Think Progress

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Igor Volsky

The War Within

In his "fourth insider account from the Bush White House," The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008, veteran journalist Bob Woodward "tracks the growing alarm in the White House in 2006, as U.S. casualties mounted during Iraq's plunge toward civil war." Based on "more than 150 interviews," including conversations with the President and classified documents, Woodward's book "reveals that the administration's efforts to develop a new Iraq strategy were crippled by dissension among the president's advisers, delayed by political calculations and undermined by a widening and sometimes bitter rift in civilian-military relations." Woodward portrays Bush as an out-of-touch commander in chief who was slow to recognize the threat posed by the growing Iraqi insurgency during the summer of 2006. Woodward reveals that, despite the Bush's public assertions that "he relies on his generals to tell him what to do," the surge strategy "came from the White House" and was strongly opposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General George W. Casey, the Commanding General in Iraq from 2004 to 2007. The surge itself, Woodward notes, was not solely responsible for the lessening of violence in Iraq. "At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge," Woodward writes.

DETACHED PRESIDENT: As violence escalated in Iraq throughout 2006, Bush seemed detached from the reality on the ground. In a recent interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, Woodward reported that Bush could not understand why the Iraqis were seemingly unappreciative of "what we've done to them." "His beacon is liberation. He thinks we've done this magnificent thing for them. I think he still holds to that position," Woodward said. In 2006, Casey "concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself" who viewed the war in conventional terms, repeatedly asking how many of the various enemies had been captured or killed." Casey "confided to a colleague that he had the impression that Bush reflected the 'radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, 'Kill the Bastards! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeeded.'" Similarly, deputy national security adviser Megan O'Sullivan and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley tried "in the summer of 2006 to get an Iraq strategy review underway" but "they encountered resistance," and "it was almost a month before the president would be fully engaged" in the process. With the 2006 midterm elections looming, the administration, Woodward writes, did not want to acknowledge that "Iraq had gotten so bad that they were considering a new approach. That would play into the hands of critics and antiwar Democrats." Finally, "in mid-October, after months of inaction, Hadley told the president, 'I want to start an informal internal review'...'Do it,' Bush said."

MILITARY OPPOSED THE SURGE: "While the violence in Iraq skyrocketed to unnerving levels, a second front in the war raged at home, fought at the highest levels of the White House, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department," Woodward writes. Indeed, "the idea of five brigades came from the White House, not from anybody except the White House." The Joint Chiefs of Staff "all but dismissed the surge option, worried that the armed forces were already stretched to the breaking point." Like Casey, the JCS "favored a renewal effort to train and build up the Iraqi security forces so that U.S. troops could begin to leave." By November 2006, the chiefs' frustrations burst into the open" after "news coverage that retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff had briefed the president...about a new strategy being proposed by the American Enterprise Institute." "When does the AEI start trumping the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff," Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief, asked during one meeting. Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, warned that "the all-volunteer force might break under the strain of extended and repeated deployments" and "several of the chiefs noted that the five brigades were effectively the strategic reserve of the U.S. military, the forces on hand in case of flare-ups elsewhere in the world." But Bush decided that the surge would "keep a lid on" violence and  "also help here at home, since for many the measure of success is reduction in violence." For all his certainty, however, the president "did not know what his principal military adviser, Gen. Pace had recommended." During an interview with Woodward, Bush said, "Okay, I don't know this. I'm not in these meetings, you'll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do."  

SURGE NOT FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR DECREASE IN VIOLENCE: Despite conventional wisdom that "the surge had worked...the full story was more complicated." According to Woodward, the U.S. military's reliance on "a series of top-secret operations...had a far-reaching effect on the violence and were very possibly the biggest factor in reducing it." These covert activities enabled  the military "to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or the so-called special groups." Defense officials say that the military relied on "fusion cells" or "small, hybrid teams of special forces and intelligence officers" to capture "hundreds of suspected terrorists and their supporters in recent months" The book also reveals that U.S. intelligence closely tracked Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. "There is significant surveillance of Maliki. And as one source told me, 'We know everything he says.' And others I've talked to about that say, 'You can't literally know everything.' But we know a great deal," Woodward said in the 60 Minutes interview. Woodward also confirms that "the so-called Anbar Awakenings, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces," and Moqtada al-Sadr's decision "to suspend operations" of his powerful Mahdi Army also contributed to the lessening of violence.

MSNBC is removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, "bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral." David Gregory will take over the anchor seat for events such as this fall's presidential and vice presidential debates and election night.

A CQ analysis finds that this year, federal lawmakers in both parties "have opposed the president far more often than at any other time since he's been in the White House, and the erosion in support is dramatic among Republicans." GOP House members, for example, supported Bush 94 percent of the time in 2001 and 2003, but just 63 percent in 2008.

In a move that will spare conservatives from a politically difficult vote before the November elections, "congressional Democrats have scrapped plans for another vote on expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program." Democrats concluded "that President Bush would not sign their legislation and that they could not override his likely veto." Bush has already twice vetoed similar legislation.

"Cellphone pictures taken in the aftermath of a U.S. military operation in Afghanistan are providing new evidence that a large number of civilians may have been mistakenly killed by American troops last month," according to NATO officials. The images show at least 11 dead children; the U.S. military has insisted that only five to seven civilian were killed.

Gen. David Petraeus will hand over the command of U.S.-led forces in Iraq to Gen. Raymond Odierno on September 16. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes that "questions linger, as they did not for Petraeus, about how ready Odierno is for the strategic challenges of Iraq."

Libyan leader and former terrorist sponsor Moammar Gadhafi dined with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week, completing "a remarkable five-year rehabilitation." Gadhafi presented Rice with several gifts, including "a locket with an engraved likeness of himself inside."

And finally: The AP reports, "Should this world ever cease to exist, Stephen Colbert will live on. The comedian's DNA will be digitized and sent to the International Space Station." Essentially, Colbert will be preserved so that "aliens can clone him." Colbert said that this move brings him one step closer to his "lifelong dream of being the baby at the end of 2001," referring to the science fiction film, "2001: A Space Odyssey."

The Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) has partnered with the three leading associations of historians to send letters urging Congress to strengthen the Presidential Records Act

THINK PROGRESS: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on "drill, drill, drill": It's like someone chanting "IBM Selectric typewriters" during the IT revolution.

WONK ROOM: Denver video: Pollution CEOs versus youth activist Jessy Tolkan.

YGLESIAS: Nationalism in Asia.

COUNTY FAIR: Washington Post reporter Jonathan Weisman fails to understand history.

OHIO: Nearly 600,000 residents may be subject to voter "caging" in elections this fall.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: "New Hampshire could be dealing with up to a $495 million budget hole in three years."

VIRGINIA: County in Virginia issues "erroneous," "chilling" press release on college voters.

"I don't think that you have the time to surge and generate enough forces for this thing to continue to go."
-- Army Chief of Staff Pete Schoomaker to President Bush, 2006

VERSUS

"Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work."
-- President Bush, 1/10/07

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