Cheney in Baghdad

We were in a grand room in the building that houses Maliki’s office–an opulent structure that Saddam built in the 1990s as a home away from home for the Arab leaders whose support he sought to end the U.N. sanctions against his country. Between Addington and his boss sat several lower-ranking Cheney staffers, and, by rank, he should have chosen a seat much closer to his boss. But Addington believes, as Cheney did when he served in the Ford White House, that a staff man should be anonymous. So he shuns the spotlight and avoids journalists unless, as in this case, he cannot help it.

The small press pool traveling with Cheney had been told we would be let into the room for a brief photo op–the smile-and-make-small-talk moment before an important bilateral meeting. The Iraqi press corps was being held at the door while we walked in. Cheney, a natural low-talker, was still speaking, and his voice trailed off. “The president sends his personal .  .  .”

No one could make out what he said–a problem for the wire reporters who use such statements to give currency to their stories. (Later we played fill-in-the-blank. His personal .  .  . greetings? His personal .  .  . trainer? His personal .  .  . hygiene?)

A short time later there was a noise at the back of the room. The guard blocking the door to keep the Iraqis from entering had moved aside and the crush was on. Some 15 cameramen, with cameras held high above their heads, were trying to squeeze through the narrow doorway at precisely the same time, with the Iraqi reporters pushing from behind. This mass of humanity got stuck momentarily, then burst through the opening as if propelled from a slingshot. They were still struggling for position, and making a quiet commotion, as they neared the delegation.

Two of the Iraqi cameramen had a particularly intense shoving match underway, and when the larger one finally tired of the smaller one knocking into his arm, he gave the little guy a forceful shove that knocked him off-balance and sent him into the loving arms of David Addington. The larger cameraman then lost his balance, and, for just a moment, he and his colleague were both sitting in the lap of Cheney’s much-feared chief of staff. Addington looked something like an underfed offseason shopping-mall Santa. He shook his head, chuckled, and gave a shrug of his large shoulders.

Cheney must have had a similar feeling often in his two days of meetings with Iraqi leaders, with political problems landing unexpectedly in his lap. He arrived in Baghdad planning to spend most of his time laying the groundwork for the next phase of the long-term strategic relationship between the United States and Iraq. But the Iraqis have yet to meet several of the benchmarks set by Congress last fall. Their apparent lack of urgency prompted General David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, to offer rare public criticism of Iraqi leaders last week. In an interview with the Washington Post, Petraeus said that “no one” in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation.”

So while Cheney spent some of his time on big-picture strategic issues, the slow churn of Iraqi political progress forced him to devote a considerable amount of his visit to seeking to broker compromises among Iraq’s sometimes intransigent leaders on issues ranging from a new oil law to the structure of provincial governments.

Cheney reviewed his work in an interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC News. “On the political front, I think we have bought the time for the Iraqis to come together, in terms of dealing with some of these issues. They’ve made some progress, not as much as we would like.” He acknowledged talking to “virtually all” of the Iraqi leaders he met with about the need for a new hydrocarbons law that ensured the various segments of Iraqi society would benefit from the sale of Iraqi oil. “The provincial powers legislation that has passed at one point was vetoed by Vice President Adel Mehdi,” Cheney continued. “I talked with him about that, and a number of others. They expect they’ll have that resolved shortly.”

They did. Adel Mehdi reversed his veto two days after talking about it with Cheney. The vice president’s advisers downplayed suggestions that the Iraqi decision came as a direct result of pressure. Still, an aide to Cheney had said before the trip that the vice president would press the Iraqis to reconcile their differences on provincial powers and would urge them to hold provincial elections this fall or in early 2009 at the latest.

There were, of course, symbolic aspects to Cheney’s trip, too. When the vice president visited Baghdad in May of last year, Iraq was averaging nearly 1,500 attacks a week and stories describing the “chaos” dominated the news. Back in Washington, Democrats on Capitol Hill were threatening to defund the war effort and beginning a summer-long push to begin troop withdrawals.

Attacks are down nearly 70 percent and more Iraqis have confidence in the U.S. military and their own leaders. Cheney’s visit underscored the progress. He ventured out of Baghdad’s green zone into the less militarized parts of the city and stayed overnight in Balad at Logistical Support Area Anaconda. When Cheney first visited Iraq in December 2005, Iraqi leaders were not told he was coming for fear of security leaks. This time, everyone he met with was notified in advance that the vice president was coming.

Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins).