to leave.
A division-- about 30,000-- would handle Iraq.
>> There was this power vacuum.
Nobody quite knew what was the plan.
The soldiers thought they were all going home.
>> NARRATOR: It was a message
the president delivered
personally when he flew 30 miles
off the coast of California to
reassure the world that the
major combat phase of the war in Iraq was over.
>> My fellow Americans, major
combat operations in Iraq have ended.
In the battle of Iraq, the
United States and our allies have prevailed.
Because of you, the tyrant has
fallen and Iraq is free.
(cheering)
>> Bush never said "Mission
accomplished," but that banner
was hanging up right behind his
head as he gave that speech.
And it really was a premature
victory speech that didn't
recognize what was going on in Iraq.
>> NARRATOR: The administration's strategy was to
pull the troops out of Iraq and
hand over responsibility to an American civilian.
In Washington, Vice President
Cheney had just the man for the
job: a little known diplomat
named L. Paul Bremer the Third.
>> Well, I was contacted by two
people: Paul Wolfowitz, who was
deputy secretary of defense,
Scooter Libby, who was the vice
president's chief of staff, both
of whom I had known for decades.
>> Bremer is old friends with
Scooter Libby, who is Cheney's chief of staff.
And Libby put Bremer's name forward.
And Bremer was sort of the right
kind of conservative.
>> NARRATOR: In Bremer, Cheney
had given secretary Rumsfeld
a businessman, a diplomat,
managing director of Kissinger and Associates.
>> Here's a guy who had worked
for Henry Kissinger but doesn't
know a whole lot about the
Middle East, doesn't speak
Arabic, doesn't know the region.
>> What he lacked was the
practical experience, and it was
that lack of experience that
commended him, in large measure,
to the Bush administration.
>> Today, it's my honor to
announce that Jerry Bremer has agreed to become the
presidential envoy to Iraq.
>> NARRATOR: President Bush made
it official: Bremer was now in
charge of the occupation.
After a two-week crash course on
Middle Eastern politics, he
arrived in Iraq to head what was
known as the Coalition
Provisional Authority-- the CPA.
>> We flew on a C-130 into Baghdad.
The thing that was striking to
us was the fact that a lot of
the buildings were on fire.
>> NARRATOR: Baghdad had been
burning for one month.
>> There'd be buildings on fire.
The fires would just have to
burn themselves out because
there was no fire department.
>> There was no government.
There were no police.
The army was gone.
>> NARRATOR: As they drove into
the city, Bremer made a decision
and promptly announced it to his new staff.
>> I did one thing that wasn't
very smart, which was suggest to
the staff meeting that I thought
we should shoot the looters,
that our military should have
authority to shoot the looters,
which they did not have at that time.
>> His point was you only needed
to shoot a few of them to make
that point and the looting would stop.
>> It wasn't very smart to do
because somebody on the staff
immediately told the press that
I had suggested shooting the
looters, and we had a problem.
>> NARRATOR: Military commanders
refused to go along with Bremer's idea.
>> Well, of course, it's against our code of honor.
There just is not sufficient
justification to shoot somebody
because they're carrying a computer out of the old
Ministry of Education Building.
>> NARRATOR: And so ended Paul
Bremer's first day in Iraq.
>> And I think one thing Bremer
found out that day was that he
had no command over the military.
>> NARRATOR: Bremer's
headquarters were in a heavily
fortified area of Baghdad called "The Green Zone."
>> The Green Zone became the
Emerald City, walled off from the rest of Iraq.
The rest of Iraq, electricity is
intermittent at best, sewage problems,
dusty, dirty, potholes.
Inside the Green Zone, it's calm, it's quiet.
>> NARRATOR: As Bremer settled
in, he knew he would have to
deal with Iraq's complicated sectarian politics.
>> This is one of the most
fractious places you could have
picked, with more problems in
terms of... it's right on the Shia/Sunni divide.
It has the Kurds.
It has 20 years of dysfunctional government.
>> NARRATOR: Saddam Hussein and
his Sunni-dominated Ba'ath party
had brutally controlled the
country's majority Shiites and the Kurds.
Now, Bremer was determined to change that.
>> The idea is you'd remove
Saddam's agents from government
or people loyal to him to make
room for Shiites and Kurds,
who it was assumed would work
together in some sort of collegial way.
>> NARRATOR: And Bremer had a
plan to remake the Iraqi government.
>> Bremer hadn't been there very
long, literally a day, and these
papers were coming out of his briefcase.
I was in the office, outside of
the front office and began reading them, and so on.
>> NARRATOR: It was called CPA Order Number One.
It would end Sunni domination
of the government and bring in
rival ethnic and religious
groups, the Kurds and the Shiites.
>> I'm walking down the hallway
and Ambassador Robin Raphel
says, "Have you seen this?"
She has a piece of paper.
I said, "No, what is it?"
She says, "De-Ba'athification order."
I said, "Wow."
So I read it real quick, there in the hall.
I said, "This is too deep."
>> NARRATOR: Retired general
Jay Garner was one of the few
Americans who knew his way around Iraq.
He'd worked there before.
>> He was very, very, very angry.
And Jay's very personable.
His head was down.
He was walking fast-paced all over.
I could tell he was very upset about it.
>> I walked down, and the CIA
guy, a great guy, was coming
across the hall, and I said,
"Hey, Charlie, have you read the
de-Ba'athification?"
And he said, "Yeah, that's why I'm here."
I said, "Well, let's go in and
talk to the ambassador."
>> NARRATOR: Garner was worried
that Bremer seemed not to
understand how things worked in Iraq.
>> So we went in and we talked
to Ambassador Bremer for a few minutes.
And I said, "You know, this is too deep."
I said, "Give Charlie and I
about 45 minutes to an hour.
Let us digest this thing,
and then let us recommend some
changes to you and come back
here, and we'll get on the phone
with Rumsfeld to see if we can't
soften this a bit."
>> And Bremer kind of says,
"Look, you don't understand.
I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.
This is what I'm going to do.
I'm not asking for your advice."
And they argue a bit more.
And finally, Bremer says, "Look, I have my orders.
This is what I'm doing."
>> And so I said, "Well,
Charlie, what do you think?"
And to the best of my memory,
Charlie said, "Well, if you do
this, you're going to drive
30,000 to 50,000 Ba'athists
underground by nightfall.
And the number's closer to 50
than it is 30."
>> NARRATOR: Ambassador Bremer
says he does not recall the
conversation with General Garner
and the CIA officer.
>> He may have come in and
spoken to me at great length about it.
I just don't remember it,
honestly don't remember it.
>> You don't remember these guys
coming in and saying, "This is
30,000 to 50,000 people, and my
God, what are you doing?"
>> I just... you know, I was
working 20 hours a day in that period, as well.
This wasn't the only thing on my
list of things to do the first
five days I was there.
I had a lot of other things to do.
>> But this is a big one, right?
>> There were a lot of big
things that first five days.
There were a lot of big things the first 48 hours.
So I don't remember every meeting.
I don't say it didn't happen.
I knew there were concerns.
I knew the agency made the
assessment that there were about
20,000 people to be thrown out of work.
And I judged in the end that
that was a risk we were willing to take.
And those who were on high
before, in particular the
Ba'athists, who used their power
to repress the Iraqi people,
will be removed from office.
>> I think, frankly, there
wasn't a single person in the
CPA who understood what Order Number One meant.
