Readying Bush's Wars for the New President

By Mark Thompson / Washington
Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008
Time

He needs to help his new boss shift forces to Afghanistan. Mike Kemp / Getty

Next to a non-denominational prayer room up in the Pentagon's attic, the ways and means of Barack Obama's foreign policy are quietly taking shape. There, in a decidedly unglamorous and narrow office that was once a hallway, sits the Chairman's New Administration Transition Team (CNATT), where a dozen midlevel military officers have been working to prepare briefings for the next President on America's two wars and other hot spots overseas.

There's an intense hum in this out-of-the-way place. Murmured conversations over secure phone lines mix with keyboard clicks. Officers from all four military services are reviewing war plans, threats to national security unknown to the rest of us, and enough PowerPoint briefings to choke a presidential campaign. The CNATT is by far the most important of all the secret teams around Washington now madly churning out to-do lists for the President-elect.

The Pentagon team has for months been tracking Obama's foreign policy and military statements. It has studied his advisers and their backgrounds. The CNATT hasn't generated a written report telling Obama what he should do or even offered options for Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Instead, it will listen to what Obama has in mind, and then detail for him the corresponding risks and benefits. Obama's transition team, says Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "will be in here very quickly ... to start to come up to speed." Obama called Mullen two days after the election to say he's "looking forward" to working together.

As Mullen likes to point out, Washington has not been through a presidential transition in wartime since 1968. Now, almost 40 years after Vietnam, Obama is inheriting not just one war, but two. The importance Mullen places on getting the handoff right can be seen in the fact that he put the front office of the CNATT on the Pentagon's exclusive E-ring corridor, right next to "the tank," where the Joint Chiefs conduct secret strategy sessions on the wars.

Mullen's first challenge will be to help his new boss shift forces from Iraq to Afghanistan without jeopardizing the gains in Iraq. While U.S. commanders in Bag