Senate Republicans were no happier. Bob Corker of Tennessee said, "I think people want a sense of what the end is going to look like."

"Where do we go from here?" asked Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican but a longtime skeptic of the war.

Senator George Voinovich of Ohio said, "The American people have had it up to here."

"We"re a generous people," said Senator John Barra.s.so of Wyoming, another new Republican, "but our patience is not unlimited."

Welcome to the club, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, seemed to say. Petraeus"s plans to draw down U.S. troops to pre-surge levels, he a.s.serted, were "just the next page in a war plan with no exit strategy." He was more or less correct: While there was an exit strategy, the exit was years away, in fact so far in the future that it was hard to discern.

As for presidential candidates, McCain seemed most detached from reality, essentially not listening to Petraeus and instead laying out a concept for an ending that seemed unreachable. The day before the hearings began, he described Iraq in terms that were eerily similar to how the Bush administration had described it on the eve of the invasion, as a country that the Americans would transform and turn into an engine of change for the entire region. "The fact is, we now have a great opportunity, not only to bring stability and freedom to Iraq but to make Iraq a pillar of our future strategy for the entire region of the Greater Middle East," he had told the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "If we seize the opportunity before us, we stand to gain a strong, stable, democratic ally against terrorism and a strong ally against an aggressive and radical Iran."

At the hearing, McCain summarized his view: "We can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success. Success, the establishment of a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state that poses no threats to its neighbors and contributes to the defeat of terrorists, this success is within reach."

McCain"s grand vision was not only at odds with the more restrained goals in Petraeus"s campaign plan-simply of "sustainable security"-but verged on fantasy. It resembled President Bush"s 2003 rhetoric, but flew in the face of five additional years of painful evidence about the imprudence of that grandiose approach. It was unlikely that Iraq would wind up a strong or genuinely democratic nation, with not only elections but also rule of law and respect for the rights of its minorities. There was even less chance that Iraq would be an ally against Iran, given that the Shiite politicians that the United States had helped to power had taken refuge in Iran during Saddam"s time, and had maintained close ties even during the U.S. occupation. Rather, the best case scenario was that in the long run, Iraq would calm down, be mildly authoritarian, and probably become an ally of Iran, but, with luck, not one that threatened the rest of the Arab world.

Senator Clinton asked sharp questions that underscored the vagueness of Petraeus"s answers. You keep on saying that your decisions will be based not on time but on conditions, she said, so please describe those conditions. Petraeus didn"t, instead describing how he would measure the situation. His response is worth quoting at length for its masterful evasiveness: With respect to the conditions, Senator, what we have is a number of factors that we will consider by area as we look at where we can make recommendations for further reductions beyond the reduction of the surge forces that will be complete in July. These factors are fairly clear. There"s obviously an enemy situation factor. There"s a friendly situation factor with respect to Iraqi forces, local governance, even economic and political dynamics, all of which are considered as the factors in making recommendations on further reductions. Having said that, I have to say that again it"s not a mathematical exercise. There is not an equation in which you have coefficients in front of each of these factors. It"s not as mechanical as that. At the end of the day, it really involves commanders sitting down, also with their Iraqi counterparts and leaders in a particular area, and a.s.sessing where it is that you can reduce your forces so that you can again make a recommendation to make further reductions. And that"s the process. Again, there is this issue, in a sense, this term of battlefield geometry. And as I mentioned, together with Amba.s.sador Crocker and Iraqi political leaders, there"s even sort of a political-military calculus that you have to consider, again, in establishing where the conditions are met to make further reductions.

It was as if, after being ambushed by Clinton in the September hearings, Petraeus had crossed her off his list. He wasn"t prepared to engage with her except at an unhelpful, arm"s-length distance. Mess me around, he seemed to be saying, and all you"ll get from me is empty but correct answers. (Meanwhile, Senator Roger Wicker, a new Republican from Mississippi, managed to get in a subtle dig at Clinton, throwing back at her that loaded phrase from last September. "There is no question that the situation is better now," he lectured. "It"s better than when the surge began and it"s better than in September. It would take a major suspension of disbelief suspension of disbelief to conclude otherwise, to conclude that things are not much improved.") to conclude otherwise, to conclude that things are not much improved.") Senator Obama was much more focused in his questions than in the September hearing, when he had rambled. Obama this time seemed to be thinking like someone who might have to make real decisions in a year"s time. He wanted to know two things: If we are never going to totally eliminate support for al Qaeda in Iraq and we are never going to totally eliminate Iranian influence, then what are we really trying to do with those two issues? Or, he asked, are we going to try to stay there for two or three decades, until everything is really solved? "I"m trying to get to an end point," Obama said. "That"s what all of us are trying to get to."

Obama"s bottom line wasn"t really much different from that of Petraeus and Crocker. If we wanted to entirely eliminate al Qaeda and have a solid Iraqi state, we"d be there for decades. "If on the other hand," he said, "our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo, but there"s not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence; there"s still corruption, but the country"s struggling along but it"s not a threat to its neighbors and it"s not an al Qaeda base; that seems, to me, an achievable goal within a measurable time frame." That was what the campaign plan called "sustainable security."

Crocker"s message was even starker. He used the hearings to raise concern about what he termed the "Lebanonization" of Iraq-this is, the weakening of the government, the division of the people into sectarian groups, and the rise of militias that rival the government in reliable firepower. Also, in both Lebanon and Iraq, Iran played an active role, supplying and training certain armed groups. "Iran is pursuing a Lebanonization strategy," Crocker said. And if the U.S. left Iraq quickly, he added, "Iran would just push that much harder."