It created a climate where
people could be expelled as
university teachers or grade
school teachers, not simply
people who had some kind of tie
to the senior structure.
>> Two reasons we wanted to keep
the Ba'athist Party intact.
One, the only folks who have experience running the
government, so we needed to keep them.
Number two, the Sunnis need to have a voice.
And if you don't give people a
voice, they have relatively few options.
And what the Middle Eastern
history and Middle Eastern...
what it tells you is their next option is violence.
>> NARRATOR: With the
de-Ba'athification order, Bremer
made a decisive statement.
In doing so, he gave the CPA
staff, the military and the
Iraqis the first indication of who he was.
>> Tough, could get things done.
Anybody who was Henry
Kissinger's right-hand man had
to have a certain amount of
steel in his personality.
>> NARRATOR: And then seven days
later, another decisive and
controversial announcement.
CPA Order Number Two:
the decision to dissolve the Iraqi military.
>> I think the decision not to
recall Saddam's army, from a
political point of view, is the
single most important correct
decision that we made in the 14
months we were there.
>> NARRATOR: It was a decision
that had been quietly authorized
by the civilian leadership at the Pentagon.
But just nine days before the
war began, the president had
agreed to keep the Iraqi army.
>> The briefing recommended that
the regular Iraqi army be
maintained as an institution
because we believe that it would
be dangerous to put 300,000 men
on the street with guns, without jobs.
>> NARRATOR: The U.S.
commanders, desperate for boots
on the ground, had been counting
on a pacified Iraqi army to do the grunt work.
>> We actually had people
negotiating with Iraqis to bring
them back, and there were a lot
of Iraqis saying, "Okay, we can bring back units."
>> They were clearly anticipating, at least as late
as 9 May, of having available
Iraqi forces for us to use in
a reconstruction effort.
>> Now you have a couple hundred
thousand people who are armed
because they took their weapons
home with them, who know how to
use the weapons, who have no
future and have a reason to be angry at you.
>> Who knows how many folks who
got disgruntled and went to the other side?
I will tell you this: 72 hours
after the decision was made,
the first major attack from the
airport road took place.
And I got two of my military police killed.
And it's been downhill from there.
>> NARRATOR: And for Commanding
General Tommy Franks, it was
just one more reason to retire.
>> All the recommendations that
we were making weren't being
taken by Bremer or Rumsfeld.
So that's when Franks said, "I'm done."
They said, "Well, you can be
chief of staff of the Army."
He said, "No, I'm done.
What would I do?"
President asked him, "Nope."
>> NARRATOR: And then, the top
military commanders in Iraq all left.
>> So across the board, it's
almost like people are wiping
their hands, saying, "Great job, fellas."
You know, "You guys play the next game.
We're out of here."
>> NARRATOR: But even as the
generals left, the fighting was far from over.
What would become known as the
insurgency had begun.
>> The military had been disbanded.
The sheiks were telling me that
the insurgents were paying them
money, paying them up to $500
per operation.
If they could videotape to show
that they had killed someone, they got a bonus.
>> It's got a military spin on it.
Now you weren't seeing looting,
criminal things, as much as you
were seeing grenades off of
bridges, all types of things.
>> In Iraq, it's been another violent day.
Two car bombs... >> There are some who feel like
the conditions are such that
they can attack us there.
My answer is, bring them on.
We've got the force necessary to
deal with the security situation.
>> There has been another spasm
of violence in Iraq...
>> We were in a state of denial.
>> A car bomb killed at least
five Iraqis in the center of Baghdad...
>> We were looking on these as
sort of a small group of
isolated diehards that we could largely ignore.
>> In Iraq, difficult work remains.
Coalition forces have captured
now some 32 out of 55 of the most wanted.
They're making progress against
the dead-enders who are harassing coalition forces.
>> NARRATOR: Then, a defining moment.
Any debate about whether there
was an insurgency was settled.
It began with a car bombing at
the Jordanian embassy.
>> August 2003 is when the real
war for the future of Iraq began.
August 7, the Jordanian
embassy gets blown up, and a few
days later, the U.N. gets blown up.
>> I am in Ambassador Bremer's front office.
We get the news, and we go into
his office and that's where things take off.
>> NARRATOR: The United Nations'
top envoy, Sérgio de Mello, had been killed.
>> It was a very emotional situation for everybody
involved.
>> We will leave no stone
unturned to find the people who did this.
>> With this new kind of attack,
how can you secure this city and this country?
>> We'll do our best to find
these people before they attack
and to deal with them.
And we will.
>> NARRATOR: To the experts, it was clear:
America was still at war.
>> I knew for absolute certain
when they had the series of
bombings-- the police station,
the Jordanian embassy, the Red
Cross and the U.N.-- that was
clearly a campaign to drive out
all of the elements that could
help the United States govern a country.
(explosions)
>> NARRATOR: The Pentagon's plan
to send more than 100,000 troops
home by the end of the summer
was now out of the question.
>> NARRATOR: In September 2003,
the secretary of defense boarded
a C-17 Globemaster to go see Iraq for himself.
Impatient, he kept asking all of
the brass that traveled with him the same question.
>> "When are you going to get
this thing wrapped up?" is the
phrase I heard Rumsfeld use.
"When are you going to get this thing wrapped up?"
>> NARRATOR: Rumsfeld spent a
couple of days looking around
and realized his commanding
general, Ricardo Sanchez,
didn't know what was happening.
>> They had absolutely no intelligence.
Sanchez said, "No intelligence."
He said, "That's not a term of art."
We had no intelligence on the enemy.
We didn't know who we were fighting.
We didn't know what resources they had.
We had no strategy for fighting this enemy.
And the demand from Washington
was for intelligence.
>> NARRATOR: Sanchez, desperate,
pushed his commanders hard.
Thousands of Iraqis were swept
up in raids that fall.
>> It was their reality that,
you know, we had these dragnet arrests.
You'd go into a village and just arrest everybody.
(siren blaring)
>> NARRATOR: Sanchez needed a
place to hold and interrogate the prisoners.
There was one not far from
Baghdad: Saddam Hussein's
most-feared prison, Abu Ghraib.
Abu Ghraib became the de facto
boot camp for the insurgency.
>> The biggest single tactical
mistake was to stuff Abu Ghraib
with tens of thousands of Iraqis, who may have been
neutral about the Americans
when they went in but weren't when they came out.
>> NARRATOR: Rumsfeld also took
a hard look at what Paul Bremer had been doing.
He told Bremer the Defense
Department had decided it
wanted Iraq given back to the
Iraqis as soon as possible.
>> The policy side of the
Pentagon was saying, "The best
way to cut all of this short is
simply to hand over power to some Iraqis.
Find us some Iraqis.
Give them authority.
We'll end the occupation.
We'll get out of here."
>> NARRATOR: Bremer had no idea
who to hand the government to.
He had formed a governing council of various Iraqi
leaders, but had no confidence in them.
>> And I told Secretary
Wolfowitz, who was pushing this
idea of early sovereignty,
just handing sovereignty over,
I didn't think the governing
council was up to this.
They couldn't organize a two-car parade.
They were simply not able to
make decisions in a timely
fashion, or any decisions.
>> NARRATOR: Bremer was overruled.
He was given until June 2004
to form a coalition government
and wind down the American occupation.
>> And basically, the new policy is three words:
"We're outta here."
>> Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.
Saddam Hussein was captured
Saturday, December 13 at
about 8:30 PM local in a cellar
in the town of Adwar, which is
about 15 kilometers south of Tikrit.
>> Two hands appeared.
The individual clearly wanted to surrender.
That individual was removed from the hole.
>> He said that, "I'm Saddam Hussein.
I am the president of Iraq,
and I'm willing to negotiate."
And then the response from the
U.S. soldiers was, "President
Bush sends his regards."
>> NARRATOR: Some hoped Saddam's
capture would calm the insurgency.
But four months later, one incident threatened
to undo everything.
Up in the Sunni heartland,
in Fallujah, four American
contractors were murdered.
>> Dragged around and hung off the bridge.
Two of the bodies are hung off the bridge.
This creates a "We must do something" response.
>> NARRATOR: The president wanted revenge.
For the first time, he reached
directly into the process and
ordered the Marines to retaliate.
>> Marines understand an order.
Well, they shaved off their
mustaches, fixed bayonets and
went in and did what Marines do best.
>> Fallujah becomes kind of an Iraqi Alamo.
Only in this case, the defenders survive.
>> Americans were moving into the city.
They were killing people.
Al Jazeera was showing images
of mosques on fire and civilians being injured and
killed.
>> The impression is portrayed
that the Americans are going in
and wantonly killing civilians
along with the insurgents.
>> And it was unsustainable for
the Iraqi leadership, which at
the time wasn't elected, to continue.
>> NARRATOR: The spectacle
of heavy Iraqi casualties
threatened to cause Bremer's
governing council to fall apart.
The June handoff of sovereignty
hung in the balance.
>> Once it flies apart, there's
no one to transfer sovereignty to.
And we can't put Humpty Dumpty
back together again in two months.
>> NARRATOR: Bremer appealed
to the president to stop the Marines.
The president pulled back.
The Marines were now ordered
to simply surround Fallujah
and contain the insurgents.
>> This is a double loss.
The Americans look indecisive.
They look incompetent.
They also look inhumane
in the eyes of a wide number
of people in the Middle East.
>> NARRATOR: But with the
pullback, Bremer's fragile coalition held.
And on June 28, 2004, he pushed
through an interim constitution,
formed a new government, and
handed Iraq back to the Iraqis.
>> Sincerely, L. Paul Bremer,
ex-administrator of the
Coalition Provisional Authority.
>> NARRATOR: It was time to go home.
>> The intelligence was
suggesting that the terrorists
and the insurgents were planning
a major series of attacks on
June 30 to embarrass us,
make it look as if we were being
chased out of Iraq, not that we
were leaving on our own.
>> NARRATOR: They were worried
about surface-to-air missiles.
>> So we had to devise a way
to get out that didn't involve a C-130.
And we had to keep, of course, all of it secret.
>> NARRATOR: For the cameras,
Bremer appeared to leave on this airplane.
>> And we pulled up the stairs
and we just sat in the C-130.
We sat there for about 15
minutes while the press and
everybody went away, and then we
went off, out over the cargo
that was in the C-130, in the
back, and flew on a helicopter
to another part of the airport.
And instead of going out on a
C-130, went out on a government
plane, a smaller government
plane to Jordan, safely.
>> It says a lot about the
security in the country by the
time we did turn over
sovereignty that that is the way
that we had to leave.
>> It was sort of an ignominious departure.
It was yet another metaphor.
>> NARRATOR: Bremer left behind
the new governing council,
140,000 American troops, and a
war that really had just begun.
>> There's been yet another
spasm of violence in Iraq...
>> Chaos returned with a vengeance...
>> 14 young men abducted, tortured...
>> It is possible that Iraq
could move toward civil war...
>> The insurgents have stepped
up their attacks since an
interim Iraqi government was
installed late last month...
>> Innocent victims of car
bombings, and insurgents and terrorists...
>> NARRATOR: The summer of 2004
was the height of the political season.
The president was running for reelection.
The insurgency was still raging.
The last thing the White House
wanted was any more bad news from Iraq.
>> Top military officer in Iraq
is being replaced... >> The Pentagon is expected
to replace... >> NARRATOR: It was time to try
a new general.
Rumsfeld reached into the
Pentagon bureaucracy for a
four-star general and found George Casey.
>> He's a second-generation Army general.
His father was a general who died in Vietnam.
He goes out to Iraq, yet he's
never led troops in combat.
>> Here's a guy in charge of the
biggest American war since
Vietnam, and nobody knows who he is.
>> NARRATOR: Casey was ordered
to minimize American casualties, to train and shift
responsibility to the Iraqi army ASAP.
>> The objective is to get Iraq
under control at a basic level,
train up Iraqi security forces,
turn over responsibility to the
government and leave.
>> NARRATOR: The plan was to
prepare Iraq for elections.
>> The political strategy was to
stand up a representative
democracy, a representative
government as quickly as possible.
>> NARRATOR: That summer,
General Casey put Rumsfeld's plan into action.
They called it the "Light Footprint."
The American force would retreat
to large bases and only engage
the insurgents when absolutely necessary.
>> You had war tourism: units
based on big forward operating
bases, FOBs, going out and doing
patrols from Humvees, and then
coming back to their base.
If that's the way you're
operating, you're not in the
war, you're simply a war tourist.
>> When you look back on that
and analyze it, it's a short-war strategy.
Nowhere in there is a plan
to defeat the insurgency.
So we had no military strategy
to defeat the insurgency.
>> NARRATOR: The first challenge
to Casey's light footprint
strategy came from Baghdad's Shiite slums.
>> NARRATOR: As anger over the
American occupation grew, the
cleric Muqtada al Sadr gained
thousands of new followers.
>> NARRATOR: With the support of
Iran, Sadr's Shiite militia--
the Mahdi army-- had taken up
arms in the holy city of Najaf.
>> The challenge to the new
coalition authority was such
that it really couldn't be ignored.
>> NARRATOR: He had set up his
headquarters inside the shrine
of Imam Ali Mosque, daring the Americans to attack.
They did.
>> I actually was with the Mahdi
Army when this battle was going on.
And the Americans were kind of
just dropping bombs literally
right next to the shrine and
just kind of wiping out the Mahdi Army.
(explosions)
>> NARRATOR: Sadr was
surrounded, but the White House
didn't want to risk destroying the mosque.
They ordered Casey to cut a deal.
>> I don't think it was ever
called a cease-fire or a peace
agreement, but essentially it was.
Sadr agreed to have his militia
not oppose the Americans.
We bought back a lot of weapons from his militia.
And that part of Baghdad became very peaceful.
>> NARRATOR: The payoff to Sadr was substantial.
Casey spent $1.2 million buying
back some weapons and $330
million more in what were called
"reconstruction funds."
They hoped they had bought some peace and quiet.
(explosions)
>> Four car bombs went off
almost simultaneously this morning....
>> The attacks came during the
busy Baghdad commute... >> NARRATOR: Now it was the
Sunni insurgents who posed a threat to the upcoming
elections.
>> At least 35 people have been
killed in a huge car bomb attack in Baghdad...
>> NARRATOR: The key insurgent
stronghold was familiar territory for the American
military: Fallujah.
>> Fallujah becomes a kind of
sanctuary for insurgents, for
radicals, for al Qaeda elements in Iraq.
>> Bomb factory after bomb
factory after bomb factory.
I mean, they were just making
the car bombs and shipping them to Baghdad.
>> The problem that Casey faces
and his advisers are telling him
is, "You're not going to be able
to hold elections here as long
as Fallujah is out there."
