>> narrator: tonight on frontliniraq: the inside story of the war we left behind. >> the attack very nearly brought the whole american enterprise in iraq to the point of complete catastrophe. >> narrator: a story over a decade in the making. >> august 2003 is when the real war for the future of iraq began. the jordanian embassy gets blown up, and a few days later, the u.n. gets blown up. >> bring 'em on. we got the force necessary to deal with the security situation. >> narrator: through two american presidencies. >> i've come to speak to you about how the war in iraq will end. >> the president decided he wanted this behind us. he wanted to normalize iraq when it's a country that's not

normal. >> the war was over. we were out. let the chips fall where they may. >> narrator: from the early days of the occupation, to the american withdrawal. tonight, "losing iraq" part one of a special two-part frontline investigation. >> frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major support for frontliis provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information is available at macfound.org. additional support is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. at fordfoundation.org. the wyncote foundation.

and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler, and additional support from bill and cile hicks. >> the iraqis had gathered around the statue and were throwing their shoes at it. >> what struck me was the iraqis couldn't pull it down themselves. >> it was obvious it wasn't going to happen. it would be a pretty anticlimactic moment if we didn't help. >> it was a dramatic moment. it was an american flag that went on it first.

that's almost a metaphor for what's happened since. you know, then, ultimately, well, an iraqi flag was put on it, and enough photographs were taken of iraqis cheering. >> by the way, that statue was very heavy. the problem was much more involved than i think anyone thought of. >> it made me worry. something told me, you know, this isn't going to be quite as easy as we thought. >> narrator: within days, there was trouble. >> iraqis are looting on a grand scale. it is a clear sign that while war might be ending, there is trouble ahead... >> and all of a sudden, the iraqi people started looting, attacked the ministries, basically created a series

of events which didn't stop with that. less than two u.s. brigades were in isolated positions in a city of more than five million people, having no idea of what might come next. >> narrator: in washington, the bush administration brushed aside the bad news. >> i picked up a newspaper today, and i couldn't believe it. i read eight headlines that talked about "chaos!" "violence!" "unrest!" and it just was, "henny penny, the sky is falling." i've never seen anything like it! just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country. >> narrator: two weeks later, president george w. bush landed on the deck of the uss abraham lincoto announce the

war was over. >> my fellow americans, major combat operations in iraq have ended. in the battle of iraq, the united states and our allies have prevailed. because of you, the tyrant has fallen and iraq is free. (cheering) >> bush never said "mission accomplished," but that banner was hanging up right behind his head as he gave that speech. and it really was a premature victory speech that didn't recognize what was going on in iraq. >> narrator: the administration's strategy was to pull the troops out of iraq and hand over responsibility to an american civilian. in washington, vice president cheney's office had just the man for the job: a little-known diplomat named l. paul bremer the third. >> well, i was contacted by two people: paul wolfowitz, who was deputy secretary of defense,

scooter libby, who was the vice president's chief of staff, both of whom i had known for decades. >> narrator: in bremer, cheney had a businessman, a diplomat, managing director of kissinger and associates. >> here's a guy who had worked for henry kissinger but doesn't know a whole lot about the middle east, doesn't speak arabic, doesn't know the region. >> today, it's my honor to announce that jerry bremer has agreed to become the presidential envoy to iraq. >> narrator: president bush made it official: bremer was now in charge of the occupation. after a two-week crash course on middle eastern politics, he arrived in iraq to head what was known as the coalition provisional authority-- the cpa. >> we flew on a c-130 into baghdad. the thing that was striking to us was the fact that a lot of

the buildings were on fire. >> narrator: baghdad had been burning for one month. >> there'd be buildings on fire. the fires would just have to burn themselves out because there was no fire department. >> there was no government. there were no police. the army was gone. >> narrator: bremer's headquarters were in a heavily fortified area of baghdad called "the green zone." >> the green zone became the emerald city, walled off from the rest of iraq. the rest of iraq, electricity is intermittent at best, sewage problems, dusty, dirty, potholes. inside the green zone, it's calm, it's quiet. >> narrator: as bremer settled in, he knew he would have to deal with iraq's complicated sectarian politics. >> this is one of the most fractious places you could have picked, with more problems in terms of... it's right on the shia/sunni divide.