The evocation of Lebanonization raised the haunting possibility of the American war in the Middle East continuing for decades. A generation of Arab fighters had taken on the United States presence in Iraq, and some had survived to go back home, reported the Washington Post" Washington Post"s Anthony Shadid. "Iraq is a badge of honor for every Arab and Muslim to fight the American vampire," he was told by Abu Haritha, the nom de guerre of a man who was wounded while fighting in Fallujah and then returned home to his home in Tripoli, Lebanon"s second-largest city. Crocker"s warning was effectively dismissed by the members of Congress quizzing him and Petraeus, despite the amba.s.sador"s persistence and his familiarity with both Lebanon and Iraq. It was as if no one even wanted to hear it.

After the hearings, I asked Petraeus over a lunch why he hadn"t taken more risks and simply laid it out plainly, saying something like this: Look, the best case scenario is we"re going to be there a minimum of another three or four years, though I think with about half the troops we have there now, and with fairly steadily declining casualties. This isn"t a lead-pipe cinch, but I think it is plausible, and it sure beats any alternative I can see. Look, the best case scenario is we"re going to be there a minimum of another three or four years, though I think with about half the troops we have there now, and with fairly steadily declining casualties. This isn"t a lead-pipe cinch, but I think it is plausible, and it sure beats any alternative I can see. He responded that he thought he had said that, more or less. He responded that he thought he had said that, more or less.

I didn"t think he had made that clear. But some military professionals disagreed, saying that they had heard that message. This didn"t necessarily make them hopeful. Retired Marine Col. Robert Work, an insightful former adviser to the secretary of the Navy, observed that Petraeus subtly had shifted from a conditions-based strategy to a time-based one: We have given up on having a shining beacon of democracy in Iraq. We want a nation that is relatively stable, not a threat to its neighbors, and can protect its borders. We have also largely given up on sectarian reconciliation; we now simply hope for some type of sectarian accommodation that will reduce the likelihood of widespread sectarian conflict when we leave. Crocker and Petraeus cannot describe the conditions for this except that it will take time. Every gain is potentially reversible, for far into the future. Our condition for leaving is now simply: We"ll wait and hope that through the pa.s.sage of time for bottom up accommodation and the formation of a functioning state. We"ve planted the seeds and will know the time to leave when the flower blooms. Unfortunately, we cannot tell the American people how long this particular flower takes to bloom. In the meantime, as part of our time-based strategy, we will expend the majority of our time, money, blood, sweat, and tears building up Iraqi security forces, not the government or the society. We leave that for natural development; it is funded and resourced in a relatively paltry fashion. This seems to me to be a highly risky strategy. It is arming all three of the major sectarian groups to the teeth.

Retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales Jr., a former commandant of the Army War College, thought the strategy was even riskier than Work did. Petraeus was caught in a fundamental contradiction, he thought: Petraeus had the correct strategy, but was on thin ice because time was running out on it. "The counterinsurgency strategy implemented by Petraeus is the right one and cannot be substantially altered," Scales said. But, he continued, "The crucible of patience among the American people is emptying at a prodigious rate and very little short of a complete shift in conditions on the ground is likely to refill it." On top of that, by early 2008 the Iraq war had cost roughly $650 billion, at minimum. That price tag would grow even more significant as the U.S. economy slipped into a recession and a burgeoning financial crisis.

It appeared that Obama might be the person who would have to address the contradiction. After securing the Democratic nomination in early June, he used part of his victory speech to talk about Iraq, beginning with a comment that echoed Kilcullen"s crack that just because you invade a country stupidly doesn"t mean you should leave it that way. "We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in," Obama said. " But start leaving, we must. It"s time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future."

Bush certainly understood the point Petraeus had been making. The two had breakfast after the April hearings, along with Crocker. "I"ve told him he"ll have all the time he needs," the president said afterward.

DRAWDOWN.

Before he moved to his new post at Central Command, Petraeus had to continue to plan in Iraq. In June 2008, his strategic planners began working on the following year. He told them to begin thinking about a transition from a mission of "securing the population" to one of "sustainable security." They already could see four hurdles ahead. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan would start this year in September, and in every year of the war it had brought a spike in violence. Second, the better security was in Baghdad, the more refugees would return home from Jordan and Syria, where many of them were running out of money. Their homecomings promised to provoke sectarian fighting and test Iraqi forces as Sunnis returned to neighborhoods that had been cleansed by Shiite militias that had taken possession of Sunni houses. Provincial elections almost certainly would increase violence. The planners also knew, finally, that the American election would be closely watched in Iraq, and that there might be violence intended to influence American voters. That election could go a long way toward determining the future U.S. mission in Iraq: Under Obama it would be to reduce the presence, while under McCain it would be to prevail and help confront Iran.

For years, the U.S. military had fretted about "mission creep." Beginning with the Somalia operation in 1992-93, top commanders worried that once U.S. forces were committed to a situation, the tasks a.s.signed them would continually expand, from security to providing a variety of services to standing up a government, until they were mired in what was derogated as "nation building." Many in the military had listened with relief with George W. Bush had denounced this tendency during the 2000 presidential election campaign, saying it was not a proper use of the armed forces. "I don"t think our troops ought to be used for what"s called nation building," he said during a debate with Al Gore, the Democratic candidate. "I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war." Then, of course, he went on to invade Iraq and inadvertently launch perhaps the most ambitious and expensive nation-building effort in the history of the United States.

In Iraq in 2008, the U.S. military would face a new variant of the mission creep problem. As the 5 brigades sent for the surge began to go home, commanders were facing "force shrinkage." That is, the mission would remain the same-ensuring that Iraq was developing sustainable security-but there would be fewer and fewer U.S. troops available to carry that out. The key would be to "hold" (under "clear, hold, and build") with less combat power. But to make that happen, Iraqi forces would have to shoulder more of the burden. Always wanting to take it slowly, Petraeus recommended holding the troop level in Iraq to about 15 combat brigades until it was clear how provincial elections were going to play out. Pushed by the Joint Chiefs, he ultimately agreed to a compromise under which one brigade would leave in January 2009 without being replaced, but another one would be on tap to replace it if needed.