>> NARRATOR: Once again, Casey's
light footprint was set aside.
He drew up plans for a full-scale attack.
>> Tonight, Iraqi security and
coalition forces kicked off offensive operations in
Fallujah.
(explosions)
>> We went into Fallujah at
about 10:00 PM, and the fighting
started immediately.
It's pitch black outside, and we all started piling
out of the troop carriers.
We went in on foot, and you
could see the RPGs sailing out
of the city towards us.
And I thought, "My God, man,
what have we gotten into here?"
>> NARRATOR: The battle raged for ten days.
>> Fallujah 2, first of all,
is an extraordinary, difficult and violent battle.
(gunfire and explosions)
I think the most intense combat
U.S. forces had seen, certainly,
since the Vietnam War.
>> Much of the city was simply
flattened by the attack.
>> Fallujah is, at that point,
a victory for the United States.
>> The city was basically destroyed after that.
>> NARRATOR: There was jubilation among many of the
commanders.
They believed the insurgency
had been irreparably harmed.
>> With the liberation of
Fallujah, they no longer have
any safe havens anywhere in Iraq.
And it was driven home to them
that they cannot defeat the coalition forces.
>> I think there's a resurgence
of optimism and that the worst is behind us.
>> In the battle for Fallujah,
the terrorists hid weapons in the cemetery.
They hid ammunition in private homes.
They hid bombs in mosques.
But they could not hide
from the United States Marines!
(cheering)
>> NARRATOR: But Casey's military success may have
backfired politically.
Sunni refugees carried tales
describing what they saw as
a brutal American assault.
>> Ultimately, if you draw out
all the events that followed
Fallujah, that certainly decreased the Sunni Arab
support.
And in that sense, it did help
the insurgency and it did turn
people to be more violently
opposed to the American presence
than they had been before.
>> NARRATOR: On election day,
Rumsfeld's plan for democracy
was about to be tested.
>> I got up that morning at 7:00.
I went out in the streets, and
there was no vehicular traffic
allowed anywhere in the country.
>> It was a day of incredible tension.
>> So the streets were empty.
And I remember thinking, "Oh, my
God, no one's going to come out to vote."
People started to trickle out.
>> By 10:30 in the morning,
there were thousands and thousands and thousands of
people out to vote.
>> The stories that started
coming in about millions of
Iraqis lining up to vote were quite encouraging.
>> It was a really extraordinary
thing, people wearing their best
clothes, husbands and wives with
their children, people lining up.
>> And the pictures of the
people with their purple fingers
started to be broadcast around.
>> NARRATOR: There were celebrations.
But angry about Fallujah, the Sunnis had boycotted
the election.
>> If you look at the January
election, it was a big turnout,
but the Sunnis didn't vote.
>> NARRATOR: As the votes were
being counted, Casey's inner
circle knew there was a problem.
>> We never imagined that
a boycott by the Sunni Arabs
could be that complete.
It appears that overall Sunni
Arab turnout was probably about ten percent.
>> Everybody understood very quickly we'd elected a
government that divided the country.
And everyone who had to work in
the Green Zone or the area knew
that beneath this political
structure, there was a virtual vacuum.
>> And so in that vacuum, the
insurgency began to step back up
in an effort to undermine that
political process and undermine
the legitimacy of the new government.
>> When we did not secure the
population, the enemy realized
that the population was fair game.
We were not securing them.
The Iraqis couldn't do it yet.
So what did they do?
They began to kill people.
>> We're following reports today
of two suicide bombings... >> NARRATOR: The Bush
administration told a different story.
>> I think the level of activity
that we see today, from a
military standpoint, I think will clearly decline.
I think they're in the last
throes, if you will, of the insurgency.
>> The victory of freedom in
Iraq will strengthen a new ally.
>> The rhetoric that the
president was evidencing in his
remarks-- he would use terms
like "Win," "We're going to defeat the insurgents,"
"Victory"-- that all would lend
itself to a military strategy
whose purpose was to defeat the insurgency.
We never had that as a mission in Iraq.
>> Explosives detonating just
after 7:00 AM this morning...
>> NARRATOR: Now Casey would
face Iraq's greatest crisis yet.
Al Qaeda had gained a foothold in the unrest.
>> One of the country's most holy Shiite religious
shrines... >> A huge explosion nearly
completely destroyed one of
Shiite Islam's holiest sites...
>> I think the February 22
bombing of the Samarra Mosque
will be remembered as this war's Tet.
>> A kind of a diabolical
attempt by al Qaeda to stimulate
a civil war and to create a
conflict between the Shiites
and the Sunnis, to making Iraq
essentially ungovernable and
chaotic and an entity that the
Americans can no longer control.
>> You would have to say the
attack on the Samarra Mosque was
an act of evil genius, and very
nearly brought, I would say, the
whole American enterprise in
Iraq to the point of complete catastrophe.
>> That bombing in Samarra broke the floodgates.
>> NARRATOR: Over the next ten
days, the Shiites responded.
Sunni mosques were attacked,
imams were killed, their bodies
dragged through the streets.
(rapid gunfire and explosions)
The Shiite cleric Muqtada al
Sadr unleashed his Mahdi army.
>> All bets are off.
The Shia begin to fight back
with the Sunni, and what was a
one-sided insurgency becomes a two-sided civil war.
(loud explosion)
>> They got the overreaction
that they wanted on the part of the Shia militias.
Drive the level of violence up
higher than it had ever been and
bring it to a state where it
would be fractured, start to
fall apart, disintegrate, the
United States has to leave under
those kind of conditions and
they begin to achieve their
political objectives in their mind.
>> NARRATOR: The Bush
administration's response was to
take to the airwaves.
>> They want a future of freedom and peace...
>> Violence is not raging rampantly across Iraq...
>> My view would be they've
reached a stage of desperation
from their standpoint.
>> The country is not awash in sectarian violence.
>> Americans have never
retreated in the face of thugs
and assassins, and we will not begin now.
>> NARRATOR: In Baghdad, with
violence growing, the Bush team
began urgently looking for an
Iraqi leader to unite the
country and stop the fighting.
>> The thought was that Iraq
needed a new prime minister,
someone who would be less
sectarian, more pragmatic and
certainly more decisive.
>> NARRATOR: American ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad was frustrated
with the available candidates.
>> I had asked my staff, can it
be that in this country of 30
million that we cannot find
someone who is a unifier who can
lead this country in this hour of need.
>> NARRATOR: Finally, a CIA
officer at the embassy had a
suggestion: a relatively unknown
Shiite member of parliament, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki.
>> The first time I ever heard
of Nouri al-Maliki was a phone
call from Zal Khalilzad.
And I said, "What do you know about him?"
And he said, "Well, we don't know much about it."
"What does the intelligence
community know about him?"
"Well, they don't know much about him either."
>> NARRATOR: When Saddam was in
power, Maliki lived in exile in
Iran and Syria, trying to topple
the Iraqi dictator.
But he had no real experience in government.
>> Nouri Kamal al-Maliki was
a kind of default choice.
And Maliki is a man who, not to
be unkind, I think if you were
sitting on a local school board,
you'd worry about appointing him
to be principal of your local high school.
>> NARRATOR: But Ambassador
Khalilzad was desperate.
He arranged a face-to-face meeting with Maliki.
>> During the course of the
discussion, Khalilzad put the
proposition to him, "Have you
ever thought about running for prime minister?"
>> NARRATOR: Maliki seemed surprised.
