Life Under Fire

By Romesh Ratnesar with Simon Robinson in Baghdad

Have we got anyone in this country that's not us?" That's the question vexing Paul Bremer--veteran American diplomat, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and current occupant of the world's toughest job--as he convenes a morning meeting inside the dusty, sprawling Baghdad palace that serves as his office and home. As is usually the case, Bremer has a crisis on his hands. An explosion at a mosque in the city of Fallujah last week killed 10 Iraqis, including the mosque's imam. U.S. soldiers who surveyed the scene say the blast was probably caused by explosives stored inside the building, but locals in Fallujah, a hotbed of anti-American militancy, are accusing the U.S. of bombing the mosque by helicopter or plane. "I'd like to get a third party in there to take a look," Bremer says. "It's one thing to say we didn't do it but quite another to get someone else to say it happened on the ground."

It's a sensible idea, with one small problem: finding a third party. An aide suggests dispatching troops from Singapore deployed in Iraq to the site, but they don't have bomb-damage-assessment experience. Someone else brings up the U.N.'s antimine unit. "The Mozambicans," Bremer ventures, referring to a group of mine-clearing specialists from Mozambique. "Are they working for us?" The idea is discussed for a few more minutes before Bremer moves on. Like so many problems in the new Iraq, this is one the U.S., for the moment, has little choice but to leave unresolved.

Three months after the fall of Baghdad, a grim fact of life for Bremer as well as his 600-member civilian staff and the 146,000 American soldiers is that they are still struggling to police Iraq's streets, restore electricity, fix the economy, rebuild schools, monitor local elections and nudge the country toward democracy--all while waging a counterinsurgency campaign against an increasingly brazen assortment of militants who have killed more than 30 U.S. and British soldiers in the past two months. It's not going well. In Baghdad recent attacks on infrastructure targets left the power and water systems in worse shape than they were in a month ago; it is a testament to the slowness of the U.S.'s rebuilding efforts so far that the traffic lights have just begun to come back on. The enthusiasm Iraqis initially showed the occupiers has largely expired, replaced by disappointment and a growing belief that everyday life was better under Saddam Hussein. "At least we had power and security," says Uday Abdul al-Wahab, 30, a shop owner in Baghdad. "Democracy is not feeding us."

The problems in Iraq are at least in part of America's own making, the result of shoddy planning, undue optimism and lackluster leadership. Before the war, Administration hawks believed a long occupation with a massive U.S. force contingent would be unnecessary. Even today Pentagon officials say they have no plans to send more troops to Iraq, though the Administration is actively pushing its allies to send up to 30,000 more of their troops there by the end of September. For the foreseeable future, cleaning up the mess has fallen entirely to Bremer, 61, the proconsul in whom the Bush Administration has vested complete authority for getting the country running again, winning 25 million hearts and minds and eventually making Iraq safe for democracy. "We are the government of Iraq, and that's big, scary stuff," Andy Bearpark, Bremer's chief of operations, told TIME. "What we're doing is postwar reconstruction before the war's even over."

And for the American soldiers enduring the torment of a searing Iraqi summer, the war's toll continues to mount. Three more U.S. soldiers died last week, and more than 20 were wounded in attacks across Iraq. The growing intensity of the fighting was highlighted around the town of Balad, 40 miles north of Baghdad, where militants wounded 17 soldiers in an attack on a U.S. base. Hours later a separate group of 50 resistance fighters tried to ambush a U.S. convoy, resulting in an eight-hour fire fight that left 11 Iraqis dead. Most attacks on U.S. soldiers are not even reported by the Pentagon, since military officials usually announce only those clashes in which Americans are killed or injured. "We're still at war," said Lieut. General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. As if to drive the point home, al-Jazeera broadcast an audiotape purported to have been made by Saddam, saying he is in Iraq and promising "days of hardship and trouble for the infidel invaders." Iraqis seen to be cooperating with Americans are also under fire. In the worst such attack, a bomb exploded at a graduation ceremony for new Iraqi police in Ramadi, killing seven and injuring more than 70.