AFTER THE SURGE.

(Summer 2008)

As the surge ended in mid-2008, with the last of the five additional combat brigades heading home, Baghdad felt distinctly better. Kebab stands and coffee shops had reopened across the city, and many ordinary Iraqis felt safe enough to venture out of their homes at night, in part because stores were remaining open to evening shoppers. Some women discarded the head scarves that Islamic extremists had insisted they wear, with violators being attacked. Even as Iraq"s factions remained murderously divided, violence was at its lowest level of the entire war, with only a dozen American soldiers dying in July 2008. Contrary to expectation, the holy month of Ramadan didn"t bring a major spike in violence, as it had in the previous five years. Some 39,000 displaced families safely returned to Baghdad.

Some optimists, such as Fred Kagan, p.r.o.nounced that Iraqi politics were moving forward smartly and that the war was all but over. But that a.s.sessment confused starting to win with having won. There was no question that under Petraeus, the U.S. military had regained the strategic initiative, an extraordinary achievement. "He has pulled off something that is unparalleled, really, and without much support from Washington or Centcom, and with active hampering from the Joint Chiefs," said David Kilcullen. Yet most of the basic questions about the long-term direction of Iraq remained unanswered. It is striking that of the predictions General Fastabend made in his 2007 essay written for Petraeus about "How All This Ends," many of the military ones came true while the political ones didn"t. As Fastabend had urged, the U.S. government was indeed able to arrive at cease-fires with tribes, to turn former insurgents and put them on the payroll, and even to chip away at the power of Sadr"s militia. But on the political side, Fastabend had predicted that Maliki would be ousted from power by January 2008 and then disappear a few months later while traveling in Iran. He saw provincial elections rolling across Iraq in 2008, another event that didn"t happen. (He did make one good call on the political side: foreseeing that the Republicans would lose the White House in the November 2008 elections.) Iraqi politics felt stuck, and American officials were beginning to fear that an entire generation of embittered, distrustful former exiles would have to pa.s.s from the scene before genuine and lasting progress could occur. This struck me especially one day late in 2008, when Maj. Gen. Guy Swan, Odierno"s director of strategic operations, told me in his Green Zone office that "with the security gains, there is a window of opportunity. . . . Only they can do it. We have set the conditions for them. They have an opportunity to pursue their own destiny." Almost exactly a year earlier, Gen. Odierno had said almost exactly the same thing to me. A window of opportunity had opened for the government to reach out to its former foes, he had explained then, but said "it"s unclear how long that window is going to be open."

a.n.a.lyzing the lack of progress in Iraqi politics one day late in 2008, Emma Sky recalled Petraeus"s image of "the Mesopotamian Stampede." "We"ve stopped the stallion from running off the cliff, but then it runs off in another direction," she said. "Right now it is frantically running around in circles." By that she meant that the existential questions that faced the country before the surge-and indeed since the day the Americans invaded-were still hanging out there.

What, then, had the surge accomplished?

THE SURGE FALLS SHORT.

The surge was the right step to take, or more precisely, the least wrong move in a misconceived war. Petraeus"s final letter to his troops, dated September 15, 2008, stated that "your great work, sacrifice, courage and skill have helped reverse a downward spiral toward civil war and wrest the initiative from the enemies of the new Iraq." That a.s.sessment captured what the surge and a.s.sociated moves did, but not what they didn"t do.

The surge campaign was effective in many ways, but the best grade it can be given is a solid incomplete. It succeeded tactically but fell short strategically. There is no question that the surge was an important contributor to the reduction in violence in Iraq and perhaps the main cause of that improvement. But its larger purpose had been to create a breathing s.p.a.ce that would then enable Iraqi politicians to find a way forward and that hadn"t happened. As 2008 proceeded, not only were some top Iraqi officials not seizing the opportunity, some were regressing, Odierno worried one day as he sat in the Green Zone office he recently had inherited from Petraeus. Iraqi politicians had found that they didn"t necessarily have to move forward, he said. "What we"re finding is that as Iraq has become more secure, they"ve . . . moved backwards, in some cases, to their hard-line positions, whether it be a Kurdish position, an Arab position, a Sunni position, a Shi"a position, a Da"wa position, an ISCI position"-these last two being the two major Shiia parties.

Odierno argued that progress was being made politically. But the a.n.a.lysis he then offered of Iraqi politics seemed instead to support the argument that the breathing s.p.a.ce given Iraqi leaders had enabled them to retreat from reconciliation and dodge tough problems. "Security is good enough where I worry about them going back," he explained. "They"re not going back to solve the old problems which we"ve pushed. They"ve continued to delay the tough ones, like the problem with land up in the north with the Kurds, the problems with the Peshmerga, oil, Kirkuk." Nor had international actors, most notably Iran, agreed to back off and let Iraq solve its problems by itself. Indeed, a senior U.S. intelligence officer in Iraq told a reporter that there were four locations in Iran at which Iraqi Shiites were being trained to a.s.sa.s.sinate Iraqi judges and other officials.

Marine Col. Tom Greenwood, who had been a member of the critical "council of colonels" that in the fall of 2006 had pushed the Pentagon toward recognizing some hard truths about Iraq, said the surge essentially had papered over the problems of Iraq without solving them. "I still think that the Maliki government is riddled with sectarianism and is dysfunctional," he said in mid-2008, and "that we have de facto part.i.tion between the Kurds, Shia and Sunni, that Iraq is little more than an Iranian proxy, that we have destabilized the region worse than Saddam Hussein ever did, that the downward trend in U.S. casualties will be short-lived."

