A Struggle for the President's Heart and Mind

Bush might order, Go get the guns! Get my horses! -- all the Texas, Alamo macho that made Powell uncomfortable. But he believed and hoped that the president knew better, that he would see the go-it-alone approach did not stand further analysis. Hopefully, the success in the first phase of the war in Afghanistan had provided the template for that understanding.

The ghosts in the machine in Powell's view were Rumsfeld and Cheney. Too often they went for the guns and the horses.

A Nearly Impossible Mission

In the spring of 2002, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became so violent that it threatened to overwhelm the war on terrorism. The president said he wanted to send Powell to the Middle East to see if he could calm things down. Powell was reluctant. He said he didn't have much to offer, too little leverage with either side.

We are in trouble, the president told Powell. "You're going to have to spend some political capital. You have plenty. I need you to do it."

"Yes, sir," Powell said.

He went to the region, made little headway and after 10 days was preparing his departure statement that proposed an international conference and security negotiations.

Rice called Armitage at the State Department to ask him to tell Powell to scale back his statement, make less of a commitment about future negotiations. There were real concerns that Powell was going too far.

In Washington, Armitage was almost chained to his desk so he could talk to Powell between his meetings. It was midnight, 7 a.m. in Jerusalem, when Armitage explained Rice's concerns.

Powell went nuts. Everybody wanted to grade papers! he said. No one wanted to step up, face reality! They wanted to be pro-Israel and leave him holding the Palestinian bag by himself. They had sent him out on a nearly impossible mission.

"I'm holding back the [expletive] gates here," Armitage reported. "They're eating cheese on you" -- an old military expression for gnawing on someone and enjoying it. People in the Defense Department and the vice president's office were trying to do him in, Armitage said. He had heard from reliable media contacts that a barrage was being unloaded on Powell. He was leaning too much to Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader. The White House was going to trim Powell's sails; he was going to fail. Armitage said he couldn't verify who was leaking this, but he had names of senior people in Defense and in Cheney's office.

"That's unbelievable," Powell said. "I just heard the same thing." He had had cocktails with some reporters traveling with him, and they reported that their sources in Cheney's office were declaring he had gone too far, was off the reservation, and about to be reined in.

"People are really putting your [expletive] in the street," Armitage said.