Among Top Officials, 'Surge' Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting

The surge was born of a review Bush launched after the midterm elections. Over the weeks that followed, the president came to agree that his strategy was heading to what he later called "slow failure." But rather than heed calls for withdrawal, he opted for a final gambit to eke out victory, overruling some of his commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ushering in a new team led by Fallon, Petraeus, Crocker and a new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates.

The logic escaped many. The day after Bush's speech, Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were pummeled during hearings on Capitol Hill. The two tried to assure lawmakers that the troop buildup would be short-lived. "We're thinking of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or two years," Gates testified. Asked about Maliki, Rice said, "I think he knows that his government is on borrowed time."

So was Bush. "There was a real question about whether we'd be able to do this at all," said a White House aide. Within five weeks, the House had voted to oppose the troop buildup, and Democratic leaders were vowing to tie Bush's hands. Most worrisome was the discontent among Republicans. "It could have potentially strangled this strategy in the crib," Wehner said.

Early Turning Points

While Bush played defense in Washington, he also needed to turn up the pressure in Baghdad. The strategy would never work, Bush aides knew, unless Maliki stepped up. National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley had outlined in a memo last fall the deep White House skepticism about the prime minister's intentions and abilities to take on Shiite militias.

Bush instituted videoconference calls with Maliki every two weeks, prodding him to seek accord among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions. At first, the Americans noticed some change. Maliki, who previously had blocked U.S. forces from taking on the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, gave Petraeus the green light to go after anyone responsible for attacks. He also deployed three Iraqi brigades in Baghdad, as promised.

Sadr fled for Iran in February, concerned that U.S. forces would target him. It was a "very personal" decision, not a strategic one, said a senior U.S. intelligence official. "He fled because he feared for his safety." With Sadr out of the picture, his power base weakened, and supporters began fighting among themselves. Some decided to become more politically active and stop mobilizing against U.S. forces. Others began attacking Sunnis.

More striking was the emerging shift in Anbar; al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents had grown so dominant in the western province that military intelligence had all but given up on the area months earlier. Bush benefited from good timing. As he introduced his new strategy, Marine commanders had already made common cause with local Sunni tribal leaders who had broken with the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, also called AQI.

Why the sheiks turned remains a point of debate, but it seems clear that the tribes resented al-Qaeda's efforts to ban smoking and marry local women to build ties to the region. "Marrying women to strangers, let alone foreigners, is just not done," Australian Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, a Petraeus adviser, wrote in an essay.

The sheik who forged the alliance with the Americans, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, traced the decision to fight al-Qaeda to Sept. 14, 2006, long before the new Bush strategy, but the president's plan dispatched another 4,000 U.S. troops to Anbar to exploit the situation. As security improved, the White House eagerly took credit.

The "Anbar Awakening" represented perhaps the most important shift in years, but it generated little debate at the White House. Long before the tribes switched sides, the administration conducted a policy exercise on how to team up with former insurgents. But when such an alliance occurred, it bubbled up from the ground with no Washington involvement. "We're not smart enough to know the course that these matters might take," Rice conceded to an Australian newspaper last week.

The alliances generated angst among Maliki and other Shiite leaders in Baghdad, who wondered whether such groups would turn against them. "There were a couple times we got from Maliki very, very alarming, 'What are you guys doing?' " messages, recalled another top official.

Buildup Expands; Concerns Grow

As Petraeus settled into his new command, he decided to press for 8,000 additional support troops beyond the 21,500 combat forces the president had committed. Just a week earlier, Gates had told Congress that only 2,000 or 3,000 more might be needed. As he reviewed a briefing sheet in preparation for more testimony, Gates was annoyed to see a larger request buried on the page. He fumed that "this is going to make us look like idiots," said a defense official. But Gates got Petraeus the troops.