What"s more, some of the country"s political tensions were worsening, most notably between Arabs and Kurds over oil and the status of Kirkuk. "As Nouri al-Maliki has become more capable and more confident, he"s actually become less inclined to reach out to those he most needs to reconcile with," said Colin Kahl of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish region, charged the Baghdad government with forgetting its commitments and acting like "a totalitarian regime."

Violence had declined much less in Kirkuk than in Baghdad, added Michael Knights, an expert on Middle East defense issues, who dubbed the disputed city "the land the surge forgot."

One White House official worried aloud that there were signs that the axis of the Iraq war was shifting from Sunnis versus Shiites to Arabs versus Kurds. After visiting Iraq in late 2008, Gen. Barry McCaffrey agreed, saying that "the war waiting in the wings is the war of the Kurds and the Arabs." The Kurds also were causing friction in Mosul, where much of the Iraqi army is Kurdish but the majority of the population is Arabic. Significantly, that city, the largest in the north, was the last redoubt of al Qaeda in Iraq, which was able to play on anti-Kurdish feeling with the locals.

Judging by the frustrated mood of officials in Baghdad, it wouldn"t be surprising in an Arab-Kurd showdown to see an American "tilt" in favor of the Arabs. "The Kurds have gotten away with everything for the last five years, taking more than they should," Emma Sky, Odierno"s political adviser, said that same month. "I think the Kurds overplayed their hand, and we helped them do it."

In August, Maliki seemed to redirect an offensive in Diyala Province, making it less against Sunni insurgents and more against the Kurds. Iraqi troops pushed Kurdish military units northward, provoking the Kurds" Barzani to issue an ultimatum that the Kurds would never give up Kirkuk. "The Iraqi army"s campaign in Diyala, ostensibly directed against al Qaeda in Iraq, has turned against Maliki"s"s ruling coalition partner, the Kurds," reported one veteran observer, Joost Hilterman of the International Crisis Group. Baghdad"s forces also raided government offices in Diyala, arresting a provincial council member and a university president, a Shiite who was led away in a hood and handcuffs.

The lack of a breakthrough meant that after the last of the surge troops went home, the U.S. military faced essentially the same set of missions, but had fewer troops to carry them out. Some a.n.a.lysts worried that the first task to be curtailed would be the most important one: protecting the population, which also required the greatest use of troops. "I can"t see them having all the same missions with less people," said Joel Armstrong, the retired Army officer who helped plan the surge. "All the training and security missions are still there." So, he worried, Iraq would backslide into "a downward spiral." American officials insisted that Iraqi forces could step into the void. That a.s.sertion will be tested in 2009, as American troop numbers begin to fall below pre-surge levels.

The surge, while making short-term security gains, also may have carried hidden long-term costs that will only become fully apparent when Obama is president. "The surge may have bought transitory successes . . . but it has done so by stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism," argued Steven Simon, a Council of Foreign Relations expert on the Middle East. If continued, he predicted, the U.S. support for tribes, local militias, and other centrifugal forces will undermine central authority and lead to a divided, dysfunctional sate "that suffers from the same instability and violence as Yemen and Pakistan."

OBAMA IN IRAQ.

He arrived in late July, escorted by two senators who are Army veterans, Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. He flew from Kuwait to Basra, where he met with British and American generals. Then it was on to Baghdad.

When Obama walked into the U.S. emba.s.sy, Petraeus and Crocker had him where they wanted him: on their turf. This was their chance to answer all the questions he had posed so well during the hearings and not given them a chance to answer. They a.s.sembled a huge, extremely detailed briefing and walked the candidate through the Iraq they knew, one where some progress had been made but where it could all fall apart. The meeting went nearly two hours, half an hour longer than scheduled.

"We noted that we didn"t have the opportunity to answer [his question] . . . in the dialogue that we had in the hearings," Petraeus said later. The issue for Obama, he said, was "We sought to . . . provide an answer to that question. And to do that we basically had an executive overview of the joint campaign plan, laid out the lines of operations, supporting activities."

The senators were a bit surprised to be given such a formal briefing, rather than a candid informal conversation. "This was a rare opportunity to have a discussion, not a step-by-step presentation that you would give to a committee or large audience," said one partic.i.p.ant who termed the meeting "serious but civil."

It was an oddly contentious encounter, in part because the two men are essentially similar-more cerebral and reserved than their peers, but also lean, focused, ambitious, and extraordinarily successful in their chosen fields. One is a paratrooper who went to graduate school at Princeton, the other a community activist who went to law school at Harvard. Most important, their vision of what America can and should do in Iraq is fundamentally fairly close, with both inclined toward what Petraeus has called a "minimalist" position, a polite way of rejecting the grandiose Bush vision and instead acknowledging that Iraq isn"t going to be a stable, quiet, peace-loving democracy anytime soon.

Yet in this meeting, according to two partic.i.p.ants, they tended to concentrate on their differences-at least when Obama was permitted to interrupt the lecture. Petraeus made it clear that he strongly opposed Obama"s notion of getting all the combat troops out by mid-2010, especially because security conditions in Iraq are always changing. Obama made it clear that his job as president would be to look at the larger picture-an a.s.sertion that likely insulted Petraeus, who justly prides himself on his ability to do just that. This is far from over, Petraeus said. Obama responded that it"s on the mend, and it"s time to divert resources elsewhere.

"We are coming down, but I need the flexibility of not having a timetable," Petraeus responded. The three senators observed that the Iraqis wanted a timetable-and so did they. At that point, Petraeus just looked at them. Some officers around Petraeus found Obama to be so self-confident that they privately referred to him as the "presumptuous nominee."

