Bush ignored advice on insurgency in Iraq, book says
Bush ignored advice on insurgency in Iraq, book says
By David E. Sanger
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 29, 2006
WASHINGTON 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 Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President George W. Bush's top advisers were often at odds, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from U.S. commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.
As late as November 2003, 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."
Defense Secretary Donald 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 Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls.
The senior U.S. commander for the Middle East, General John Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the autumn of 2005 that "Rumsfeld doesn't have any credibility anymore" to make a public case for the U.S. strategy in Iraq.
The book, bought by a reporter for The New York Times at retail price in advance of its official release, is the third that Woodward has written chronicling the inner debates in the White House after the Sept. 11 attacks, the invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent decision to invade Iraq. Like Woodward's previous works, the book includes lengthy quotations from conversations and describes what senior officials are thinking at various times, without identifying the sources.
Woodward writes that his book is based on "interviews with President Bush's national security team, their deputies, and other senior and key players in the administration responsible for the military, the diplomacy, and the intelligence on Iraq." Neither Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney agreed to be interviewed, the book says.
Robert Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, is said to have issued his warning about the need for more troops in a lengthy memorandum sent to Rice. The book says Blackwill's memorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as 40,000, were desperately needed.
It says that Blackwill and Paul Bremer, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Rice and Stephen Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops. It says the White House did nothing in response.
The book describes a deep fissure between Colin Powell, Bush's first secretary of state, and Rumsfeld: When Powell was eased out after the 2004 elections, he told Andrew Card, then the White House chief of staff, that "if I go, Don should go," referring to Rumsfeld.
Card then made a concerted effort to oust Rumsfeld at the end of 2005, according to the book, but was overruled by Bush, who feared that it would disrupt the coming elections in Iraq and operations at the Pentagon.
Cheney is described as a man so determined to find proof that his claim about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was accurate that, in the summer of 2003, his aides were calling the chief weapons inspector, David Kay, with specific satellite coordinates as the sites of possible caches. None resulted in any finds.
Two members of Bush's inner circle, Powell and a former director of central intelligence, George Tenet, are described as ambivalent about the decision to invade Iraq. When Powell assented, reluctantly, in January 2003, Bush told him in an Oval Office meeting that it was "time to put your war uniform on," a reference to his many years in the army.
Tenet apparently did not share his qualms about invading Iraq directly with Bush, according to Woodward's account.
Woodward's first two books about the Bush administration, "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack," portrayed a president firmly in command and a loyal, well-run team responding to a surprise attack and the retaliation that followed. As its title indicates, "State of Denial" follows a very different story line, of an administration that seemed to have only a foggy notion that early military success in Iraq had given way to resentment of the occupiers.
The 537-page book describes tensions among senior officials from the very beginning of the administration. Woodward writes that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Tenet believed that Rumsfeld was impeding the effort to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that the National Security Agency had been intercepting, wondering whether they might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda.
The book details an exchange in early 2003 between Lieutenant General Jay Garner, the retired officer Bush appointed to administer postwar Iraq, and Bush and others in the White House situation room. It describes senior war planners as having been thoroughly uninterested in the details of the postwar mission.
After Garner finished his PowerPoint presentation - which included his plan to use up to 300,000 troops of the Iraqi Army to help secure postwar Iraq, the book says - there were no questions from anyone in the situation room, and the president gave him a rousing sendoff.
But it was Garner who was soon removed, in favor of Bremer, whose actions in dismantling the Iraqi Army and removing Baathists from office were later disparaged within the government.
Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington, and Julie Bosman from New York.
By David E. Sanger
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 29, 2006
WASHINGTON 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 Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President George W. Bush's top advisers were often at odds, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from U.S. commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.
As late as November 2003, 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."
Defense Secretary Donald 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 Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls.
The senior U.S. commander for the Middle East, General John Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the autumn of 2005 that "Rumsfeld doesn't have any credibility anymore" to make a public case for the U.S. strategy in Iraq.
The book, bought by a reporter for The New York Times at retail price in advance of its official release, is the third that Woodward has written chronicling the inner debates in the White House after the Sept. 11 attacks, the invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent decision to invade Iraq. Like Woodward's previous works, the book includes lengthy quotations from conversations and describes what senior officials are thinking at various times, without identifying the sources.
Woodward writes that his book is based on "interviews with President Bush's national security team, their deputies, and other senior and key players in the administration responsible for the military, the diplomacy, and the intelligence on Iraq." Neither Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney agreed to be interviewed, the book says.
Robert Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, is said to have issued his warning about the need for more troops in a lengthy memorandum sent to Rice. The book says Blackwill's memorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as 40,000, were desperately needed.
It says that Blackwill and Paul Bremer, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Rice and Stephen Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops. It says the White House did nothing in response.
The book describes a deep fissure between Colin Powell, Bush's first secretary of state, and Rumsfeld: When Powell was eased out after the 2004 elections, he told Andrew Card, then the White House chief of staff, that "if I go, Don should go," referring to Rumsfeld.
Card then made a concerted effort to oust Rumsfeld at the end of 2005, according to the book, but was overruled by Bush, who feared that it would disrupt the coming elections in Iraq and operations at the Pentagon.
Cheney is described as a man so determined to find proof that his claim about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was accurate that, in the summer of 2003, his aides were calling the chief weapons inspector, David Kay, with specific satellite coordinates as the sites of possible caches. None resulted in any finds.
Two members of Bush's inner circle, Powell and a former director of central intelligence, George Tenet, are described as ambivalent about the decision to invade Iraq. When Powell assented, reluctantly, in January 2003, Bush told him in an Oval Office meeting that it was "time to put your war uniform on," a reference to his many years in the army.
Tenet apparently did not share his qualms about invading Iraq directly with Bush, according to Woodward's account.
Woodward's first two books about the Bush administration, "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack," portrayed a president firmly in command and a loyal, well-run team responding to a surprise attack and the retaliation that followed. As its title indicates, "State of Denial" follows a very different story line, of an administration that seemed to have only a foggy notion that early military success in Iraq had given way to resentment of the occupiers.
The 537-page book describes tensions among senior officials from the very beginning of the administration. Woodward writes that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Tenet believed that Rumsfeld was impeding the effort to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that the National Security Agency had been intercepting, wondering whether they might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda.
The book details an exchange in early 2003 between Lieutenant General Jay Garner, the retired officer Bush appointed to administer postwar Iraq, and Bush and others in the White House situation room. It describes senior war planners as having been thoroughly uninterested in the details of the postwar mission.
After Garner finished his PowerPoint presentation - which included his plan to use up to 300,000 troops of the Iraqi Army to help secure postwar Iraq, the book says - there were no questions from anyone in the situation room, and the president gave him a rousing sendoff.
But it was Garner who was soon removed, in favor of Bremer, whose actions in dismantling the Iraqi Army and removing Baathists from office were later disparaged within the government.
Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington, and Julie Bosman from New York.
posted by Carlos T Mock @ 3:54 AM
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