WP, Froomkin: Bush tells a tall tale about listening to his military commanders

Bush Tells a Tale
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, January 12, 2007

President Bush is pushing a revisionist explanation of how he came to support an escalation of troop strength in Iraq.

From the transcript of Bush's remarks at a Georgia military base yesterday:

"The (Iraqi) Prime Minister came and said, look, I understand we've got to do something about this violence, and here is what I suggest we do. Our commanders looked at it, helped fine-tune it so it would work. . . .

The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to -- by the way, that's what you want your Commander-in-Chief to do. You don't want decisions being made based upon politics, or focus groups, or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. And they analyzed the plan and they said to me, and to the Iraqi government, this won't work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence...."

It was a bold attempt by Bush to rebut the widely-reported story that he stopped listening to his commanders -- and in fact, reassigned some -- when they stopped telling him what he wanted to hear.

But Bush's new story lacks a certain important quality: Believability.

Previous reporting -- see, for instance, Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks in The Washington Post on Wednesday -- has made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders -- nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.

And, as it turns out, two stories in this morning's New York Times add to the evidence....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html

But Bush's new story lacks a certain important quality: Believability.

Previous reporting -- see, for instance, Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks in The Washington Post on Wednesday -- has made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders -- nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.

And, as it turns out, two stories in this morning's New York Times add to the evidence.

Jim Rutenberg, David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon write: "A narrative pieced together from interviews with participants and from public testimony suggests that through much of the process, generals who had been on the ground in Iraq during the past year had favored that the new strategy begin with a substantially smaller force than the one that President Bush announced to the nation on Wednesday night. In the end, it was Mr. Bush who appeared to drive his commanders along to the conclusion that more troops were needed."

They write: "White House officials were clearly sensitive on Thursday about any suggestions that the president countermanded his generals, and said his new plan had their full support. They said the generals sought and received assurances that the Iraqis would undertake political initiatives and end the practice of releasing militia figures who were friends of the government and captured by American or Iraqi forces."

.
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html

> "At one point, as Mr. Bush,
> Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the newly appointed
> secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, weighed their options, the
> president asked his deputies, in effect: 'Why can't we just pull out
> of Baghdad and let the factions fight it out themselves?'"
>
> What happened to change Bush's mind? The Times reports: "In the end,
> the official said, Mr. Hadley's teams concluded that an American
> withdrawal from Baghdad would 'crater the government.'"
>
> I have my own guess: Cheney happened.
>
> As the Times notes: "According to a senior administration official,
> Vice President Dick Cheney was among those who wanted a bigger force."
>
> And in the other Times story, John F. Burns and Sabrina Tavernise
> contradict the Baghdad portion of Bush's psuedo-narrative:

Amazing.....Bullies are known for their Deception/Lies/Prevarications/BS/etc....This latest one takes the big Prize..

Have to wonder how many military commanders are now thinking, "I didn't say any such thing." Then they begin to compare notes with each other.... Jeeeeeez.

of Generals that won't do his bidding, or he is only doing what the Generals recommend. They both certainly can't be true so some right wingers are LYING somewhere....