Obama left the meeting unswayed. Later that day, he said that he understood that Petraeus had "deep concerns," especially about a timetable, but that "my job is to think about the national security interests as a whole and to weigh and balance risks in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their job is to get the job done here."

He also said he wouldn"t be "boxed" into either "rubber-stamping" the advice of generals or rigidly following a time line. At a press conference the next day, Obama elaborated on that apparent flexibility, saying that even after combat forces were pulled out, he expected a substantial military presence to remain.

The senators spent the night in VIP trailers behind the emba.s.sy. The next day they boarded a Marine V-22 Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter but then tilts its rotors to fly like an airplane, and headed west to Ramadi, where they met with Marine officers and then with the brother of Sheikh Sittar, the tribal chief who had worked so effectively with Col. Sean MacFarland in Ramadi in 2006. Also attending were about 30 other sheikhs, clad in white robes with gold and black trim, as well as some Iraqi officials. "He came to us," Mamoun Sami Rasheed, the governor of al Anbar Province, later said. This was about as big as wasta wasta gets-having the future president of the United States haul out to the bank of the Euphrates to explain his views. "He asked many questions," Rasheed continued. "We asked him not to pull out of Iraq." Obama told him that he wanted to get the American combat forces out of Iraq in about 16 months. Rasheed replied that the U.S. military would need to stay at least three more years, because the Iraqi military isn"t ready to take over the mission. To that, he said, Obama promised, "The United States will not abandon Iraq." gets-having the future president of the United States haul out to the bank of the Euphrates to explain his views. "He asked many questions," Rasheed continued. "We asked him not to pull out of Iraq." Obama told him that he wanted to get the American combat forces out of Iraq in about 16 months. Rasheed replied that the U.S. military would need to stay at least three more years, because the Iraqi military isn"t ready to take over the mission. To that, he said, Obama promised, "The United States will not abandon Iraq."

That last promise may prove decisive in shaping the future of the U.S. effort in Iraq. If Obama keeps it, he almost certainly will have to break his vow to get all U.S. combat units out of Iraq by mid-2010. On the other hand, there is less to that promise than meets the eye. The phrase "combat units" is really meaningless in the context of the Iraq war, where there is no front and where all troops, front line or not, are vulnerable. What the American people care about is whether U.S. troops of any sort are getting killed. Most deaths in the war have been caused by roadside bombs, which don"t distinguish between front-line infantry and support units. Indeed, a transport soldier whose mission is to conduct convoys is more likely to get bombed than an infantryman who mainly operates on foot.

Gen. Austin, the number two commander in Iraq, said that his impression was that Obama "really took to heart some of the things we told him." Obama left people in Iraq with the sense he would be flexible and consider conditions on the ground and would be able to adjust his 16-month timetable if he saw the need. In sum, Obama, Bush, Maliki, and Petraeus all seemed to be saying more or less the same thing: We all want the U.S. military out of Iraq eventually, but want to do it in a way that doesn"t push the country over a cliff. The long war view appeared to have won.

PETRAEUS OUT OF IRAQ.

It has happened to hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Leaving Iraq is a moment of ambivalence. One is pleased to be going home and antic.i.p.ating a reunion with one"s family, but is also conflicted by the nagging sense of leaving in the middle of the fight, with much unfinished business. There is a sense of lightness, of a weight being lifted, followed by a recognition of how much a mental and physical strain it has been to fight in Iraq. When Petraeus got on the airplane to leave Iraq in mid-September 2008, he experienced all these mixed emotions. He and others felt "a quiet pride," he said, "that we helped Iraq step back from the brink of civil war and to essentially go . . . from the brink to the mend." But in his case, the sense of relief didn"t last long. "I think there might have been a lifting of the weight for five minutes and then someone started talking about Centcom."

At his new a.s.signment at Central Command, Petraeus would face a new round of troubles, and also would be dealing with a new president who had made it clear that he has strong strategic views of his own. Looming largest before Petraeus was the war in Afghanistan, which is really a war in both that country and Pakistan, with Pakistan the more important part of it, because Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and remains a hotbed of Islamic extremism. On top of that, the world financial crisis was already beginning to hit Pakistan and threatened to put a new crimp in the U.S. military as America was forced to tighten its belt. In addition, the American face-off with Iran over that country"s nuclear ambitions continued to threaten to escalate into a crisis that could change the region. Nor was Iraq going to be resolved anytime soon.

Even before yielding command in Iraq, Petraeus flew to Lebanon. The trip suggested that if no one else had heeded Crocker"s concerns about the possible "Lebanonization" of Iraq, he had. He entered Beirut just after a new government was created that gave Hezbollah-an armed militia independent of government control-and its allies 11 of 30 seats in the new cabinet. The visit came as American intelligence a.n.a.lysts in Baghdad were suggesting that the Sadr organization"s future course would be to try to become the Hezbollah of Iraq, an armed force outside the government that provides services and also holds great influence over the actions of the government. A major difference between Sadr and Hezbollah is that thus far, Iran has not provided Sadr"s militia with Kornet anti-tank laser-guided missiles and the other sophisticated weaponry it is said to have shipped to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah used that materiel to great effect in its 2006 war with Israel, fighting the Israeli military to a standstill and gaining wasta wasta across the Arab world. If Iran provided such weaponry to its allies in Iraq, it would be escalating the war there significantly, and likely would require the U.S. government to reevaluate its approach to the war and even consider actions inside Iran. across the Arab world. If Iran provided such weaponry to its allies in Iraq, it would be escalating the war there significantly, and likely would require the U.S. government to reevaluate its approach to the war and even consider actions inside Iran.

