New Book Says Bush’s Private Thoughts On Iraq War Differ From Public Statements

September 5, 2008

The Facts

Bob Woodward’s new book, “The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008″, says “Bush maintained that U.S. forces were “winning”; privately, he came to believe that the military’s long-term strategy of training Iraq security forces and handing over responsibility to the new Iraqi government was failing”. Exerts from the book is quoted in this Washington Post article. According to the book, in 2006 Bush asked Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, to lead a closely guarded review of the Iraq war, but warned Hadley of the upcoming congressional elections. Hadley then told Condoleezza Rice “We’ve got to do it under the radar screen because the electoral season is so hot”.

Woodard sheds some light on the “surge” success in Iraq. He quotes three other factors that contributed to the success. The covert operations; the decision by militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to rein in his powerful Mahdi Army; and the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and allied with U.S. forces.

My View

I suppose the first thing I have to say is this is a pretty clear indication that Bush was more concerned with the politics here at home and keeping control of Congress than he was about the public being made aware of the truth about the war. And the second thing is he and his public relations departments were (and still are) hyping the surge as the soul reason for the advertised success. However, the unbiased mind would surely say the surge was the least of the four reasons of success, with the latter two noted above being the primary contributors. It appears the surge did nothing more than help protect the soldiers who were already in country, which, to me, was reason enough for a surge.

But has the surge really helped at all relative to ending the violence and the war? It seems now that the Pentagon is asking President Bush to make no further reductions in troop reductions in Iraq.

Just a note on Bob Woodward and his book; if you get into the book, you will find that nearly all of his documentation came from within the White House and it’s circle, much of it from Bush himself. So if you decide to “write off” the book as partisan politics, you should probably look into who Bob Woodward really is and his documentation. Remember one of my mottos; “you can’t make the truth a lie just because you want it to be a lie”.