Perhaps the best insight into what I was thinking as we entered 2005 can be gained from the first several paragraphs of an assessment I wrote to my boss, General Abizaid, on January 5, laying out my plans for 2005. I began that with the famous passage from T.E. Lawrence that provided advice on dealing with Arabs: “Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. It was a mindset that I had concluded we would need to instill in coalition forces if we were to be successful in Iraq. I told
General Abizaid

On June 28, as I was about to board a plane to the Middle East having been confirmed by the Senate 2 days prior, Ambassador Negroponte called to tell me that sovereignty had been passed to the Iraqis earlier that day. While he intended to head into Iraq later that day, I had planned stops at USCENTCOM forward headquarters in Qatar and at my supporting Army headquarters in Kuwait, Third Army, en route to Iraq. Despite the early transfer of sovereignty, I decided to stick with my travel plan as insights from my higher and supporting headquarters in theater would be important in framing my understanding of the mission. My change of command remained scheduled for July 1.

I did not go to work on May 17, 2004, thinking I would be the commander of Multi-National Force–Iraq in 45 days. I knew that the Secretary of Defense was looking to increase the new MNF-I headquarters from a three-star to a four-star command to handle the wide range of strategic issues that a corps’s headquarters is not equipped to deal with. But as the Army vice chief of staff, I was decisively involved in the multiyear reorganization of the Army. I had been asked by my boss, Army Chief of Staff Pete Schoomaker, to see that through.