It was a high-profile trip for Petraeus to take as his first move as the incoming chief of Centcom. He insisted it wasn"t the harbinger of a more aggressive stance. "This is not a provocative-type initiative," he said, but rather "to get a sense of the situation in a country where Iran has been a.s.serting substantial influence."

The biggest change Petraeus is apt to bring to Centcom is in the handling of Afghanistan, where he likely will reach out to "reconcilable" enemies while trying to isolate and kill those deemed "irreconcilable." The best indication of this isn"t anything he has said, but his pick for his deputy at Centcom: John Allen, the Marine general who loved Gertrude Bell, and also had become the de facto American amba.s.sador to Anbar"s sheikhs, playing a major role in the turning of the Sunni insurgency in that province.

I"d be surprised if Petraeus remains at Centcom for more than two years. I wouldn"t be surprised to see him at some point in the Obama administration, picked to be national security adviser or for another senior national security position. Petraeus wouldn"t have to leave the military to move to the White House. For example, Colin Powell did it as an active-duty officer late in the Reagan administration. He said he wasn"t interested in writing a memoir. "I am not interested in a sort of rehashing." He cited Gen. George Marshall"s refusal after World War II to write an autobiography, even when doing so would have made him a wealthy man. "It would cause some discomfort and I don"t have any desire to do that," Petraeus said. Crocker had a similarly clear response: "absolutely not." If they stick to that, one of many oddities of the Iraq war will be that the officials who failed-L. Paul Bremer, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, even Lt. Col. Nate Sa.s.saman-will leave behind memoirs while those who were more successful remain officially silent.

SURPRISES AT HOME.

When Petraeus got home, he was moved to be invited to the State Department by Condoleezza Rice, who surprised him with an award for distinguished service. He was pleased especially because his time in Iraq had followed a spell in which the State Department and the Pentagon often viewed each other as enemies. He had brought about reconciliation. Always looking for opportunities to teach, he used the occasion to underscore "the importance, the imperative, of unity of effort in endeavors such as the one in Iraq." Crocker also was recognized, but had to accept his medal remotely, because he was still in Baghdad. He had plans to retire in February 2009 and retreat to a hideaway in the high desert of eastern Washington.

After being home for a few weeks, Petraeus grew dismayed that people didn"t seem to understand quite how difficult the previous 18 months had been in Iraq, especially for the troops who had implemented the new approach on the streets and in the palm groves of Iraq. In his view, it was a "horrific nightmare" that simply was being forgotten. During the surge, some 1,124 American soldiers had been killed and 7,710 wounded. About another 24,000 Iraqi soldiers, police officers, and civilians were killed, according to an accounting based on news reports.

At about the same time, Odierno was surprised when Bob Woodward"s book, published just as he took command from Petraeus in Iraq, credited White House aides and others in Washington with cooking up the surge. From Odierno"s perspective-and that of many other senior officers in Iraq-it had been more or less conceived and executed by Odierno in Baghdad, with some crucial coaching from Gen. Keane. "We thought we needed it [the new strategy] and we asked for it and we got it," he said, puzzled that President Bush"s aides would present such a different account to Woodward. "You know General Petraeus and I think . . . [that] I did it here, [and] he picked it up. That"s how we see it. And so it"s very interesting when people back there see it very differently." Of course, he said, ultimately the president had to make the policy decision to do it, and some White House aides encouraged that step. But, he continued, "I mean, they had nothing to do with developing" the actual way it was done, he said. "Where to go, what they [the soldiers] would do. I mean, I know know I made all those decisions." I made all those decisions."

Different people have different views. Even so, without question, Odierno hasn"t gotten the public recognition he deserves, not only for his role in developing and implementing the surge, but also for his overall adaptation to the Iraq war. If the ability to adjust effectively in wartime is the measure of generalship, then Odierno has come further than any other American general in the war and is as successful as any of them, including Petraeus.

A FRAYED MILITARY.

One of the themes of this book is that the U.S. military adjusted as a whole in 2007 making radical, far-reaching, and unexpected changes in its approach to the Iraq war. "I think in the last two years, the Army feels different," observed Lt. Col. Suzanne Nielsen, an aide to Petraeus and a professor at West Point. "It really began to think about outcomes. Before that, it judged itself a lot by processes and inputs." That is, it had been judging its performance by effort expended rather than by results achieved-a metric that tends to waste resources and be counterproductive, often encouraging mindless activity more than insight or patience.

The improvement has come at a cost we can only guess at. This worry surfaces publicly on occasion, but is a major subject of discussion among military leaders. In the short term, there is worry about readiness and about bad actors around the globe thinking that Uncle Sam might be too preoccupied with Iraq, Afghanistan, and a global financial crisis to respond to other challenges. But the deeper and more abiding worry is about the military of ten or fifteen years from now. How long will it take to recover from Iraq? It required years to rebuild the Army and Marine Corps after the Vietnam War, and especially to recruit and train a new cadre of professional non-commissioned officers, the backbone of the American ground forces.

The last few years have seen soldiers burning out after repeated tours of duty in the war, with high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder among combat veterans. Rates of suicide and divorce have been increasing. Officers and sergeants are leaving in greater numbers. Some 50,000 soldiers now have prescriptions for narcotic pain relievers. In one unit, the 509th Engineer Company, based at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, about a third of the soldiers were found to be abusing drugs. In another worrisome sign, in the fall of 2008, five soldiers at Fort Carson, Colorado, were suspected in a series of killings after their return from Iraq.