it has the kurds. it has 20 years of dysfunctional government. >> narrator: saddam hussein and his sunni-dominated ba'ath party had brutally controlled the country's majority shiites and the kurds. now, bremer was determined to change that. >> the idea is you'd remove saddam's agents from the government or people loyal to him, make room for shiites and kurds, who it was assumed would work together in some sort of collegial way. >> narrator: and bremer had a plan to remake the iraqi government. >> bremer hadn't been there very long, literally a day, and these papers were coming out of his briefcase. i was in the office, outside of the front office and began reading them, and so on. >> narrator: cpa order number one. it would end sunni domination of the government and bring in rival ethnic and religious groups, the kurds and the

shiites. >> i'm walking down the hallway and ambassador robin raphel says, "have you seen this?" she has a piece of paper. i said, "no, what is it?" she says, "de-ba'athification order." i said, "wow." so i read it real quick, there in the hall. i said, "this is too deep." >> narrator: retired general jay garner was one of the few americans who knew his way around iraq. he'd worked there before. >> he was very, very, very angry. and jay's very personable. his head was down. he was walking fast-paced all over. i could tell he was very upset about it. >> i walked down, and the cia guy, a great guy, was coming across the hall, and i said, "hey, charlie, have you read the de-ba'athification?" and he said, "yeah, that's why i'm here." i said, "well, let's go in and talk to the ambassador." >> narrator: garner was worried that bremer seemed not to understand how things worked in iraq. >> so we went in and we talked to ambassador bremer for a few minutes. and i said, "you know, this is too deep." i said, "give charlie and i

about 45 minutes to an hour. let us digest this thing, and then let us recommend some changes to you and come back here, and we'll get on the phone with rumsfeld to see if we can't soften this a bit." >> and bremer kind of says, "look, you don't understand. i'm not asking you, i'm telling you. this is what i'm going to do. i'm not asking for your advice." and they argue a bit more. and finally, bremer says, "look, i have my orders. this is what i'm doing." >> and so i said, "well, charlie, what do you think?" and to the best of my memory, charlie said, "well, if you do this, you're going to drive 30,000 to 50,000 ba'athists underground by nightfall. and the number's closer to 50 than it is 30." >> narrator: ambassador bremer says he does not recall the conversation with general garner and the cia officer. >> he may have come in and spoken to me at great length about it. i just don't remember it, honestly don't remember it. >> you don't remember these guys coming in... >> doesn't mean it didn't happen. >> ...and saying "this is 30,000 to 50,000 people, and my god, what are you doing?" >> i just... you know, i was

working 20 hours a day in that period, as well. this wasn't the only thing on my list of things to do the first five days i was there. i had a lot of other things to do. >> but this is a big one, right? >> there were a lot of big things that first five days. there were a lot of big things the first 48 hours. so i don't remember every meeting. i don't say it didn't happen. i knew there were concerns. i knew the agency made the assessment that there were about 20,000 people to be thrown out of work. and i judged in the end that that was a risk we were worth... we were willing to take. and those who were on high before, in particular the ba'athists, who used their power to repress the iraqi people, will be removed from office. >> i think, frankly, there wasn't a single person in the cpa who understood what order number one meant. it created a climate where people could be expelled as university teachers or grade school teachers, not simply people who had some kind of tie to the senior structure.

>> two reasons we wanted to keep the ba'athist party intact. one, the only folks who have experience running the government, so we needed to keep them. number two, the sunnis need to have a voice. and if you don't give people a voice, they have relatively few options. and what the middle eastern history and middle eastern... what it tells you is their next option is violence. >> narrator: with the de-ba'athification order, bremer made a decisive statement. in doing so, he gave the cpa staff, the military and the iraqis the first indication of who he was. >> tough, could get things done. anybody who was henry kissinger's right-hand man had to have a certain amount of steel in his personality. >> narrator: and then seven days later, another decisive and controversial announcement. cpa order number two: the decision to dissolve the iraqi military. >> i think the decision not to recall saddam's army, from a political point of view, is the single most important correct

decision that we made in the 14 months we were there. >> narrator: it was a decision that had been quietly authorized by the civilian leadership at the pentagon, in spite of the fact that just nine days before the war began, the president had agreed to keep the iraqi army. >> the briefing recommended that the regular iraqi army be maintained as an institution because we believed that it would be dangerous to put 300,000 men on the street with guns, without jobs. >> narrator: the u.s. commanders, desperate for boots on the ground, had been counting on a pacified iraqi army to do the grunt work. >> we actually had people negotiating with iraqis to bring them back, and there were a lot of iraqis saying, "okay, we can bring back units." >> they were clearly anticipating, at least as late as 9 may, of having available

iraqi forces for us to use in a reconstruction effort. >> narrator: cpa order number two went into effect. >> now you have a couple hundred thousand people who are armed because they took their weapons home with them, who know how to use the weapons, who have no future and have a reason to be angry at you. >> who knows how many folks who got disgruntled and went to the other side? i will tell you this: 72 hours after the decision was made, the first major attack from the airport road took place. and that two of our military police were killed. and it's been downhill from there. >> in iraq, it's been another violent day. two car bombs... >> there are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. my answer is, bring 'em on.

