Free Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

to represent Iraq’s diverse society. Chalabi and Allawi, who hated each other, were both secular Shiites. Al-Jafari and al-Hakim were far more religious. The group promised to bring on board at least one Sunni Arab and a few “internals”—Iraqis who had never gone into exile.
    Garner thought it was a great idea. The exiled leaders were people the U.S. government had worked with before, all of whom had impeccable anti-Saddam credentials. All of them, except Chalabi, represented large blocs of Iraqis. And they were willing to assume the responsibility of leadership. To Garner, they were the “takeover guys.”
    Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith did not tell Garner how to manage the political transition. Garner assumed that all three favored a dominant role for the exiled leaders, particularly Chalabi, in a transitional government. But the Pentagon trio worried that an order to Garner to hand over authority to the exiles would have made its way back to the State Department and sparked new debate within the Bush administration. State didn’t want the exiles in charge. It believed that authority should rest with the United States, either through a military commander or a civilian governor, until a representative group of Iraqis, internals as well as exiles, formed a government. In State’s view, there would have to be elections and perhaps even a new constitution written before the Americans handed over the keys. Although Cheney and his staff were strong backers of Chalabi, the rest of the White House, specifically President Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, had not articulated a clear view of how the transition should unfold. If the issue were forced, Pentagon leaders feared that Bush and Rice might choose elements of the State plan. But if Garner were not given orders, and events on the ground were allowed to run their course, Pentagon officials hoped the exiles would simply form a transitional government. Once that happened, the officials thought, it would obviate the need for State’s transition plan.
    â€œI never knew what our plans were,” Garner said. “But I did know that what I believed, and what the plans were, were probably two different things.”
    By the time he left Kuwait for Baghdad, Garner had concluded that elections should be held within ninety days. When he made that view known to reporters, it infuriated his bosses at the Pentagon, who feared that an election would not be in the best interests of the exiles. Once Garner got to Iraq and met with Kurdish leaders Talabani and Barzani, both of whom he had known from running relief operations in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, his plans evolved. He still wanted elections, but he also threw his support behind the exiles’ plan to form a transitional government. That pleased the Pentagon but irritated State. Before long, Colin Powell and Richard Armitage voiced objections to Garner’s plan at the White House.
    In Baghdad, efforts to get the exiles to broaden their ranks with internals soon ran into trouble. The exile leaders could not agree on whom to invite. As a sign of reconciliation, Allawi wanted to include someone who had been in the Iraqi army or in Saddam’s government. Chalabi and the Shiite religious leaders regarded such people as too compromised. Chalabi also expressed concern that anything more than a small expansion of their ranks would dilute the exiles’ power. The not-so-subtle message was that he didn’t want to loosen his hold on the nascent government.
    To make the process appear participatory and to identify promising internals, ORHA convened a conference of about three hundred Iraqis in the Convention Center to discuss the country’s future. There were tribal sheiks in gold-fringed robes, men in business suits, and even a few women. They gathered in the cavernous auditorium where, six months earlier, Saddam’s deputy had announced that the