The quality of recruits also has been dropping, with only 70 to 80 percent of new Army enlistees having high school degrees, well below the salad days of the 1990s, when the figure regularly was above 90 percent. (Repeated studies have found that recruits who finish secondary school are much more likely to succeed in the armed forces than are dropouts.) The military also has been admitting more recruits with criminal records, with 511 convicted felons entering the Army in fiscal year 2007. In that year, more than 27,000 "conduct waivers" were issued to troubled recruits by the Army and Marines.

Lower quality recruits also affect how other soldiers perceive their service. In the mid- and late 1970s, the surge in recalcitrant, poorly educated, and ill-disciplined new soldiers deepened the downward cycle of the Army, making some sergeants decide to get out. No one can tell at this point whether that unhappy pattern will again plague the Army.

In recent years many seasoned but still young officers have left the Army, despite the lure of big bonuses to stay in. Lt. Col. Charlie Miller taught at West Point from 1999 to 2002 and knows many of the young officers who are at the point of deciding whether to leave, having served their obligatory five years. "They are just flying out," he said.

What types of captains are getting out? "Almost all of them," said Capt. Liz McNally, another Petraeus aide. That includes her, and most of her friends from West Point, she said. A big part of this decision is the desire to have a normal life, and raise a family, after seeing two or three tours of duty overseas since 2001. Heavy deployments are inflicting "incredible stress" on soldiers and their families and posing "a significant risk" to the military, Gen. Richard Cody, then the Army"s vice chief of staff, said early in 2008. "I"ve never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today."

But the nature of the war in Iraq also is causing some to leave the military. As Lt. Col. Ollivant, a key planner in the surge, had noted, during the first several years of the war it was deeply frustrating for younger officers to report to men who had never done what they were doing, and often didn"t understand the situation. Until recently, many senior officers did not recognize how ill prepared they had been. The Army could be quite unforgiving of the missteps of younger soldiers, but enormously understanding when it came to much larger mistakes by generals. Captains were subjected to rigorous after-action reviews, but generals, inexplicably, were treated with kid gloves. As Lt. Col. Paul Yingling put it in a widely noticed essay, "a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war."

OBAMA"S WAR (Fall 2008)

When he delivered his victory speech on the night that he was elected president, Barack Obama alluded to the war twice. Both references were telling and, though his powerful speaking style smoothed it over, somewhat contradictory. The first mention underscored his ambivalence about the war. It came in his list of the problems his administration would face, including "two wars"-and then, in a pattern he has shown in the past, he immediately raised a competing domestic need, in this case the difficulty Americans face in paying their bills for health care, mortgages, and college tuitions. The second allusion, less noted, came when the new president-elect was sending explicit messages to the world. "To those who would tear the world down," he vowed, "we will defeat you."

Looming before him that night was the knowledge that upon taking office, he would face an almost immediate dilemma, torn between what his supporters expect and what his generals advise. Newly confident Democrats want him to follow through on ending the war. This was brought home when Gordon Smith, the emotional Oregon Republican who had broken so dramatically with President Bush over the Iraq war, was narrowly defeated in his bid for a third Senate term. Smith was downed by Jeff Merkley, who in his own victory speech gave a hint of the troubles Obama may face in reconciling his goals for getting out of Iraq while defeating terrorism. Merkley was far clearer than Obama was about where he stood on Iraq. "That bold agenda for change involves ending this war in Iraq and bringing our sons and daughters, our husbands and wives, home," he told his followers unambiguously.

Public sentiment is likely to flow in the same direction. "A democratic republic fighting an unpopular war, with limited war aims, for an unlimited time period is a bad combination," commented retired Navy Capt. Rosemary Mariner, an expert on national strategy.

But like Congress, the military has also gone through some major changes recently. Chastened by the performance of its leaders in the first part of the war, the Army is no longer chasing the chimera of "rapid, decisive operations." As Col. Karlton Johnson, an official in the Iraqi training and equipping program, put it one day in the summer of 2008, "We"re not looking at doing things fast. We"re looking at doing things right." The new president"s front-line military advisers, most notably Petraeus and Odierno, are likely to tell him that doing the right thing, including defeating "those who would tear the world down," is going to take much longer than he likes, and with more fighting than he wants.

By the time Obama made that vow in Chicago, the sun already had dawned on a pleasant, sunny, California-like day in Baghdad. There were more soldiers smiling and more black soldiers watching television news than is usual, but it felt much like any other day in the war. Soldiers stood guard duty in watch towers, conducted foot patrols, trained Iraqi counterparts, and piloted Black Hawk helicopters over the city. Some staff officers reviewed details of how to ensure that the Iraqi government paid the Sons of Iraq on those groups" first payday on the Baghdad payroll. (Discussing that exercise, Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commander of American troops in Baghdad, invoked the film Jerry Maguire: Jerry Maguire: "I keep on telling my guys, like that Tom Cruise movie about sports agents, "Show me the money!"") Long-term planners were looking at the run-up to Iraqi provincial elections at the end of January. It all felt like the previous day-yet the war had changed overnight. It now was effectively Obama"s war. It may change him more than he changes it. "I keep on telling my guys, like that Tom Cruise movie about sports agents, "Show me the money!"") Long-term planners were looking at the run-up to Iraqi provincial elections at the end of January. It all felt like the previous day-yet the war had changed overnight. It now was effectively Obama"s war. It may change him more than he changes it.

Obama indicated during the campaign that he doesn"t view Iraq through the lens of Vietnam. "The Vietnam War had drawn to a close when I was fairly young," he said. "And so that wasn"t formative for me in the way it was, I think, for an earlier generation." Rather, the Iraq war seems to have taught Obama several lessons, among them to be wary of the unilateral use of force. For all his idealistic rhetoric about hope, he also seems to be essentially a realist about Iraq, willing to limit the American commitment by stating during the campaign that "Iraq is not going to be a perfect place." Yet he also said that as long as the Iraqis made some political progress, he would plan to keep troops there to pursue al Qaeda, protect the emba.s.sy and other American personnel, and train and support Iraqi security forces. "I have never talked about leaving the field entirely," he explained. "n.o.body"s talking about abandoning the field." Rather, he said in a December 2008 press conference, he expects "to maintain a residual force" in Iraq.

