Doubts and Debate Before Victory Over Taliban

Tenet wanted to stand up and cheer. He went back to CIA headquarters and told his senior leadership what the president had said. What it meant, Tenet said, was simple: Keep going.

Rice believed it was one of the most important moments. If the president had opened up to alternatives, the war cabinet would have lost the focus of trying to make the strategy work and flitted off to think up alternatives. She hoped that the recommitment would cause everyone to redouble their efforts on the current strategy that he had just then fully blessed.

Rumsfeld reported to some of his senior aides that the president had been particularly strong that day. He didn't provide details.

Powell found the situation in Afghanistan troubling, but he didn't think they were in a quagmire, yet.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, their ally in the war in Afghanistan, was interviewed that evening by ABC anchor Peter Jennings, who asked him right off the bat whether the United States was facing a quagmire.

"Yes," the Pakistani president declared, "it may be a quagmire."

The Media and the 'Quagmire'

During the early morning secure phone conversation that Rumsfeld had with Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, on Saturday, Oct. 27, the secretary wanted to make sure they were planning and thinking way ahead -- to the worst-case scenario, if necessary.

Suppose the Afghan opposition, the Northern Alliance, the mercenary force that was being paid by the CIA, could not do the job? They were going to have to consider the possibility that they would have to send in large numbers of U.S. ground forces.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was taking notes in a white spiral notebook. He wrote, "Be prepared to go in -- major land war -- either on our own or with coalition partners. . . . Process of organizing for it would be very, very useful. . . . It would become visible and people would know that we're not kidding, we are coming, if you don't change sides now, we are going to continue the process."

Rumsfeld and Franks agreed to step up bombing of the Taliban front lines as the Northern Alliance wanted. With the first U.S. Special Forces A-teams now inside Afghanistan, that would be possible. But both the secretary and Franks were skeptical of the Alliance and Fahim, who seemed slow to move on their own.

Rice and the others were on edge as the administration was being murdered in the media.

On Tuesday morning, Oct. 30, two leading conservatives, Bush's usual allies, had blasted the war effort on the op-ed page of The Washington Post. William Kristol said, "It's a flawed plan," because of too many self-imposed constraints. Charles Krauthammer said the war was being fought with "half-measures."

On Wednesday, Oct. 31, some war cabinet members read a news analysis by R.W. Apple Jr. of the New York Times.

"Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not."

Earlier in the week, a military analyst on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" had leveled the unkindest cut of all, saying that Bush was practicing "the Bill Clinton approach to warfare . . . thinking small."

At his Wednesday morning meeting with senior staff, Bush expressed his pique at the media.

"They don't get it," the president said. "How many times do you have to tell them it's going to be a different type of war? And they don't believe it. They're looking for the conventional approach. That's not what they're going to see here. I've talked about patience. It's amazing how quickly people forget what you say, at least here in Washington." The quagmire stories made little sense to him. They had a good plan. They had agreed to it. "Why would we start second-guessing it this early into the plan?"

Rumsfeld had declared publicly that day that he was following the news commentary about the alleged stalemate or quagmire in Afghanistan. "I must say that I find those differences of views often helpful and interesting and informative and educational," he had said at his regular Pentagon briefing, trying to avoid a defensive tone.

To his senior staff, he had referred once to the authors and television talking heads as "K Street pundits," former government officials and hangers-on who occupied the downtown corridor of K Street that housed seemingly endless consultancies and think tanks. To Rumsfeld, K Street was a low-life refuge for those who couldn't get real jobs, or didn't have the independence of spirit to leave Washington once they were through.

"Of course that's what they are saying," he had said, "they've got the attention span of gnats." The news business manufactured urgency and expectation. He was convinced that the public was more realistic, more patient.

Planning for Boots on the Ground

"Well, there's buzzing in the press," Powell said at the beginning of the NSC meeting the next day, Friday, Nov. 2. "Buzzing" was an understatement that brought some half-chuckles around the table. "The countries in the coalition are still with us," he added, somewhat confidently.