>> He physically changed when I
said that and he said, "Would
you not object to me or do you not object to me?"
I said, "It's not my place to object."
>> NARRATOR: By May of 2006, the
Americans had their man.
Nouri al-Maliki was elected the
new prime minister of Iraq.
>> Nouri al-Maliki was so
unknown to so many people in the
Bush White House that they
weren't even using his right first name.
He finally actually had to
correct them and tell them that
they weren't using the right name.
And I think it tells you about
how little they understood about
him when he first came to power.
They were so happy to have somebody.
>> NARRATOR: Maliki was so
inexperienced, the president
himself scheduled frequent video
conferences in order to school
the new prime minister in the art of politics.
>> But the president wanted to
help him be a leader, what do
you do, what don't you do.
>> The idea being to kind of
mentor him, to sort of bring him along.
This is Bush teaching Maliki politics.
>> Democrats took control of the
House for the first time in 12
years.
>> NARRATOR: That fall,
President Bush was learning a
political lesson of his own.
>> Democrats will have the upper
hand in the new Congress...
>> Ladies and gentlemen, the
president of the United States.
>> NARRATOR: Congressional
Republicans suffered an historic
defeat in the November midterm elections.
>> Say, why all the glum faces?
Look, this was a close election.
If you look at race by race, it was close.
The cumulative effect, however, was not too close.
It was a thumping.
>> You have the midterm elections.
And the U.S. public is saying to
President Bush, "This is not working for us.
We are losing confidence."
>> NARRATOR: It was time to clean house.
>> Secretary Rumsfeld and I
agreed that the timing is right
for new leadership at the Pentagon.
>> It becomes, I think, a very
attractive option to say, "Look,
this is Rumsfeld's war, not Bush's war.
Time for a change."
>> NARRATOR: And now the
president was determined to find
a new strategy for Iraq.
>> Finally, only when things
were just as bad as they could
be, when his presidency was on
the line, when the country was
completely in rebellion against
him, in effect, does he finally
say, "Okay, I have to step in
here and decide what I think is
the right strategy."
>> NARRATOR: He went looking for
fresh ideas and honest assessments.
He was offered one by retired General Jack Keane.
>> I got called by the White
House to come see the president
and to give him my views, with
others, in terms of the way ahead in Iraq.
>> NARRATOR: Keane advocated a
plan he called "The Surge".
>> I told him that we were in a
crisis, that time was running
out, and I said the only thing
that can work is to bring the
level of violence down.
The way to do that is to secure
the population and we don't have
enough forces to do it.
We have to surge forces to do it.
>> NARRATOR: It would be a
complete reversal of General
Casey's "Light Footprint".
>> Most of his advisors, as I
understand it said, "Don't do it.
"It won't work, and it will cost
us a tremendous amount in blood and treasure."
He saw it as our last best hope and went with it.
>> NARRATOR: On January 10,
2007, Bush announced the surge.
>> Good evening.
I have committed more than
20,000 additional American troops to Iraq.
>> That decision at a minimum
guaranteed that his presidency
would not end with a defeat in
history's eyes, that by
committing to the surge he was
certain to at least win a stalemate.
>> NARRATOR: In private, with
his national security advisor
Stephen Hadley, the president
revealed just how unsure he was.
>> At one point, he looked up to
me and he said, "Hadley, do you
think this surge strategy is going to work?"
And I said, "Mr. President, I
think it will, but I do think,
Mr. President, it's our last
chance to get this right."
And he says, "Good."
He said, "If you ever decide
that you think the surge
strategy cannot work, you need to come tell me."
>> NARRATOR: To implement the
surge, the president replaced
General Casey with an unlikely
choice: David Petraeus.
>> Perhaps it was a sign of how
desperate the times were that,
you know, I got the nod.
I don't know.
>> David Petraeus is an interesting figure.
An intellectual, has a Ph.D.
from Princeton, enjoys talking
to politicians and journalists
and in the Army, that's kind of three strikes.
You know, Princeton intellectual, likes Washington,
likes journalists, you're out, fella.
>> NARRATOR: Petraeus was a
counterinsurgency expert.
He knew what would have to happen.
>> I said, "Get ready, because
it is going to get harder before it gets easier.
We are going to take away from
Al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents on
one hand and then Shia militia
extremists on the others, the
areas in which they operate.
We are going to fight them."
>> NARRATOR: And Petraeus was
blunt with the president.
>> And the president says, "You
know, this is really important.
You know, we're doubling down here."
And Petraeus corrects him and
says, "We're not doubling down.
This is all in."
He recognizes, this is it.
If this goes bad, that's the end of the war.
And it's not going to be good for America.
>> Thousands of extra troops,
both Iraqi and American, will
try to slow down the killing amongst Sunni Arabs...
>> The surge begins, but the
president stands increasingly alone...
>> NARRATOR: That spring,
General Petraeus and almost
30,000 new troops initiated the surge.
>> The White House is calling
its Iraq plan the "New Way Forward"...
>> NARRATOR: Petraeus ordered
tens of thousands of troops off
the large bases and out among the Iraqis.
>> The priority had to be on
securing the Iraqi population
and that this could only be done
by living with the people.
So instead of consolidating on
big bases, which is the
direction we'd been going in.
We went back in to the neighborhoods in Baghdad and
other areas that were also threatened by this
ever-spiraling sectarian strife.
>> NARRATOR: The job was to
separate Sunnis and Shiites.
That meant fierce engagements
with Sunni insurgents and with
Shiite militia groups.
>> When you take the fight to
the adversary, by definition
casualties are going to go up.
And casualties went up.
(loud explosions)
(shouting)
>> NARRATOR: Door to door,
street by street, the American
troops fought to seize control.
>> But what they often overlook
is just how violent the surge was.
Because the Americans are
dropping lots of bombs and using
artillery, and all, just about every heavy weapons
system you could imagine to
try to reclaim lost ground.
>> NARRATOR: Petraeus' troops
often found themselves in bloody
firefights with heavily armed insurgents.
>> Spring 2007 was very difficult in Iraq.
It was a scary time.
>> And it was very, very tough.
And it continued to go up and
American casualties continued to
go up to the May, June time frame.
(loud explosion)
(shouting)
>> NARRATOR: Ambassador Ryan
Crocker worked closely with
Petraeus during those rough first months.
>> The early months of the surge
were pretty horrible.
We were losing hundreds of
troopers, and neither Dave nor I
could say it was going to
succeed in the spring of '07.
June was our worst month.
We lost more than 120 Americans in combat.
>> It's a daily litany of violence...
>> At least 122 Americans were killed...
>> I remember talking to
Petraeus, and he was ashen.
It was a very rough month in Baghdad.
And you really could see guys
with their fingers crossed that
month in Baghdad with, "This has
got to start working pretty soon."
Petraeus was very worried in that period.
>> NARRATOR: As the death toll
grew, the political pressure intensified.
Some of the president's men blamed Nouri al-Maliki.
>> There's a real frustration
with Maliki inside the Bush government.
He's just not somebody who is
easy to do business with.
And they're not happy with him.
And so, in fact, when opposition
to Maliki develops inside the
Iraqi government, there's a real
school of thought inside
Washington saying, "Okay, fine.
Let him go."
>> NARRATOR: One of the first to
raise concerns about Maliki was
national security advisor Stephen Hadley.
>> There was a sectarian agenda
that was being carried out on the ground.
>> NARRATOR: The previous fall,
Hadley had authored a memo
warning that Maliki's government
was becoming increasingly sectarian.