The U.S. is trying to dispel fears that having removed Saddam's regime, U.S. forces are embroiled in a guerrilla war. "I guess the reason I don't use the phrase guerrilla war is because there isn't one," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. The varying groups of resisters "are all slightly different in why they're there and what they're doing." For weeks U.S. commanders have maintained that some of the violence against their forces has been coordinated by Baath Party members, Republican Guard commanders and Fedayeen Saddam operatives who survived the allied push through southern Iraq. U.S. forces conducted Operation Sidewinder last week, the latest in a series of offensives aimed at rooting out enemy fighters. American officials say the raids netted at least 20 "high value" targets, but few U.S. commanders believe it has subdued the resistance. So testy is the White House about the violence in Iraq that President Bush last week was reduced to school-yard posturing. "There are some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on," he said, an outburst that seemed particularly ill-advised the following day, when 20 soldiers were wounded in attacks across Iraq.

Despite the President's bluster, Bush Administration officials are privately worried that U.S. forces are caught in a dangerous loop. The persistence of attacks has forced the U.S. to remain on a combat footing, which has diverted attention and resources away from the reconstruction effort. The heavy military footprint, in turn, has soured Iraqi opinion and created a more hospitable climate for anti-American agitators. "Going out on raids, busting up things and shooting people tend not to win you many friends," says a top foreign-policy aide to the first President Bush and adviser to the current White House. "Which means more guys are going to get shot at. We've got to break out of that cycle."

No one would welcome a change more than Bremer. Since taking control of the U.S.'s postwar operation in early May, Bremer has earned near unanimous backing inside the Administration, thanks to his toughness, pragmatism and devotion to the job. Bremer has become so attached to the country he runs that he speaks of it in the first-person plural. "We are eventually going to be a rich country," he told reporters last week. "We've got oil, we've got water, we've got fertile land, we've got wonderful people." But few Iraqis have seen tangible results, in part because Bremer can't do his work while the shooting persists. Bremer toured the Iraq National Museum last week in an effort to show the progress made since the chaotic days of early April, when the facility was looted. As beaming museum officials showed Bremer a collection of ancient gold and jewelry--"Which one can I take home for my wife?" Bremer cracked--a member of his security detail interrupted, informing him of reports of four grenade attacks near Bremer's palace headquarters. Minutes later Bremer climbed into a waiting SUV and headed back to the office, managing a few hurried handshakes as he left. Later that day a U.S. soldier was shot and killed while guarding the museum.

In an interview with TIME last week, Bremer, dressed in an ensemble befitting a Washington power broker in a war zone--pinstripe suit, red tie, white pocket square, combat boots--was keen to emphasize the coalition's successes but seemed all too aware of growing Iraqi impatience. "Saddam took 35 years to run the place down, and it's not going to take 35 days to fix it. People need to be patient. And I know that's hard when the temperature's 124DEG and the electricity goes off. But that's the message, and that's the only message there is."

In the next few weeks Bremer hopes to quiet grumbling over the U.S.'s delay in putting an Iraqi face on the occupation. He plans to announce the appointment of a 35-member Iraqi advisory council that he says will have control over some former government ministries--the first small step toward handing authority over to a new Iraqi government, which would enable the U.S. to withdraw its troops from the country. Bremer says he hopes Iraqis will vote for a new national government sometime next year. "This place can blossom, as it did in the 1950s," he says. "It's a proud country with really good people. And they can succeed." But after the bunglings of the occupation's first three months, most U.S. officials know better than to make rosy predictions. "We'll get it right eventually," says a Pentagon official, "hopefully before we f___ it up completely."

Though U.S. officials blame Saddam for creating the mess they have inherited, Washington is in fact digging itself out of a self-imposed hole. Military officers and officials involved in planning the governing of postwar Iraq say the Administration never devised a strategy for running the country and ignored warnings about some of the maladies--such as widespread looting and collapse of the country's infrastructure--that continue to plague the nation-building effort. "The war plan was there in spades," says Ron Adams, who served as deputy to Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who briefly preceded Bremer as the U.S. governor in Iraq. "But we didn't see much postconflict stuff in writing until we got into Kuwait" on March 17, two days before the war began. Adams says that as far back as January, when Garner first convened his staff, a sense of foreboding hung over the enterprise. "Right from the beginning, we said, 'Holy mackerel, we don't have enough time to do this,'" Adams says. "We were still building the team about the time we deployed."