we got the force necessary to deal with the security situation. >> there has been another spasm of violence in iraq... >> we were in a state of denial. >> a car bomb killed at least five iraqis in the center of baghdad... >> we were looking on these as sort of a small group of isolated diehards that we could largely ignore. >> narrator: then, a defining moment. it began with a car bombing at the jordanian embassy. >> august 2003 is when the real war for the future of iraq began. august 7, the jordanian embassy gets blown up; a few days later, the u.n. gets blown up. >> i am in ambassador bremer's front office. we get the news, and then we go into his office and... that's where things take off. >> narrator: the united nations' top envoy, sérgio de mello, had been killed. >> it was a very emotional situation for everybody involved.

>> we will leave no stone unturned to find the people who did this. >> with this new kind of attack, how can you secure this city and this country? >> just to do our best to find these people before they attack and to deal with them. and we will. >> narrator: to the experts, it was clear: america was still at war. >> i knew for absolute certain when they had the series of bombings-- the police station, the jordanian embassy, the red cross and the u.n.-- that was clearly a campaign to drive out all of the elements that could help the united states govern the country. >> narrator: in september 2003, the secretary of defense boarded a c-17 globemaster to go see iraq for himself. impatient, he kept asking all of the brass that traveled with him the same question. >> "when are you going to get this thing wrapped up?" is the phrase i heard rumsfeld use. "when are you going to get this thing wrapped up?"

>> narrator: rumsfeld also took a hard look at what paul bremer had been doing. he told bremer the defense department had decided it wanted iraq given back to the iraqis as soon as possible. >> the policy side of the pentagon was saying, "the best way to cut all of this short is simply to hand over power to some iraqis. find us some iraqis. give them authority. we'll end the occupation. we'll get out of here." >> narrator: bremer had no idea who to hand the government to. he had formed a governing council of various iraqi leaders, but had no confidence in them. >> and i told secretary wolfowitz, who was pushing this idea of early sovereignty, just handing sovereignty over, i didn't think the governing council was up to this. they couldn't organize a two-car parade. they were simply not able to make decisions in a timely fashion, or any decisions. >> narrator: bremer was given until june 2004 to form

a coalition government and wind down the american occupation. >> and basically, the new policy is three words: "we're outta here." >> narrator: but bremer's efforts to form an iraqi government were threatened that spring up in the sunni heartland. in fallujah, four american contractors were murdered. >> dragged around and hung off the bridge. two of the bodies are hung off the bridge. this creates a "we must do something" response. >> narrator: the president wanted revenge. for the first time, he reached directly into the process and ordered the marines to retaliate. >> marines understand an order. so, they shaved off their mustaches, fixed bayonets and went in and did what marines do best. >> fallujah becomes kind of an iraqi alamo. only in this case, the defenders survive.

>> americans were moving into the city. they were killing people. al jazeera was showing images of, you know, mosques on fire and civilians being injured and killed. >> the impression is portrayed that the americans are going in and wantonly killing civilians along with the insurgents. >> and it was unsustainable for the iraqi leadership, which at the time wasn't elected, to continue. >> narrator: bremer appealed to the president to stop the marines. the president pulled back. the marines were now ordered to simply surround fallujah and contain the insurgents. >> this is a double loss. the americans look indecisive. they look incompetent. they also look inhumane in the eyes of a wide number of people in the middle east.

>> narrator: but with the pullback from fallujah, bremer managed to push through an interim constitution, form a new government, and hand iraq back to the iraqis. >> sincerely, l. paul bremer, ex-administrator of the coalition provisional authority. (men chuckling) >> narrator: it was time to go home. but they were worried about surface-to-air missiles. >> so we had to devise a way to get out that didn't involve a c-130. and we had to keep, of course, all of it secret. >> narrator: for the cameras, bremer appeared to leave on this airplane. >> and we pulled up the stairs and we just sat in the c-130. we sat there for about 15 minutes while the press and everybody went away, and then we went off, out over the cargo that was in the c-130, in the back, and flew on a helicopter to another part of the airport. and instead of going out on a c-130, went out on a government plane, a smaller government plane to jordan, safely.