Reports of nondelivery of
services to Sunni areas, removal
of Iraq's most effective
commanders on a sectarian basis,
and efforts to ensure Shia
majorities in all ministries all
suggest a campaign to consolidate Shia power in
Baghdad.
>> I tried to frame the issue
for the president, knowing that
this was a judgment that the
president was going to have to make himself.
>> NARRATOR: And now, on a
secure video conference, both
General Petraeus and Ambassador
Crocker gave up on the president's man.
>> There was a moment when Dave
Petraeus and I, because we were
in the smoke and the dust every
single damn day had had it with Maliki.
We said, "Boss, we got to have a change here."
>> NARRATOR: But Bush had taken a liking to Maliki.
He insisted he would not turn
his back on the prime minister.
>> Bush really believes in his
gut instinct toward other leaders.
He really believes that
international affairs is driven
at least partly by how heads of
state get along, and whether
they can trust each other.
And he thinks he's gotten a read
on Maliki at this point.
>> The president effectively
said, "You know, guys, I know
you're under a lot of pressure,
but just go sit under a tree
until that notion passes from your minds.
We are going to make it work with Maliki.
There is no other alternative."
>> For the third month,
Americans have lost more than 100 soldiers...
>> Deadliest month this year for
U.S. troops in Iraq...
>> NARRATOR: As the news from
the battlefield got worse, Petraeus upped the ante.
>> That number has just gone up and up and up...
>> NARRATOR: He decided to try
to drive a wedge between the
foreign al Qaeda fighters and
the Sunni tribes that had been supporting them.
>> They'd gotten tired of al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda had been abusive.
It had been blowing Sunni Arabs
up and Sunni mosques up, in
addition to Shia Arabs and mosques.
And so they were keen to get
these individuals out of their areas.
>> NARRATOR: Petraeus made a bold move.
>> The biggest change Petraeus
makes, and the biggest gamble he
takes, is he puts the Sunni
insurgency on the American payroll.
>> NARRATOR: In one clandestine
meeting after another, millions
were handed over to former Sunni insurgents.
>> I'm giving him 10,905,000.
>> NARRATOR: Petraeus called his
Sunni paramilitary group the "Sons of Iraq."
>> Four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, seven-thousand.
Ten, 20, 30, 40-thousand.
>> NARRATOR: In exchange for
fighting al Qaeda, Petraeus also
promised the Sunnis a role in the Iraqi government.
But inside Petraeus' war
council, it was not a popular move.
>> Our own commanders had concerns about this.
I had commanders come to me and
say, "Hey sir, we can't sit down
across the table with these guys.
They've got our blood on their hands."
And I'd say, "Yes, indeed they do."
But that's how these kinds of fights typically end.
You have the reconcilables.
We want to get as many as
possible of them again to be
part of the solution instead of
a continuing part of the
problem, and then that will
identify the irreconcilables.
>> NARRATOR: Petraeus says he
initiated the payoffs on his own authority.
>> I remember I asked Petraeus
once, "How did you get President
Bush to approve that?"
And he said, "Oh, I didn't need
his approval, so I didn't ask for it."
>> NARRATOR: In the end, 103,000
Sunnis joined Petraeus' army.
They cost $400 million.
On the streets of Iraq, they started to rebuild.
>> We saw a dramatic reduction
in violence, and ultimately,
over the course of the surge,
the level of violence was down by some 90% or so.
>> By the end of 2008, clearly
the Al Qaeda and Sunni
insurgency had been relatively stabilized.
And in the al Qaeda's mind, they were defeated.
They actually said that in many
of their transmissions that we
were able to pick up.
And the Shia militia, largely
those trained by the Iranians,
in Basra and also in Sadr City had been defeated.
>> Violence in Iraq is on a downward trend...
>> The story of hope, a better future in Iraq...
>> The numbers are starting to change.
The violence is beginning to come down.
There's the green shoots of
optimism in the White House.
>> It's a stunning turn, like a
light switch being flipped...
>> Maybe this is the time
things are beginning to get better, they hope.
>> There has been a sharp
decline in roadside bombings in Iraq...
>> NARRATOR: In December of
2008, during the last month of his presidency...
>> President Bush made an unannounced trip to Iraq
Sunday... >> NARRATOR: ...George W. Bush
made one final visit.
>> Bush's surprise last visit to
Iraq as commander in chief...
>> It's meant to be, in a sense, a valedictory.
In effect, the surge has at
least seems to have changed
things, turned things around.
>> The reasons for that trip
are, of course, closure.
I mean, how could the president
who has started the war in Iraq,
how could he leave office
without going back to Iraq?
>> NARRATOR: There was a meeting
with his friend Nouri al-Maliki.
Together, they signed an agreement that would keep
American troops in Iraq through at least 2011.
>> The policy was that we want
to build a long term partnership
with Iraq, and that in their
realm of security, some level of
security presence was envisaged.
>> NARRATOR: In effect,
President Bush had made sure his
successor, Barack Obama, would
keep American troops in place
for at least three more years.
>> What he's done is sort of set
the pace of the war for his successor.
His successor will come in and
have this agreement already signed with the Iraqis,
dictating how the next three years will go.
And Bush has basically
guaranteed that his successor
will keep troops there, at least
on some level, well into the next term.
>> NARRATOR: But then, as Bush
celebrated the agreement... (angry shouting)
>> NARRATOR: The shoes had come
from an Iraqi reporter angry
about the deaths of at least
100,000 Iraqi civilians in the
years since Bush's decision to invade.
>> President Bush is left sort
of humiliated, I think, in front of the world.
>> Maliki is stricken.
I mean, you can see it on his
face; humiliated, angered.
>> Bush, I think, found this a
rather depressing end to what
had been a pretty depressing
experience in Iraq, he gets back
on the plane, his staff notices
that he's kind of low, he's just
kind of... the wind has been
taken out of his sails.
So I think it was kind of a
deflating moment for him.
>> President Barack Obama has inherited two wars...
>> Obama has obviously been
dealing with a full plate of
foreign policy issues...
>> He was inheriting what was left by the Bush
administration... >> NARRATOR: On January 20,
2009, the war in Iraq was now Barack Obama's.
>> Iraq and Afghanistan, the two
wars he inherited... >> To the extent that the
president came to office with a
new approach, it was he really
didn't like this war.
>> The first step toward his
campaign promise to end the Iraq war...
>> NARRATOR: The Iraq war was
nearing its sixth year.
The country was weary.
>> Obama had campaigned on the
Iraq issue as a candidate.
And he had a plan: The idea was
that American forces would leave
Iraq on a kind of regular
schedule, and then we'd hand over to the Iraqis.
>> NARRATOR: During the
campaign, Obama had been warned
not to leave Iraq too quickly.
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were firm.
>> Dave Petraeus and I refused
to talk about timelines.
We talked about what needed to
be done and the need to maintain
strategic patience and
commitment until those things were done.
To set an arbitrary timeline is
just telling the enemy how long
he has to wait, and that can be
very dangerous, and that is the argument we made.
>> The President of the United States...
>> NARRATOR: At the end of his
first month in office, before
thousands of Marines at Camp
Lejeune, North Carolina,
President Obama told Americans
what he intended to do about that campaign promise.
>> I have come to speak to you
about how the war in Iraq will end.
The situation in Iraq has improved.
Violence has been reduced
substantially from the horrific
sectarian killing of 2006 and 2007.