Complicating the Garner team's planning was the Pentagon's war plan, which Army officers say called for an invasion force too small to maintain security and take on massive rebuilding tasks after victory. "There was a lot of pressure from the Secretary of Defense to keep the force small to show we could win the war that way," an Army officer says. And so the U.S. was left with a relatively light combat force short on the skills and tools needed to control the chaos that seized the country after the fall of Baghdad. Garner told TIME that while collateral damage from U.S. bombing was less severe than anticipated, looting canceled out that advantage. "The Iraqis pull the wiring out, then the plumbing, then they set it on fire, so there is nothing left but the hulk of a building that is probably structurally unsound." The trashing of former government buildings was so extensive that 17 of the 21 ministry buildings the U.S. had planned to reopen were rendered unusable by the time occupation authorities got to them.

While Baghdad burned, American officials in Iraq squabbled over familiar Washington commodities: turf and money. Adams says members of Garner's team wanted to pay former Iraqi soldiers to perform cleanup and security tasks and were stunned when Bremer told them that was not going to happen (a decision he reversed, in part, after a month of turmoil). Garner's 200-member Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq found itself unable to exert authority over the activities of the 146,000 soldiers in Iraq, let alone Iraqi civilians. And part of the problem was Garner himself, who had earned plaudits for overseeing humanitarian efforts in northern Iraq after the first Gulf War but who, according to some Administration officials, lacked the executive savvy needed for the task of restoring order and stitching Iraq back together. Though a favorite of Rumsfeld's, Garner had few other patrons at the White House. By early May, Administration officials say, the White House decided to move Garner out and install a new proconsul to run the whole postwar operation. "The White House seemed to decide the Garner thing hadn't worked," says a State Department official. "They wanted a decision maker who could transcend the discussion in Washington."

And so the call went out to Bremer, a former ambassador to the Netherlands and Reagan Administration official with deep ties to the Republican foreign-policy establishment. "It's a very, very tough assignment, and I don't know anyone who could do it better," says Henry Kissinger, for whose international consulting firm Bremer worked after leaving government in 1989. "He's acceptable to both the State and Defense departments because he has no agenda." It helps, too, that he worked for the first President Bush and shares W.'s pedigree and passions: both men attended Yale as undergraduates and received MBAs from Harvard, and both are avid runners. In Baghdad, Bremer beats the heat by jogging around the palace compound at 5:30 a.m. three or four times a week.

Bremer, who is called Jerry--after his patron saint, Jerome--keeps a demanding schedule, rising before dawn and going to bed around 11 p.m. in an air-conditioned trailer on the grounds of the palace. His morning runs are often followed by an Arabic lesson in his office and then an 8 a.m. meeting with his top aides, at which he ticks off outstanding items and asks for a 30-second update from each staff member. He asks advisers to tell him what they have done and what they're going to do next and often cuts them off before they finish their sentences. "A lot of people come in here with problems," he says. "The people I really like are the ones who come in here with solutions." Although the Americans are frequently criticized for spending too much time in the garrisoned palace compound, Bremer insists he gets out "every day. I've traveled all over this country."

In public Bremer has adopted an almost presidential air, moving about in motorcades flanked by Secret Service agents, wearing a suit and tie despite the heat, positioning himself behind a podium at press conferences. "Everything Jerry Bremer's done has been to give the impression that he's in charge, that someone is running things," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "And after the disorder, that's exactly what you need." On Bremer's desk sits a plaque that reads SUCCESS HAS A THOUSAND FATHERS.

Bremer's biggest asset is his direct line to the people who matter in Washington. He says he speaks to Bush every 10 days and to Rumsfeld several times a week. He phones in to the White House's weekly national security meeting. Unlike Garner, whom some U.S. officials criticize for failing to engage the Army commanders, Bremer works closely with Lieut. General Sanchez to determine how the military deploys its resources. Since Bremer's arrival, U.S. troops have become more visible peacekeepers: conducting foot patrols, guarding schools, building soccer fields, cleaning streets. "What is unusual is that Lieut. General Sanchez has been directed by the President to support my efforts," Bremer says. "I cannot order Sanchez to move his troops to a certain area. But I can indicate commander's intent"--which means that although he doesn't issue orders, he does make clear to the military what he wants.

Some combat-hardened soldiers in Iraq have bristled at having to perform workaday rebuilding tasks, but for now they are needed in those roles. "This job takes someone who can stand up in front of 60, 70, 80 people screaming at you," says Lieut. Colonel P.J. Dermer, a civil-affairs officer in Baghdad. "The military adds a bit of backbone. The Kumbaya part comes later." Captain James Ogletree, a Marine civil-affairs officer in Karbala, says his units are carrying out orders that come directly from Bremer's staff. "They will say, 'See how many orphanages there are in the city and what they need,'" says Ogletree. "Basically, Marines who pull triggers are going into schools and saying 'O.K., it needs this many windows?'" Bremer has asked Washington to send him 400 additional civilians for his staff, but the Administration has not found many volunteers jumping at the chance to relocate.

