Decision ‘08

It’s Woodward Time Again

Bob Woodward’s m.o. is well-known by now, and is built on access; therefore, it stands to reason that those who give him the most access are the most likely to have their view of things communicated in his numerous best-sellers. The fun for me, then, when a new Woodward book comes out is to see who was talking, and we have some early tantalizing hints:

The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.

The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.

As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.

My early guess, based on the excerpt above and the rest of the article is:

Talking - Paul Bremer, Colin Powell, Andy Card, and George Tenet

Not Talking - Rumsfeld, Rice(?), Cheney, and Bush

I find it very amusing to read the Times‘ method of obtaining the information:

The book [was] bought by a reporter for The New York Times at retail price in advance of its official release…

All right, people, who broke the embargo? Heads are gonna roll…

12 Responses to “It’s Woodward Time Again”

1 mtl Says:
September 29th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
I am a polar opposite on the ‘more troops strategy’ in regards to Iraq.

We are having difficulty in getting the Iraqis up to speed in taking over there country, and the placement of an additional 100,000 plus troops would have further weakened their resolve to address these problems, leaving security issues to the occupiers.

We are currently fighting the Iraqi belief that we are there forever, and I can’t see how more troops would alleviate this fear, actually deployment of more troops would aggravate this fear.

During peak deployment we had 500,000 troops in vietnam. Their success is debateable, but the result of Vietnam is in extroidinary conflict with the ‘Powell doctrine’. The powell doctrine is treated as if it is new, but I cannot recall a strategy involving conflicts involving large scale armies that would not favor the powell doctrine.

the belief that more troops would help seems to ignore the lessons of Vietnam. Larger troop deployments mean more clusters of targets for insurgent/guerilla warfare.

Basically the pros of more troops-
additonal firepower, and ‘localized’ security

the cons-
more targets, less Iraqi responsiblity, higher cost

If someone could make the argument that the evolution of the Iraqi govt would have proceeded quicker with a larger troop size, or that by having twice as many troops we would have less casualties than we do now, I’d love to hear it.
2 azredneck Says:
September 29th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
If we had had more military government types, rather than gung ho ranger types, after ’shock and awe’ was over, we would have had much more success. Bremer was also a disaster.
Not talking–all of the neocons. Talking–also Armitage?
3 Flopping Aces » Blog Archive » The Latest Democratic Gossip Book Says:
September 29th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
[…] Decision ‘08 Book Bush Iraq Woodward Filed in: The Iraqi War, War On Terror | No Comments » […]
4 mtl Says:
September 29th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
“shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.”

you mean when they asked for advice, the person providing the information gave them a ‘worst case’ scenario? In any circumstance I would want ALL possiblities stated. Dismissing the ‘too pessimistic’ isn’t really an indictment.

apparently they must have listened to the advice they kept the insurgency from winning…they are further away from it then wehn they started.
5 mtl Says:
September 29th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
I bet bush dismissed the advice that was too pessimistic on his tax cuts.
6 peter Says:
September 29th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
“Rumsfeld refused to comment on the book — for which he was interviewed extensively.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15063982/
7 Mark Says:
September 29th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
Well, I missed that one, then…
8 LJ Says:
September 30th, 2006 at 11:04 am
I’m reading the WaPo excerpt of the book and it looks like Cheney himself is quoted from an interview he did with Woodward. Apparently the only senior level official not interviewed was Bush himself. This is just astounding and deeply depressing. Bush had warning from the beginning (in May of 2003) about the growing insurgency and the need for more troops and an overall policy for Iraq and he choose to overrule the advice of his main staff and the military commanders on the ground. Amazing. History will not be kind to him.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000293_pf.html
9 mtl Says:
September 30th, 2006 at 11:35 am
“Bush had warning from the beginning (in May of 2003) about the growing insurgency and the need for more troops and an overall policy for Iraq”

The implication is that the insurgency coudl ahve been prevented. I see it as more of an issue of degrees-we are currently seeing insurgency, but one could specuate on waht actions wopuld make it smaller/larger, effective/inneffective. People are trying to draw an absolute value, from somehting which we still cannot define.
10 LJ Says:
September 30th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Of course the insurgency could’ve been prevented. We disbanded the Iraqi Army, there went 400,000 soldiers who didn’t get paid and had decent weapons training. At the time, most of the CPA leadership opposed the disbanding and as we know from the book Cobra II, the US military OPLAN for Iraq called the Iraqi Army to be kept intact (and only the senior level Baathists to be removed) but Bremer, acting on Rumsfled’s orders decided to get rid of the whole thing. THe “new” Iraqi Army is HEAVILY infiltrated by al Qaeda and it is very sectarian, in fact the sectarian violence is more of a threat than the insurgency itself.

Vast areas of Iraq were not secured (from lack of troops, Gen Abiziad has said just this) and that allowed al Qaeda to come in and set up their own mini-state in Anbar province. It’s obvious today that we don’t have enough troops because we can’t even garrison restive cities. We go into Ramadi and the insurgents flee and things become relatively peaceful, then we leave and the insurgents set up shop again and execute any and all collaborators. That defies any sound military strategy. We need an additional 50,000 to 100,000 troops there immediately to stop Iraq from collapsing altogether.
11 Mark Says:
September 30th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Well, I’m absolutely in agreement on the need for more troops, probably closer to your high end of 100,000 are needed…
12 LJ Says:
September 30th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
Mark, I don’t know if you saw the article a couple weeks ago in the NYT right after the military transfered an additional 5,000 troops to Baghdad to help restore order, but within a couple of days the level of violence dropped by more than 30%. This was stunning to me, that 5,000 troops could have such a huge difference in such a short period of time. Imagine what we could do with 100,000.

Sigh. Unfortunately, it’s clear that while Bush is president we will not withdrawl troops (unless the Dems regain Congress and cut off funding, I saw Charlie Rangel making noises to that extent on CNN yesterday), but at the same time Bush just doesn’t have the political will to pull off a large influx of troops.