Decision Points

should have followed my own advice. Tommy Franks felt it was important to show that a new phase in the war had begun. As a way to do that, I decided to give a speech aboard the USS
Abraham Lincoln
, which was returning home after ten months at sea. The five thousand sailors, airmen, and Marines aboard the carrier had supported operations in both the Afghan and Iraqi theaters.
    On May 1, 2003, I climbed into the seat of a military jet for the firsttime in more than thirty years. Navy pilot Scott Zellem , known by his call sign as Z-Man, briefed us on the safety procedures at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego. *** Commander John “Skip” Lussier, a fine pilot with more than five hundred carrier landings on his résumé, got our S-3B Viking off the ground. At one point, he handed the controls to me, and I flew the jet for a few minutes over the Pacific Ocean. I was rusty, but after a few porpoises I steadied out. The commander wisely took over as we approached the carrier. He guided the plane down to the deck and caught the final arresting wire.
    Aboard the
Lincoln,
I visited with the landing crew, marveled at takeoffs and landings in the catapult zone, and ate chow with the sailors and Marines. “My fellow Americans,” I said in my speech, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. … The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.”

    Aboard the USS
Abraham Lincoln
.
White House/Paul Morse
    I hadn’t noticed the large banner my staff had placed on the bridge of the ship, positioned for TV. It read “Mission Accomplished.” It was intended as a tribute to the folks aboard the
Lincoln
, which had just completed the longest deployment for an aircraft carrier of its class. Instead, it looked like I was doing the victory dance I had warned against. “Mission Accomplished” became a shorthand criticism for all that subsequently went wrong in Iraq. My speech made clear that our work was far from done. But all the explaining in the world could not reverse the perception. Our stagecraft had gone awry. It was a big mistake.

    With Saddam gone from power, our central objective became helping the Iraqis develop a democracy that could govern itself, sustain itself, defend itself, and serve as an ally in the war on terror. The objective was ambitious, but I was optimistic. Many of the dire contingencies we had planned for and worried about before the war had not come to pass. There had been no Fortress Baghdad, no massive oil field fires, nowidespread starvation, no civilian massacre by Saddam, no WMD attack on our troops, and no terrorist attack on America or our allies.
    There was one important contingency for which we had not adequately prepared. In the weeks after liberation, Baghdad descended into a state of lawlessness. I was appalled to see looters carrying precious artifacts out of Iraq’s national museum and to read reports of kidnapping, murder, and rape. Part of the explanation was that Saddam had released tens of thousands of criminals shortly before the war. But the problem was deeper than that. Saddam had warped the psychology of Iraqis in a way we didn’t fully understand. The suspicion and fear that he had cultivated for decades were rising to the surface.
    “What the hell is happening?” I asked during an NSC meeting in late April. “Why isn’t anybody stopping these looters?”
    The short answer was that there was a manpower shortage in Baghdad. The Iraqi police force had collapsed when the regime fell. The Iraqi army had melted away. Because of Turkey’s decision, many of the American troops who liberated Baghdad had been required to continue north to free the rest of the country. The damage done in those early days created problems that would linger for years. The Iraqis were looking for someone to protect them. By failing to secure Baghdad, we missed our first chance to show that we could.
    The security vacuum was accompanied by a political vacuum. I decided to name an American administrator to provide order while we worked to develop a legitimate government. The idea grew into the Coalition Provisional Authority , authorized by a United Nations resolution and led by a distinguished foreign service officer and counterterrorism expert, Ambassador L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer .
    Jerry impressed me from the start. He was an aggressive