Woodward book puts boot into Bush

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The War Within: a Secret White House History, 2006-2008, is the fourth volume in Woodward's detailed account of the Bush administration at war. In early volumes the author, who leaped to worldwide fame as one of the two reporters credited with breaking the 1970s Watergate scandal, was criticised for being soft on the president, but his stance has toughened with each new volume.

Also likely to cause the administration considerable discomfort are passages in the book, printed in the Washington Post today, that suggest the government's strategy on the Iraq war at the height of the Sunni insurgency in 2006 was "crippled by dissension among the president's advisers, delayed by political calculations and undermined by a widening and bitter rift in civilian-military relations".

With suicide bombings running at record levels, Woodward claims that Bush held the then commander of US forces in Iraq, George Casey, in such distrust that he circumvented the established chain of command and went behind his back to his eventual replacement, General David Petraeus. The suspicions were mutual, Woodward says. Casey regarded the president as one of the biggest problems in the conduct of the war. Casey confided to a colleague that he saw Bush as being from the "radical wing of the Republican party that kept saying, 'Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeed'".

The Woodward book comes as the latest in a long line of exposés that have consistently caught the administration off balance. Earlier this year the former White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, published What Happened, in which he accused the president of self-deception.

The criticisms of Bush present the president with a problem. On the one hand, he will want to secure his legacy as he leaves the White House. On the other hand, any comment made from the administration is certain to be injected into the intensifying presidential campaign, in which the Democrats are portraying the Republican candidate, John McCain, as another Bush.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/iraq.usforeignpolicy

Saying, based on Woodward's book, that he did this against his generals advice. What they didn't say, is that his generals originally told him (in the person of the former chairman of the joint chiefs) tha they needed 250K - 300K to successfully hold Iraq, Had bush listened from the beginning, even though the Iraq War would still have been wrong, it would not have been as big a disaster as it has been.

Thanks for posting.

During the interview - they said the Surge started and then the Sunni's started to come around.

So this interview helped perpetuate the lie.

More man-lust just like the others.