Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (100 page)

Meeting in Baghdad with Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki, on the right; in the center is Sadi Othman, an interpreter and adviser to General David Petraeus. Chosen because he was weak, Maliki would become too strong and not particularly interested in reconciling the opposing factions in Iraq.

Comforting the mother of a grievously wounded soldier at the U.S. military hospital at Landstuhl, Germany. Her son would recover.

On a helicopter with Petraeus in Iraq. Our partnership in two wars would last four and a half years.

President Bush meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their conference room (the Tank). From the end of the table, moving clockwise from me: Steve Hadley (National Security Adviser), General George Casey (Army), General Buzz Moseley (Air Force), General Jim “Hoss” Cartwright (vice chairman), General Pace (chairman), and Admiral Mike Mullen (Navy). Not visible is General Jim Conway (Marine Corps).

With President Bush at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq, for a meeting with the Iraqi Presidential Council. From left, Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi (Shia), Prime Minister Maliki (mostly hidden), President Jalal Talabani (Kurd), and Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi (Sunni). There was no love lost among them.

Aboard a C-17 cargo plane converted into a hospital plane. Such was the skill of the doctors and nurses on board that I heard of only one patient who died en route home.

I present Marine First Lieutenant Dan Moran his Navy Commendation Medal with V for valor at a Texas A&M home football game as 85,000 fans cheer him. I had handed him his diploma in 2003 when I was president of the university—a job I loved—and next saw him in the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

With Marines during basic training. I visited all of the services’ basic training facilities to see new recruits preparing to go to war.

Visiting the plant in Charleston, South Carolina, where skilled and dedicated workers complete the assembly and equipping of mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs). They knew they were saving lives.

Watching an MRAP being loaded for airlift to Iraq.

Enlisting new recruits in my hometown of Wichita, Kansas. They volunteered to serve knowing they would go to war.

At Kansas State University in late 2007, I called for more money for the long-underfunded State Department and U.S. development programs abroad. Coming from the secretary of defense, the speech made a big splash.