After a long presentation by Franks, Cheney said to him and Rumsfeld, "We may need to think about giving you more resources, a different timeline, more forces and a higher tempo of operations."

Franks and his staff and the Joint Chiefs were forcing themselves to face the possibility that a large ground force of U.S. troops would have to be sent to Afghanistan. The numbers 50,000 to 55,000 were being mentioned. These were staggering numbers, suggesting the kind of land war that military history dictated should be avoided in Asia, at all costs.

The president was aware of the figure under consideration. In a later interview, he recalled dealing with "the scenario where we may need to put the 55,000 troops in there."

"What's the capability of the opposition forces?" Powell asked. "Do we need to train them?" In his 35 years in the military, he had found that good training could go a long way. Neither Powell nor anyone was prepared for Franks's answer.

"I don't place any confidence in the opposition," the commander said. On the question of whether the Alliance could be trained, he said, "I don't know." He was depressed about Fahim, who had the advantage and was not really moving. In contrast, Abdurrashid Dostum, another Alliance general who commanded cavalry, was aggressive, a General George Patton. "Dostum rides 10 to 15 miles a day in windstorms or snowstorms with guys lacking a leg. They go to blow up a Taliban outpost and take casualties knowing they had no medical assistance."

So even though he had lost confidence in the opposition forces, Franks said he would continue with the current strategy "while at the same time doing some planning to see if we need to be able to do the kind of things the vice president described."

The president had not known that Cheney was going to raise these issues, but he had found that when Cheney asked questions, it was worth listening to them. He wanted Franks to take them seriously. "When can you give me some options," Bush asked Franks, "along the lines of what the vice president talks about?"

"In one week," Franks said, "to a very small group."

Bush had previously asked Franks what response would be possible if al Qaeda struck the United States at home again in a major way, and he wanted to order an escalation.

"And I also owe you options of what we do if we get hit again," Franks said.

"We might take Mazar in 24 to 48 hours," Tenet told skeptical colleagues at a principals' meeting on Thursday, Nov. 8, six days later. Dostum and another commander were engaged in an envelopment of Mazar-e Sharif, the major city in northern Afghanistan. "One is seven and one is 15 kilometers from the town."

At the Friday, Nov. 9, NSC meeting, Franks reported, "We're doing 90 to 120 sorties a day; 80 or 90 percent are going to support the opposition. We're focusing on Mazar." He said they were supplying five of the 10 main tribal leaders. "We're doing cold-weather gear and ammunition. We assemble the packages in Texas, they're staged in Germany. It takes two days to get them into Germany, and then we distribute them two or three days thereafter." They were starting to get a reliable logistics chain.

"By the end of the month, we're going to have it in good shape around Mazar. And we're working on Fahim Khan to get him to move."

"We've got to keep our expectations low," he concluded.

Well after lunch, Army Lt. Col. Tony Crawford, an intelligence specialist and executive assistant to Rice, walked into her corner West Wing office.

"Mazar has fallen," he said. "We're getting reports that Mazar has fallen."

"What does that mean?" Rice asked skeptically. "Are they in the center of the city? What does 'Mazar has fallen' mean?"

Crawford said he would find out what it meant.

He was back shortly to report that Dostum's troops were indeed in the center of the city. The locals were throwing off their Taliban clothing. They were celebrating. Sheep were being sacrificed. Women were waving, cheering and clapping.

What does the national security adviser do in such a situation? She turned on CNN, which confirmed the reports, and called Rumsfeld to tell him the news.

"Well," he replied, "we'll see."

His view was that first reports are almost always wrong, and this sounded like one that was. Maybe it fell today, and maybe it won't have fallen tomorrow.

Rice walked down to tell the president. He had already heard. "That's good," he said, controlling his enthusiasm.

She noticed that he didn't get out a cigar to chew -- a standard sign of genuine celebration.

Instead, Bush asked Rice, "Well, what next?"

At a meeting later in the afternoon, the president did not conceal his astonishment at the shift of events. "It's amazing how fast the situation has changed. It is a stunner, isn't it?"

Mark Malseed contributed to this report.