>> it says a lot about the security in the country by the time we did turn over sovereignty that that is the way that we had to leave. >> it was sort of an ignominious departure. it was yet another metaphor. >> narrator: bremer left behind 140,000 american troops and a war that really had just begun. >> there's been another spasm of violence in iraq... >> chaos returned with a vengeance... >> 14 young men abducted, tortured... >> it is possible that iraq could move toward civil war... >> the insurgents have stepped up their attacks since an interim iraqi government was installed late last month... >> innocent victims of car bombings, and insurgents and terrorists... >> narrator: the summer of 2004 was the height of the political season. the president was running for reelection. the insurgency was still raging. the last thing the white house wanted was any more bad news from iraq.

>> top military officer in iraq is being replaced... >> the pentagon is expected to replace... >> narrator: it was time to try a new general. rumsfeld reached into the pentagon bureaucracy for a four-star general and found george casey. >> he's a second-generation army general. his father was a general who died in vietnam. he goes out to iraq, yet he's never led troops in combat. >> here's a guy in charge of the biggest american war since vietnam, and nobody knows who he is. >> narrator: casey was ordered to minimize american casualties, to train and shift responsibility to the iraqi army asap. >> the objective is to get iraq under control at a basic level, train up iraqi security forces, turn over responsibility to the government and leave. >> narrator: the plan was to prepare iraq for elections. >> the political strategy was to stand up a representative democracy, a representative government as quickly as possible. >> narrator: that summer,

general casey put rumsfeld's plan into action. they called it the "light footprint." the american force would retreat to large bases and only engage the insurgents when absolutely necessary. >> you had war tourism: units based on big forward operating bases, fobs, going out and doing patrols from humvees, and then coming back to their base. if that's the way you're operating, you're not in the war, you're simply a war tourist. >> when you look back on that and analyze it, it's a short-war strategy. nowhere in there is a plan to defeat the insurgency. so we had no military strategy to defeat the insurgency. >> narrator: the first challenge to the light footprint strategy came from baghdad's shiite slums. as anger over the american occupation grew, the cleric

muqtada al sadr gained thousands of new followers. >> narrator: with the support of iran, sadr's shiite militia-- the mahdi army-- had taken up arms in the holy city of najaf. >> the challenge to the new coalition authority was such that it really couldn't be ignored. >> narrator: he had set up his headquarters inside the shrine of imam ali mosque, daring the americans to attack. they did. >> and i actually was with the mahdi army when this battle was going on. and the americans were kind of just dropping bombs literally right next to the shrine and just kind of wiping out the mahdi army. (explosions) (muezzin calling prayer)

>> narrator: sadr was surrounded, but the white house didn't want to risk destroying the mosque. they ordered the military to cut a deal. >> i don't think it was ever called a cease-fire or a peace agreement, but essentially it was. sadr agreed to have his militia not oppose the americans. we bought back a lot of weapons from his militia. and that part of baghdad became very peaceful. >> narrator: the payoff to sadr was substantial. the u.s. spent $1.2 million buying back some weapons and $330 million more in what were called "reconstruction funds." they hoped they had bought some peace and quiet. (explosions) >> four car bombs went off almost simultaneously this morning... >> the attacks came during the busy baghdad commute... >> narrator: now it was the

sunni insurgents who posed a threat to the upcoming elections. >> at least 35 people have been killed in a huge car bomb... >> shredded everything in their path. >> narrator: the key insurgent stronghold was familiar territory for the american military: fallujah. >> fallujah becomes a kind of sanctuary for insurgents, for radicals, for al qaeda elements in iraq. >> bomb factory after bomb factory after bomb factory. i mean, they were just making the car bombs and shipping them to baghdad. >> narrator: once again, the light footprint was set aside. casey drew up plans for a full-scale attack. >> we went into fallujah at about 10:00 p.m., and the fighting started immediately. it's pitch black outside, and we all started piling out of the troop carriers. we went in on foot, and you could see the rpgs sailing out of the city towards us. and i thought, "my god, what have we gotten into here?"

>> narrator: the battle raged for ten days. >> fallujah 2, first of all, is an extraordinary, difficult and violent battle. (gunfire and explosions) i think the most intense combat u.s. forces had seen, certainly since the vietnam war. >> much of the city was simply flattened by the attack. >> fallujah is, at that point, a victory for the united states. >> the city was basically destroyed after that. >> narrator: but casey's victory in fallujah would have wider consequences. sunni refugees spread stories about what they described as a brutal american assault. >> ultimately, if you draw out all the events that followed

fallujah, that certainly decreased the sunni arab support. and in that sense, it did help the insurgency and it did turn people to be more violently opposed to the american presence than they had been before. >> and so the insurgency began to step back up in an effort to undermine that political process and undermine the legitimacy of the new government. >> we're following reports today of two suicide bombings... >> narrator: in washington, they were telling a different story. >> i think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, i think will clearly decline. i think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency. >> the victory of freedom in iraq will strengthen a new ally. >> the rhetoric that the president was evidencing in his remarks-- he would use terms like "win," "we're going to defeat the insurgents,"