For all Bremer's efforts, progress has been slow. Aid groups say hospitals are running out of oxygen supplies. Oil production is at less than half its prewar capacity, and though gasoline stocks inside Iraq are closer to prewar levels, Baghdadis claim that lines for gas are longer than they used to be. Bremer says the U.S. has tried to tackle the unemployment problem by paying 1.5 million civil servants their monthly salaries, but even that has provoked discontent. The U.S. is paying salaries in 10,000-dinar ($7.40) notes, which a cartel of Baghdad money changers has refused to break. As a result, hundreds of Iraqis were forced to stand in six-hour queues last week at the few open banks willing to make change for the 10,000-dinar notes. Baghdad has suffered from recent acts of sabotage on power lines and transmission towers; some neighborhoods have gone more than a week without electricity. Bremer calls the sabotage terrorist acts being waged by members of the former regime fully aware of how "rundown the infrastructure is, which makes it very fragile and vulnerable to these types of attacks."

So can Bremer fix it? During his interview with TIME, Bremer insisted that his team had achieved "quite a lot of progress" on its three main priorities: restoring law and order, reviving the economy and moving toward the establishment of a new Iraqi government. Operations chief Bearpark says, "I've seen the systems be put in place here faster than anywhere I've worked. What we have in Iraq after 12 weeks wasn't in place in six to 12 months in Bosnia and Kosovo." Bremer says people will begin to realize the promise of a brighter future in coming months, as the U.S. oversees the drafting of a new constitution, foreign investment enters the country and oil starts pumping again. "Let's keep our eye on the vision. The vision is a much better Iraq--it's already better--but one with a freely elected government and all the rest of it: human rights and all that. An Iraq where we get a vibrant sector going, so people have jobs. It's going to take time."

What will it take to get there? Americans remain the target of blame for the country's woes, not because they are hated, but because many Iraqis are baffled that the same military machine that won the war in three weeks has proved so ineffective at running the country after it. Even Iraqis sympathetic to the Americans say Bremer and his team remain too distant from ordinary people and have yet to prove to Iraqis that the U.S. is committed to seeing the project through. Kais al-Shakrchi, 52, a TV repairman in Baghdad, believes the U.S. still possesses a reservoir of popular goodwill for removing Saddam, but it will evaporate if the U.S. fails to put its money where its might is, invest in the country's future and bring more Iraqis into the rebuilding effort. "We are millions, and we are ready to help. Ninety-nine percent want America and want to work with them," he says. "But if I am hungry, I will kill my own father, not just the Americans."

In the end, the biggest threat to the U.S. is not Saddam loyalists launching RPGs on Humvees--most commanders say they expect attacks until the day U.S. forces leave Iraq--but the possibility that everyone else will sit back and let it happen. Bremer is confident the U.S. will vanquish its opponents in Iraq. "They're going to lose," he says. "We've got very substantial strategic superiority here, and we're going to maintain, and over time we're going to get these guys under control." But merely staving off a guerrilla war will not put Iraqis back to work or rebuild the school system or make Iraq a stable country ready to run itself. That outcome will take a more substantial investment of U.S. money and manpower--a kind of Marshall Plan, costing billions of dollars and involving hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers and civilians for years to come--than the Bush Administration has so far been willing to make, out of fear that the public doesn't have the stomach for a costly, long-term occupation. It's a telling indication that when asked what he says to Iraqis frustrated with the U.S.'s rebuilding efforts, Bremer for the first time gets defensive. "What's the alternative?" he says. "That's what I'd like to say to them. What's the alternative? Do you really think you'd be better off if we pulled our troops out of here? Do you really think Iraq would be better off if we left?'" Unless the U.S. proves it has the will and determination to turn things around, Bremer may not receive the answer he expects for much longer. --With reporting by Joshua Kucera/Karbala, Lisa Beyer/New York and Massimo Calabresi, Matthew Cooper, James Carney and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by Joshua Kucera/Karbala, Lisa Beyer/New York and Massimo Calabresi, Matthew Cooper, James Carney and Mark Thompson/Washington