Depending on the amount of support provided to the Iraqi forces, the mission as described by Obama could be surprisingly large, requiring anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 troops.

Military planners have been mulling the shape and size of the "postoccupation" force ever since it became clear in mid-2007 that the surge was working tactically. Such a long-term presence would have four major components. The centerpiece would be a reinforced mechanized infantry division of 15,000 to 20,000 soldiers a.s.signed to guarantee the security of the Iraqi government and to a.s.sist Iraqi forces or their U.S. advisers if they get into fights they can"t handle. Second, a training and advisory force of close to 10,000 troops would work with Iraqi military and police units. In addition, there would be a small but significant Special Operations unit focused on fighting the Sunni insurgent group al Qaeda in Iraq. "I think you"ll retain a very robust counterterror capability in this country for a long, long time," an American official in Iraq said in 2007. Finally, the headquarters and logistical elements to command and supply such a force would total more than 10,000 troops, plus some civilian contractors. Again, this would amount to a long-term commitment in the area of 35,000 troops.

Interestingly, that is about the figure that Gen. Odierno cited in my last interview with him for this book in November 2008. Asked what the U.S. military presence would look like around 2014 or 2015-that is, well after President Obama"s first term-Odierno said, "I would like to see a . . . force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000," with many training Iraqi forces and others conducting combat operations against al Qaeda in Iraq and its allies. To justify such a force, Odierno or Petraeus could read back to Obama the statement the candidate made in July 2008, not long before that trip to Iraq: "My 16-month time line, if you examine everything I"ve said, was always premised on making sure our troops were safe," Obama had told reporters in North Dakota. "And my guiding approach continues to be that we"ve got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable." Indeed, they could argue that that last word is overambitious, because it will be a long time before anyone can confidently call Iraq stable.

Obama is likely to find Odierno and other generals arguing pa.s.sionately that to come close to meeting Obama"s conditions of keeping the troops safe, keeping Iraq edging toward stability, and keeping up the pressure on al Qaeda and other extremists, he will need a relatively large force for many years. In addition, they will argue that adhering to any timetable will risk giving up the security gains already made. "Now is not the time to take your foot off the gas," said Gen. Swan. "If you a.s.sume the war is won, that would be a faulty a.s.sumption. We"ve got the bad guys down. Don"t let them get back up."

Clearly Odierno has been mulling what he will say when he sits down with Obama. Just before the election, Odierno said in my interview with him that one of the points he would make to the new president would be "the importance of us leaving with honor and justice. . . . For the military it"s extremely important because of all the sacrifice and time and, in fact, how we"ve all adjusted and adapted."

For Obama to reject such an argument, made by soldiers such as Odierno who have seen their own children fight and bleed, would risk a confrontation with the military early in his administration perhaps akin to but more contentious than President Clinton"s battle early in his first term over gays in the military. Like Clinton, Obama also would face the prospect of a de facto alliance between the military and congressional Republicans to stop him from making any major changes. My bet is that Obama and his generals eventually will settle on what one Obama adviser calls "a sustainable presence"-and that that smaller force will be in Iraq for many years.

A NEW CAMPAIGN.

As Obama prepared to take office, Iraq faced its own electoral upheaval, and in its own rough fashion. Elections feel different in Iraq than they do in the United States, where they tend to mark the end of contention. Few outsiders know the politics of Iraq as well as Amba.s.sador Crocker. Asked in November 2008 what one word best describes Iraq, he didn"t hesitate: "fear." Among other things, that shapes campaigns and their aftermaths.

In late 2008, a new form of terrorism was becoming popular in Baghdad, using small magnetic "sticky bombs" that were attached to the bottoms of automobiles. The goal of the bomber wasn"t ma.s.s murder, but rather targeted a.s.sa.s.sination of individuals. Perversely, this new form of killing was a sign of political ferment. Another round of electoral politics was getting under way, with provincial elections likely in early 2009, and the bombings were effectively a form of Iraqi primary system.

If events go according to the revised schedule devised by the Iraqi parliament-and in Iraq that is a major condition-then 2009 will be the year of elections in Iraq. The first round is supposed to be provincial elections, which have been postponed repeatedly but are supposed to come early in the year. Next comes a round of district voting. Finally, the end of the year may bring national elections.

Americans tend to view elections in Iraq as goals to be reached. In Iraq, they are better seen as tests to be pa.s.sed. That is, the important thing is not just doing them, but doing them well. The next round of elections, noted Nazar Janabi, an a.n.a.lyst at the Washington Inst.i.tute for Near East Policy, "marks the beginning of a vital transition that could lead either to a unified democratic country or to a fractured sectarian one that is p.r.o.ne to foreign influence."

Holding fair elections is only the first step. The next question will be whether they are perceived as legitimate, especially if the new parties emerging for the election suspect, rightly or wrongly, that they"ve been cheated in the counting of votes. Following that will be the issue of whether and how those ousted by the vote give up power. Finally, those elected will have to learn the ropes and begin governing.

Odierno said his major concern is not so much the period leading up to the elections but rather the 60 to 90 days after them. "I still think the major parties will be the people who are successful in the elections. And so what I worry about is those who feel they"ve had these new movements, how much effect will they gain from these elections? I think it"s going to be less than they expect." Significantly, some of those newcomers are leaders of the Sons of Iraq, who not only have local support, but also are a paramilitary force.