"victory"-- that all would lend itself to a military strategy whose purpose was to defeat the insurgency. we never had that as a mission in iraq. >> explosives detonating just after 7:00 a.m. this morning underneath the golden dome... >> narrator: now casey would face iraq's greatest crisis yet. in the unrest, al qaeda had gained a foothold. >> ...the country's most holy shiite religious shrines... >> a huge explosion nearly completely destroyed one of shiite islam's holiest sites... >> i think the february 22 bombing of the samarra mosque will be remembered as this war's tet. >> it's a kind of a diabolical attempt by al qaeda to stimulate a civil war and to create a conflict between the shiites and the sunnis, to making iraq essentially ungovernable and chaotic and an entity that the

americans can no longer control. >> you would have to say that the attack on the samarra mosque was an act of evil genius and very nearly brought, i would say, the whole american enterprise in iraq to the point of complete catastrophe. >> that bombing in samarra broke the floodgates. >> narrator: over the next ten days, the shiites responded. sunni mosques were attacked, imams were killed, their bodies dragged through the streets. (rapid gunfire and explosions) the shiite cleric muqtada al sadr unleashed his mahdi army. >> all bets are off. the shia begin to fight back with the sunni, and what was a one-sided insurgency becomes a two-sided civil war. (loud explosion) >> they got the overreaction that they wanted on the part of the shia militias. drive the level of violence up higher than it had ever been and

bring it to a state where it would be fractured, start to fall apart, disintegrate, the united states has to leave under those kind of conditions, and they begin to achieve their political objectives in their mind. >> narrator: in baghdad, the new iraqi government was struggling. there was a deadlock over who should be the prime minister. the bush team decided to get involved. >> the thought was that iraq needed a new prime minister, someone who would be less sectarian, more pragmatic and certainly more decisive. >> narrator: american ambassador zalmay khalilzad was frustrated with the available candidates. >> i had asked my staff, can it be that in this country of 30 million that we cannot find someone who is a unifier who can lead this country in this hour of need? >> narrator: finally, a cia

officer at the embassy had a suggestion: a relatively unknown shiite member of parliament, nouri kamal al-maliki. >> the first time i ever heard of nouri al-maliki was a phone call from zal khalilzad. and i said, "what do you know about him?" and he said, "well, we don't know much about it." "what does the intelligence community know about him?" "well, they don't know much about him either." >> narrator: when saddam was in power, maliki lived in exile in iran and syria, trying to topple the iraqi dictator. but he had no real experience in government. >> nouri kamal al-maliki was a kind of default choice. and maliki is a man who, not to be unkind, i think if you were sitting on a local school board, you'd worry about appointing him to be principal of your local high school. >> narrator: but ambassador khalilzad was desperate. he arranged a face-to-face meeting with maliki. >> during the course of the discussion, khalilzad put the

proposition to him, "have you ever thought about running for prime minister?" >> narrator: maliki seemed surprised. >> he physically changed when i said that and he said, "would you not object to me or do you not object to me?" i said, "it's not my place to object." >> narrator: by may of 2006, the americans had their man. nouri al-maliki was elected the new prime minister of iraq. >> nouri al-maliki was so unknown to so many people in the bush white house that they weren't even using his right first name. he finally actually had to correct them and tell them that they weren't using the right name. and i think it tells you about how little they understood about him when he first came to power. they were so happy to have somebody. >> narrator: maliki was so inexperienced, the president himself scheduled frequent video conferences in order to school the new prime minister in the art of politics. >> but the president wanted to help him be a leader, to be

a... what you do, what don't you do. >> the idea being to kind of mentor him, to sort of bring him along. this is bush teaching maliki politics. >> democrats took control of the house for the first time in 12 years. >> narrator: that fall, president bush was learning a political lesson of his own. >> democrats will have the upper hand in the new congress... >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. >> narrator: congressional republicans suffered an historic defeat in the november midterm elections. >> say, why all the glum faces? look, this was a close election. if you look at race by race, it was close. the cumulative effect, however, was not too close. it was a thumpin'. >> you have the midterm elections. and the u.s. public is saying to president bush, "this is not working for us. we are losing confidence." >> narrator: it was time to clean house. >> after a series of thoughtful conversations, secretary