>> NARRATOR: He rejected
Petraeus' and Crocker's advice
not to publicly announce a timetable.
>> I intend to remove all U.S.
troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.
(applause)
We will complete this transition
to Iraqi responsibility, and we
will bring our troops home with
the honor that they have earned.
Semper Fi!
Hoo-rah!
>> NARRATOR: He had said all he
was going to say about his policy on Iraq.
>> The president decided he wanted this behind us.
He didn't want to think about it.
He didn't want to talk about it.
He didn't want to develop any resources to it.
He wanted to normalize Iraq when
it's a country that's not normal.
He simply wanted to put Iraq behind us.
>> NARRATOR: The president would
focus his attention elsewhere.
>> He pretty much turns his
attention away from Iraq.
He gives it to Joe Biden, his
vice president, to manage.
And he focuses instead on
Afghanistan, on the economy, on healthcare.
These are the things he wants to
be remembered for, particularly
the domestic accomplishments.
And Iraq is not what he wants to
be spending his presidency on.
>> NARRATOR: In the aftermath,
the effects of announcement were immediate.
NSC director Douglas Ollivant saw it firsthand.
>> Shortly after the U.S. policy
for Iraq is announced, the Iraq
NSC shop as we knew it is shut down.
The directors go from six to two.
And they're buried fairly deep
in the bureaucracy with no
direct access to the president.
>> NARRATOR: In Iraq, at the
American embassy, there was a new hands-off policy.
>> What happened, almost
immediately that indicated major
political change was about to
take place is the new ambassador
to Iraq, Christopher Hill, told
General Odierno that Iraq is
going to be treated as a sovereign state.
In other words, we were no
longer attempting to shape and
guide their political maturation.
Huge mistake.
>> NARRATOR: Maliki, who had grown used to frequent
conversations with George W.
Bush, now rarely spoke to Barack Obama.
>> I remember when I went to see
him he was quite nostalgic and
said, "How is President Bush?
I wish I could talk to him," and so forth.
I said, "Do you want to talk with him?"
He was very enthusiastic.
"Can I really talk to him?"
So I had picked up my cell phone
and called the president's
office, President Bush's office
in Dallas and within a few
minutes they were talking with each other.
And I could tell that he missed
the ability to reach out to the president.
>> NARRATOR: Without regular
guidance from the Americans, Maliki was on his own.
>> Middle East politics is a full contact sport.
It's a survival game.
And as Maliki figures out that
the White House is just really
not that vested in Iraq, he'll
take matters into his own hands.
>> NARRATOR: Within months, the
old Iraq hands were getting word
that Maliki was beginning to
consolidate power and increasing sectarian tension.
>> In 2009, there are complaints
coming out of Iraq that Maliki,
who was initially criticized as
too weak, is now being
criticized as too strong and too
authoritarian and increasingly sectarian.
>> NARRATOR: The Iraqi army,
trained and equipped by the
Americans, was one of Maliki's first targets.
>> He begins to de-professionalize the military,
removing Sunni commanders, replacing them with Shia
commanders.
He's concerned about the
reliability of the armed forces.
>> Maliki gets rid of a lot of
well-trained commanders in the
Iraqi army, and replaces them
with political loyalists.
It's as if he's more worried
about a coup than he is in
having an effective military.
Because what good is an effective military if it's
against you.
>> NARRATOR: And in the Sunni
heartland, Petraeus' "Sons of
Iraq" were quickly becoming enemies of the state.
>> He began to take exception to
the Sons of Iraq, which all came
from the Sunni tribes.
He stopped paying them.
Not only that, he began to purge
some of them and actually
attacked and killed some of them.
>> NARRATOR: The American
ambassador James Jeffrey knew Maliki was a problem.
>> There was a lot of concern about Maliki.
I could see that among the Iraqi
political figures and also in
Washington, all the way to the
top-- I want to underline all
the way to the top-- there was a
lot of concern about Maliki.
>> NARRATOR: Nevertheless, the
American government continued to back Maliki.
>> The timetable for withdrawal
from Iraq is nearing month by month...
>> The U.S. military in Iraq has
been scheduled to leave Iraq...
>> There's still about 46,000
combat troops inside Iraq...
>> U.S. troops must leave that
country by the end of the year...
>> NARRATOR: By the spring of
2011, a deadline was looming in Iraq.
The president had promised all
American forces would be out of Iraq by December.
But at the Pentagon, they wanted
to keep a residual force on the ground.
>> Instead of the 50,000 who are
there now, they'd like to keep
20,000 to 24,000 troops in Iraq.
That arrives at the White House
to expressions of great shock.
>> NARRATOR: In a series of
tough meetings in the Situation
Room, the president pushed back.
>> They force the Pentagon to go
back, to redo the numbers, they
come back with the 10,000 troop option.
Eventually they whittle that down to 5,000 troops.
>> NARRATOR: Even that small
number would require a new agreement with Iraq.
Over video conference, Obama and
Maliki negotiated in earnest for the first time.
>> When he opened the talks,
President Obama made a demand
that the Bush administration had
not made for keeping American troops in Iraq.
>> NARRATOR: Obama insisted
Maliki convince the Iraqi
parliament to bestow legal
immunity to the American troops.
>> It wasn't sufficient merely
to have an agreement that
conferred legal immunities on these troops.
This agreement had to be
formally approved by the Iraqi parliament.
>> NARRATOR: But delivering the
dysfunctional parliament's
approval would be difficult
given Iranian influence and Sunni opposition.
>> When Maliki in effect said,
"This is a big roadblock," and
Washington said, "Well, we can't
do it unless you send this to parliament."
I think that both sides actually
were more or less happy to let
it fall aside and say, "Fine."
>> Nobody really wanted it,
neither the Americans nor Maliki.
The Americans were pretty sick of Iraq at the time.
And frankly, I think the Iraqis
were pretty sick of the Americans.
>> NARRATOR: The negotiations had failed.
Still, the president declared victory in Iraq.
>> All the way!
Everything that American troops
have done in Iraq, all the
fighting, all the dying, all of
it has led to this moment of success.
>> The Obama administration saw
departure from Iraq as a foreign
policy victory in of itself, divorced from what the
consequences for Iraq would be.
So it was a gain for the American budget, it was a
reversal of the Bush policy, it
was an unburdening of the U.S.
military, all of these things
which had nothing to do with
actually what was happening in Iraq.
>> NARRATOR: And to celebrate
the moment, the president
invited a special guest to the White House.
>> They had a joint press
conference, where he talked
about this new democratic Iraq
that was going to be built.
>> Today, I'm proud to welcome
Prime Minister Maliki, the
elected leader of a sovereign,
self-reliant and democratic Iraq.
>> The Americans at this point,
have, in effect, embraced Maliki.
He had been very controversial for a lot of years.
But to them, he was going to be
the person who was going to lead
this new government into the
future without American troops.
>> Mr. Prime Minister, as we end
this war and as Iraq faces its
future, you have a strong and
enduring partner in the United States of America.
Thank you very much everybody.
>> NARRATOR: There was no public
criticism of Maliki's sectarian maneuvers.
>> Maliki was becoming a problem.
On the other hand, the President
had taken the position: Iraq was
a mistake, we've ended our war
in Iraq, the country is on its own.
>> NARRATOR: Now, for better or
worse, President Obama, like his
predecessor, was entrusting Iraq's future to Nouri
al-Maliki.
>> The last 6,000 U.S. forces in
Iraq are packing up...
