Decision Points

spirits, but they lifted mine.
    They weren’t the only ones. On New Year’s Day 2006, Laura and I traveled to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. We visited fifty-one wounded service members and their families. In one room, we met Staff Sergeant Christian Bagge of the Oregon National Guard, along with his wife, Melissa. Christian had been on patrol in Iraq when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb. He was pinned in the vehicle for forty-five minutes and lost both legs.
    Christian told me he used to be a runner and planned to run again someday. That was hard to imagine. I hoped to buoy his spirits. “When you’re ready, just call me,” I said. “I will run with you.”
    On June 27, 2006, I met Christian on the South Lawn. He had two prosthetic legs made of carbon fiber. We took a couple of laps around the jogging track Bill Clinton had installed. I marveled at Christian’s strength and spirit. I could barely believe this was the same man who had been confined to a hospital bed less than six months earlier. He did not look at himself as a victim. He was proud of what he had done in Iraq, and he hoped his example might inspire others.

    Ready to run with Army Staff Sergeant Christian Bagge.
White House/Eric Draper
    I thought about Christian a lot that summer, and in the years that followed. Our country owed him our gratitude and support. I owed him something more: I couldn’t let Iraq fail.

    On August 17, I convened the national security team in the Roosevelt Room, with General Casey, General Abizaid, and Ambassador Khalilzad on the video screen. The results of Operation Together Forward were not promising. Our troops had driven terrorists and death squads out of Baghdad neighborhoods. But Iraqi forces couldn’t maintain control. We could clear but not hold.
    “The situation seems to be deteriorating,” I said. “I want to be able to say that I have a plan to punch back. Can America succeed? If so, how? How do our commanders answer that?”
    General Casey told me we could succeed by transferringresponsibility to the Iraqis faster. We needed to “help them help themselves,” Don Rumsfeld said. That was another way of saying that we needed to take our hand off the bicycle seat. I wanted to send a message to the team that I was thinking differently. “We must succeed,” I said. “If they can’t do it, we will. If the bicycle teeters, we’re going to put the hand back on. We have to make damn sure we do not fail.”
    Chief of Staff Josh Bolten , who knew where I was headed, added the exclamation point. “If it gets worse,” he said near the end of the meeting, “what radical measures can the team recommend?”
    I left the meeting convinced we would have to develop those measures ourselves. I authorized Steve Hadley to formalize the review the NSC Iraq team *** had been conducting. I wanted them to challenge every assumption behind our strategy and generate new options. I soon came to view them as my personal band of warriors.
    By the fall, my Iraq briefing charts showed an average of almost a thousand attacks per week. I read accounts of sectarian extremists torturing civilians with power drills, kidnapping patients from hospitals, and blowing up worshippers during Friday prayers. General Casey had launched a second major operation to restore security in Baghdad, this time with more Iraqi forces to hold territory. Once again, it failed.
    I decided a change in strategy was needed. To be credible to the American people, it would have to be accompanied by changes in personnel. Don Rumsfeld had suggested that I might need fresh eyes on Iraq. He was right. I also needed new commanders. Both George Casey and John Abizaid had served extended tours and were scheduled to return home. It was time for fresh eyes in their posts as well.
    With the 2006 midterm elections approaching, the rhetoric on Iraq was hot. “The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong,” DNC Chairman Howard Dean proclaimed. “We are causing the problem,” said Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, one of the first prominent Democrats to call for an immediate withdrawal. Senator Joe Biden , the ranking member of the ForeignRelations Committee, recommended partitioning Iraq into three separate entities. Republicans were anxious, too, as Mitch McConnell made clear with his Oval Office request for a troop reduction.
    I decided to wait until after the elections to announce any policy or