rumsfeld and i agreed that the timing is right for new leadership at the pentagon. >> it becomes, i think, a very attractive option to say, "look, this is rumsfeld's war, not bush's war. time for a change." >> narrator: and now the president was determined to find a new strategy for iraq. >> finally, only when things were just as bad as they could be, when his presidency was on the line, when the country was completely in rebellion against him, in effect, does he finally say, "okay, i have to step in here and decide what i think is the right strategy." >> narrator: he went looking for fresh ideas and honest assessments. he was offered one by retired general jack keane. >> i got called by the white house to come see the president and to give him my views, with others, in terms of the way ahead in iraq. >> narrator: general keane advocated a plan he called "the surge." >> i told him that we were in a crisis, that time was running out, and i said the only thing that can work is to bring the

level of violence down. the way to do that is to secure the population and we don't have enough forces to do it. we have to surge forces to do it. >> narrator: it would be a complete reversal of general casey's "light footprint." >> most of his advisors, as i understand it, said, "don't do it. "it won't work, and it will cost us a tremendous amount in blood and treasure." he saw it as our last best hope and went with it. >> narrator: on january 10, 2007, bush announced the surge. >> good evening. i have committed more than 20,000 additional american troops to iraq. >> that decision at a minimum guaranteed that his presidency would not end with a defeat in history's eyes, that by committing to the surge he was certain to at least win a stalemate. >> narrator: to implement the surge, the president replaced general casey with an unlikely choice: david petraeus.

>> perhaps it was a sign of how desperate the times were that, you know, i got the nod. i don't know. >> david petraeus is an interesting figure. an intellectual, has a ph.d. from princeton, enjoys talking to politicians and journalists, and in the army, that's kind of three strikes. you know, princeton intellectual, likes washington, likes journalists-- you're out, fella. >> narrator: petraeus was a counterinsurgency expert. he knew what would have to happen. >> i said, "get ready, because it is going to get harder before it gets easier. we are going to take away from al qaeda, sunni insurgents on one hand and then shia militia extremists on the other, the areas in which they operate. we are going to fight them." >> narrator: and petraeus was blunt with the president. >> and the president says, "you know, this is really important. you know, we're doubling down here." and petraeus corrects him and says, "we're not doubling down.

this is all in." he recognizes this is it. if this goes bad, that's the end of the war. and it's not going to be good for america. >> thousands of extra troops, both iraqi and american, will try to slow down the killing amongst sunni arabs... >> the surge begins, but the president stands increasingly alone... >> narrator: that spring, general petraeus and almost 30,000 new troops initiated the surge. >> the white house is calling its iraq plan the "new way forward"... >> narrator: the job was to separate sunnis and shiites. that meant fierce engagements with sunni insurgents and with shiite militia groups. >> when you take the fight to the adversary, by definition casualties are going to go up. and casualties went up. >> narrator: door to door, street by street, the american troops fought to seize control. >> but what they often overlook is just how violent the surge was.

because the americans are dropping lots of bombs and using artillery, and all... just about every weapons system you could imagine to try to reclaim lost ground. >> narrator: petraeus's troops often found themselves in bloody firefights with heavily armed insurgents. >> spring 2007 was very difficult in iraq. it was a scary time. >> and it was very, very tough. and it continued to go up and american casualties continued to go up to the may, june time frame. (loud explosion) (shouting) >> narrator: ambassador ryan crocker worked closely with petraeus during those rough first months. >> early months of the surge were pretty horrible. we were losing... hundreds of troopers, and neither dave nor i could say it was going to succeed in the spring of '07. june was our worst month.

we lost more than 120 americans in combat. >> narrator: as the death toll grew, the political pressure intensified. some of the president's men blamed nouri al-maliki. >> there's a real frustration with maliki inside the bush government. he's just not somebody who is easy to do business with. and they're not happy with him. and so, in fact, when opposition to maliki develops inside the iraqi government, there's a real school of thought inside washington saying, "okay, fine. let him go." >> narrator: one of the first to raise concerns about maliki was national security advisor stephen hadley. >> there was a sectarian agenda that was being carried out on the ground. >> narrator: the previous fall, hadley had authored a memo warning that maliki's government was becoming increasingly sectarian. "reports of nondelivery of services to sunni areas... removal of iraq's most effective commanders on a sectarian basis

and efforts to ensure shia majorities in all ministries... all suggest a campaign to consolidate shia power in baghdad." >> i tried to frame the issue for the president, knowing that this was a judgment that the president was going to have to make himself. >> narrator: and now, on a secure video conference, both general petraeus and ambassador crocker gave up on the president's man. >> there was a moment when dave petraeus and i, because we were in the smoke and the dust every single damn day, had had it with maliki. we said, "boss, we got to have a change here." >> narrator: but bush had taken a liking to maliki. he insisted he would not turn his back on the prime minister. >> bush really believes in his gut instinct toward other leaders. he really believes that international affairs is driven at least partly by how heads of