>> Marks the end of the war in Iraq...
>> The last U.S. troops are now leaving Iraq...
>> NARRATOR: After nearly nine
years, over 4,000 Americans
killed, more than 30,000
wounded. And an estimated cost
of 2 trillion dollars.
the last US troops left Iraq.
>> We disengaged not only
militarily at the end of 2011,
we disengaged politically.
The war was over, we were out.
Let the chips fall where they may.
Well, I don't think we thought
through exactly how many chips
were going to fall and what the
consequences of that would be.
>> NARRATOR: And as American
troops left, the diplomatic
effort was also being scaled back.
More than 10,000 State
Department employees would begin to leave.
>> Senior level regular phone
calls, senior level regular
visits basically ceased.
There was exactly one visit to
Iraq since the end of 2011 until
mid-2014 by a cabinet level official.
And given that we were hard
wired into their political
system, they wouldn't be able to
function effectively with each
other among communities without us.
I think that disengagement
brought them all back to zero sum thinking.
>> NARRATOR: With the Americans
gone and the attention of the
world waning, it did not take
long for Maliki to act.
>> Then when the last American
troops leave, he begins a pretty
concerted crackdown on the Sunni population.
>> NARRATOR: Just one day after
the last American soldier left,
an arrest warrant was issued for
Maliki's rival, the country's
Sunni vice president Tariq al-Hashimi.
They accused him of running
death squads and assassinating
political enemies, charges he denied.
>> This is clearly a moment
where Iraqi politics begins to fall apart.
But Hashimi is really the one
who triggers everything that happens afterwards.
>> NARRATOR: By now, David
Petraeus had left the army to
become director of the CIA for
the Obama administration.
He was the only senior American
official in Baghdad that day.
>> Ironically, the Ambassador was not there.
The U.S. four star was gone.
So here I was on the ground as
the director of the CIA, ended
up shuttling back and forth
between the different parties,
with M1 tanks all over the Green
Zone pointed at different houses.
>> NARRATOR: But Petraeus could not broker a deal.
Vice President Hashimi was
sentenced to death but smuggled
to safety in Turkey, where he is
under police protection.
>> This was a very serious development.
And tragically, what it did, of
course, is it started the
process of undoing the process
we'd worked so hard to do during
the surge and even in the years after the surge.
>> NARRATOR: In the months that
followed, Maliki would go after others.
The offices of the Sunni finance
minister were raided.
Sunni leaders were detained.
Mass protests broke out in Sunni provinces.
>> It was a catalyst for a
renewed sense among the Sunni
Arab population that they, once
again, didn't have a seat at the
table in their country, and that
their leaders were targeted by the government.
And that had a very, very harmful effect.
>> NARRATOR: The tenuous peace
between the Sunnis and Shiites was broken.
Political protestors in a Sunni
town were brutally attacked.
(shouting and gunfire)
(loud explosions)
>> I think that the goal he had was very clear.
"I am going to use every element
of power to both advance my own
interests and that of creating
a stable Shiite control of this state."
(gunfire)
>> Maliki's game plan for the
future of Iraq is to consolidate
Shia power and basically putting
Sunnis in a subservient position.
What he sees with the American
departure is an opportunity to
implement this, there's not
going to be any Americans in his way.
>> Since the final withdrawal of
American troops, Islamists have
been gaining ground in the
western Anbar province...
>> Militants have been using the
sectarian strife to gain a foothold...
>> NARRATOR: By 2014, the Sunnis struck back.
(loud explosions)
In the north, a Sunni group, the
Islamic state in Iraq and Syria,
joined by former Ba'athists and
other Sunni insurgents, stunned
Maliki by capturing key cities:
Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul.
>> ISIS began moving through
places where so many Americans
had given their lives to liberate.
Seeing what amounts to
al Qaeda-type folks resurgent
was a big blow and a big
surprise, I think, to a lot of
people in Washington, including the White House.
>> NARRATOR: In short order,
ISIS shocked the world by
releasing brutal execution videos.
(gunshots)
As ISIS and their Sunni allies
marched to the edge of Baghdad,
the Iraqi forces, led by
Maliki's hand-picked generals, were no match.
(loud explosions)
(gunfire)
>> The top leadership up there
fled some 30,000 troops.
People say that the total
security forces may have been twice as high.
Basically, fled from the arrival
of perhaps 1,000 or 2,000 of
lightly armed al Qaeda forces.
>> What was a surprise to the
White House was the rapid
collapse of the Iraqi forces.
And why was that a surprise?
Because we didn't have any
advisors with the Iraqi troops.
>> What's going on in Iraq is
not 800 Syrian militants running into Iraq.
It's the Sunni tribes, probably
20% of the country, have lost
patience with the government in
Baghdad led by Prime Minister
Maliki, and encouraged by the
Syrian war, and in part armed by
the Syrian war, have risen up.
>> NARRATOR: And this time,
Petraeus' Sunni paramilitary--
the Sons of Iraq-- did not
fight for Maliki's government.
>> Not only do you not have the
Sunni awakening groups or Sons
of Iraq that are helping the
Iraqi security forces, you
actually have a population that
became disenfranchised once
again, that developed a feeling
that they didn't have a seat at
the table in Baghdad.
>> NARRATOR: Now the sectarian
killings are back in full force.
Muqtada al-Sadr's Shiite Mahdi
army is back on the streets and ready for battle.
Looking ahead, some see an even
bloodier civil war, the breakup of Iraq, or worse.
>> I keep on thinking in terms
of a Shakespearean tragedy.
And I think we're probably only in Act 4 right now.
Act 5, the bloody conclusion of
Hamlet or Macbeth, still has not happened.
>> NARRATOR: At the White House,
it is now President Obama whose
legacy is being threatened by Iraq.
>> For President Obama, it can't
be satisfying to say you
diminished a terrorist threat,
you took out bin Laden, you
dealt with the situation in
Afghanistan, but now a new
terrorist threat, involving
thousands of fighters, has
emerged in western and northern Iraq.
>> The guerrilla army had roared
east to take over big chunks of western Iraq...
>> In northern Iraq, a number of
districts have been taken over by fighters...
>> Militants have swallowed up
territory and they're pushing toward Baghdad...
>> This is analogous to Afghanistan, August 2001.
This time, it is al Qaeda version 6.0.
They make bin Laden's al Qaeda
look like boy scouts.
They are far stronger, they are far more numerous.
They have thousands who hold
foreign passports and require no
visas to get into the United
States or other Western countries.
They are well funded, they are
battle hardened, and they are
well armed and they now control
far more territory exclusively
than bin Laden ever did.
>> ISIS has looted the banks in Mosul.
They've taken all the American
arms they can grab their hands
on, including the second-largest
ammunition supply point in Iraq.
Having grabbed all this loot and
assets in Iraq they've plunged
back into Syria taking Deir
al-Zor oil rich province.
They're expanding their footprint.
>> And I can tell you as we sit
here today in Washington.
They're sitting in Mosul
figuring out how they're going to get at us next.
>> Go to PBS.org/frontline for
extended interviews with
General David Petraeus.
>> Perhaps it was a sign of how
desperate the times were.
>> Ambassador Ryan Crocker,
General Jack Keane and others.
A closer look at the key
turning points of the war in
Iraq and its aftermath.
Explore Frontline's collection
of reporting on Iraq since 2003.
Then connect to the Frontline
community and follow us on
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PBS.org/frontline.
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