state get along and whether they can trust each other. and he thinks he's gotten a read on maliki at this point. >> the president effectively said, "you know, guys, i know you're under a lot of pressure, but just go sit under a tree until that notion passes from your minds. we are going to make it work with maliki. there is no other alternative." >> for the third month, americans have lost more than 100 soldiers... >> deadliest month this year for u.s. troops in iraq... >> narrator: as the news from the battlefield got worse, petraeus upped the ante. >> that number has just gone up and up and up... >> narrator: he decided to try to drive a wedge between the foreign al qaeda fighters and the sunni tribes that had been supporting them. >> they'd gotten tired of al qaeda. al qaeda had been abusive. it had been blowing sunni arabs up and sunni mosques up, in addition to shia arabs and mosques. and so they were keen to get these individuals out of their

areas. >> narrator: petraeus made a bold move. >> the biggest change petraeus makes, and the biggest gamble he takes, is he puts the sunni insurgency on the american payroll. >> narrator: in one clandestine meeting after another, millions were handed over to former sunni insurgents. >> i'm giving him 10,905,000. >> narrator: petraeus called his sunni paramilitary group the "sons of iraq." >> four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, seven-thousand. ten, 20, 30, 40-thousand. >> narrator: in exchange for fighting al qaeda, petraeus also promised the sunnis a role in the iraqi government. but inside petraeus's war council, it was not a popular move. >> our own commanders had concerns about this. i had commanders come to me and say, "hey, sir, we can't sit down across the table with these guys. they've got our blood on their hands." and i'd say, "yes, indeed they

do." but that's how these kinds of fights typically end. you have the reconcilables. we want to get as many as possible of them again to be part of the solution instead of a continuing part of the problem, and then that will identify the irreconcilables. >> narrator: petraeus says he initiated the payoffs on his own authority. >> i remember i asked petraeus once, "how did you get president bush to approve that?" and he said, "oh, i didn't need his approval, so i didn't ask for it." >> narrator: in the end, 103,000 sunnis joined petraeus's army. they cost $400 million. on the streets of iraq, they started to rebuild. >> violence in iraq is on a downward trend... >> the story of hope, a better future in iraq... >> the numbers are starting to change. the violence is beginning to come down. there's the green shoots of optimism in the white house. >> it's a stunning turn, like a light switch being flipped... >> maybe this is the time things are beginning to get better, they hope.

>> there has been a sharp decline in roadside bombings in iraq... >> narrator: in december of 2008, during the last month of his presidency... >> president bush made an unannounced trip to iraq sunday... >> narrator: ...george w. bush returned for a final visit. >> bush's surprise last visit to iraq as commander in chief... >> it's meant to be, in a sense, a valedictory. in effect, the surge has at least seems to have changed things, turned things around. >> the reasons for that trip are, of course, closure. i mean, how could the president who has started the war in iraq, how could he leave office without going back to iraq? >> narrator: there was a meeting with his friend nouri al-maliki. together, they signed an agreement that would keep american troops in iraq through at least 2011. >> the policy was that we want to build a long-term partnership with iraq, and that in the

realm of security, some level of security presence was envisaged. >> what he's done is sort of set the pace of the war for his successor. his successor will come in and have this agreement already signed with the iraqis, dictating how the next three years will go. and bush has basically guaranteed that his successor will keep troops there, at least on some level, well into the next term. >> narrator: but then, as bush celebrated the agreement... (angry shouting) >> narrator: the shoes had come from an iraqi reporter angry about the deaths of at least 100,000 iraqi civilians in the years since bush's decision to invade. >> president bush is left sort of humiliated, i think, in front of the world. >> maliki is stricken.

i mean, you can see it on his face; humiliated, angered. >> bush, i think, found this a rather depressing end to what had been a pretty depressing experience in iraq. he gets back on the plane, his staff notices that he's kind of low, he's just kind of... the wind has been taken out of his sails. so i think it was kind of a deflating moment for him. >> president barack obama has inherited two wars... >> ...that he was inheriting what was left by the bush administration... >> ...obama has obviously been dealing with a full plate of foreign policy issues... >> narrator: on january 20, 2009, the war in iraq was now barack obama's. >> ...obama will need all the magic he can muster to solve the huge problems he's inherited... >> to the extent that the president came to office with a new approach, it was he really didn't like this war. >> the first step toward his campaign promise to end the iraq war...

>> narrator: the iraq war was nearing its sixth year. the country was weary. >> obama had campaigned on the iraq issue as a candidate. and he had a plan: the idea was that american forces would leave iraq on a kind of a regular schedule, and then we'd hand over to the iraqis. >> narrator: during the campaign, obama had been warned not to leave iraq too quickly. >> dave petraeus and i refused to talk about timelines. we talked about what needed to be done and the need to maintain strategic patience and commitment until those things were done. to set an arbitrary timeline is just telling the enemy how long he has to wait, and that can be very dangerous, and that is the argument we made. >> the president of the united states... >> narrator: at the end of his first month in office, before thousands of marines at camp lejeune, north carolina, president obama told americans what he intended to do about

that campaign promise. >> i have come to speak to you about how the war in iraq will end. the situation in iraq has improved. violence has been reduced substantially from the horrific sectarian killing of 2006 and 2007. >> narrator: he rejected petraeus's and crocker's advice not to publicly announce a timetable. >> i intend to remove all u.s. troops from iraq by the end of 2011. (applause) we will complete this transition to iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned. semper fi! hoo-rah! >> narrator: he had said all he was going to say about his policy on iraq.

>> the president decided he wanted this behind us. he didn't want to think about it. he didn't want to talk about it. he didn't want to develop any resources to it. he wanted to normalize iraq when it's a country that's not normal. he simply wanted to put iraq behind us. >> the timetable for withdrawal from iraq is nearing month by month... >> the u.s. military in iraq has been scheduled to leave iraq... >> there's still about 46,000 combat troops inside iraq... >> u.s. troops must leave that country... >> narrator: by the spring of 2011, a deadline was looming in iraq. the president had promised all american forces would be out of iraq by december. but at the pentagon, they wanted to keep a residual force on the ground. >> instead of the 50,000 who are there now, they'd like to keep 20,000 to 24,000 troops in iraq. that arrives at the white house to expressions of great shock.

>> narrator: in a series of tough meetings in the situation room, the president pushed back. >> they force the pentagon to go back, to redo the numbers, they come back with the 10,000 troop option. eventually they whittle that down to 5,000 troops. >> narrator: even that small number would require a new agreement with iraq. over video conference, obama and maliki negotiated in earnest for the first time. >> when he opened the talks, president obama made a demand that the bush administration had not made for keeping american troops in iraq. >> narrator: obama insisted maliki convince the iraqi parliament to bestow legal immunity to the american troops. >> it wasn't sufficient merely to have an agreement that conferred legal immunities on these troops. this agreement had to be formally approved by the iraqi parliament. >> narrator: but delivering the dysfunctional parliament's approval would be difficult

given iranian influence and sunni opposition. >> when maliki in effect said, "this is a big roadblock," and washington said, "well, we can't do it unless you send this to parliament." i think that both sides actually were more or less happy to let it fall aside and say, "fine." >> nobody really wanted it, neither the americans nor maliki. the americans were pretty sick of iraq at the time. and frankly, i think the iraqis were pretty sick of the americans. >> narrator: the negotiations had failed. still, the president declared victory in iraq. >> all the way! everything that american troops have done in iraq, all the fighting, all the dying, all of it has led to this moment of success. >> the last 6,000 u.s. forces in iraq... >> narrator: after nearly nine years, 4,000 americans killed, more than 30,000 wounded and an estimated cost of

$2 trillion, the last u.s. troops left iraq. the iraqis were on their own. >> next time... >> this is the al qaeda that osama bin laden only dreamed of. >> the story continues. >> the intelligence continued to point to what could happen. >> the view was, this is iraq's problem. let them deal with it. >> the growth of isis was noted, and the deterioration of the iraqi forces was missed. >> if you threaten america, you will find no safe haven. >> "the rise of isis," next te frontline. >> go to pbs.org/frontline for our extended interviews with general david petraeus, ambassador ryan crocker, general jack keane and others. a closer look at the key turning points of the war in iraq and its aftermath.

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have you ever noticed how on knowing the exact time?are i mean, we take time for granted now, but just 150 years ago, it was all very different. [ ♪ ] back then, america had hundreds of towns, each using its own different local time. and 50 railroad companies, each with its own time. it was a total nightmare trying to take a train around the country. i mean, you'd have to be a math major to figure out what time it is. and you could forget about ever owning a watch unless you were incredibly wealthy. back in the mid-1800s, hand-crafted luxury watches were the only kind on the market. so who fixed these problems? well, it was a railway clerk and a cobbler's son.