New Facts About Iraq
Stay the course? Withdraw? The spiral of violence poses more vexing questions for a White House increasingly under siege
The fiery debate over Iraq is turning absolutely sulfurous. With the November 7 congressional elections just around the corner, two new developments are stoking a surge of second-guessing about President Bush's conduct of the war and raising new concerns about how Washington can extricate itself from what most Americans now see as a deadly, baffling mess. One was last week's partial release of a secret National Intelligence Estimate that pokes big holes in Bush's rationale for the conflict by concluding that it is fueling, not curtailing, support for the global jihadist movement. The second is a new book by investigative reporter Bob Woodward asserting that the administration is putting a deliberately misleading spin on how the war is going.
All this, coupled with daily news reports of chilling new spasms of violence there, is deepening America's sour mood about the war and escalating tensions in Washington. After calling for conciliation and unity on the five-year anniversary of 9/11 less than a month ago, President Bush angrily branded Democrats the "cut and run" party last week and sparked another round of bitter recriminations. But a senior White House adviser said the situation, prompted by New York Times and Washington Post stories about the NIE, was so potentially damaging politically that "we needed to get our arms around this quickly."
Making matters worse for a president trying to sound upbeat, a new poll conducted for the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes found that a large majority of Iraqis believe the U.S. military presence there is provoking more violence than it is preventing. Most want U.S. troops out within a year, and 6 out of 10 support attacks on U.S.-led forces. Meanwhile, U.S. News has learned that the U.S. Army may ask Congress to expand its 504,000-strong force by 30,000-in large part because of the manpower strains from keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq.
"Things are not right." Even though Bush is getting a political boost from the economy (story, Page 36), the latest developments may prove to be a crystallizing moment in America's assessment of the war. Which is "the last thing the Republicans can afford," as they try to hold on to their fragile majorities in the House and Senate, says Boston University historian Julian Zelizer. What makes the furor over the Iraq intelligence assessment so important, Zelizer adds, is that it's based on an evaluation by 16 intelligence agencies, not the Democrats or other Bush critics. "It's nonpartisan analysis," Zelizer says, and it shows that "things are not right" in Iraq and that the rosy scenarios offered by Bush and his allies seem to be untethered by the facts.
As if all that weren't enough, more troubling disclosures and criticisms are contained in Woodward's book, State of Denial. Unlike the positive tone of his previous writings about Bush and his advisers, this time Woodward is highly negative and appears to be revising his own earlier assessments. He told CBS's 60 Minutes last weekend that the administration has not told the truth about the level of violence in Iraq, especially against U.S. troops, and says intelligence sources have predicted an even more violent insurgency there. Woodward writes that, last May, the intelligence division of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff predicted an increase in violence not only this year but also in 2007. This report, Woodward writes, also painted a bleak picture of oil production, electricity generation, and the potential for political stability. But Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continued to say publicly that the war was going well and remained vital in combating terrorism. In an interview with Mike Wallace, Woodward said attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, which he says the administration has kept secret. "It's getting to the point now where there are eight, nine hundred attacks a week. ... The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are," Woodward wrote. "Who doesn't know? The American public."
"Cotton candy." White House officials say the storms over the Iraq intelligence report and Woodward's book are overblown. Bush and senior administration officials have been saying for months that the Iraq conflict and the global war on terrorism will be tough, prolonged struggles, the officials point out. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow went still further, telling reporters that Woodward's book is filled with "cotton candy" that dissolves on contact. Bush advisers say most Americans have already made up their minds about the war-and insist that the recent developments won't make much of a difference.
Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker tends to agree. What roils waters in official Washington, he says, rarely causes a stir elsewhere: "So much of what is heard in Washington [on Iraq] is not being heard outside Washington. There's deep concern about Iraq. It borders on a kind of national depression. ... But nobody has a way out." Since Democrats haven't unified behind an alternative strategy to Bush's, Baker adds, there's nothing for voters to rally around, leaving millions of Americans sullen but not rebellious.
It's also true that the selected portions of the NIE released by the White House were not terribly revealing. They reflected public statements and private assessments of the terrorist threat by a variety of top intelligence officials over a long period. Many analysts, for example, have agreed that the Iraq war has become a breeding ground for terrorists, has made the jihadist movement worse, and has resulted in more terrorists today than there were when the war began-all conclusions of the NIE. But the NIE goes on to warn that "the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the [five-year] time frame of this estimate."
Vietnam-again. This isn't the first time a secret document has entered the political realm. In 1976, another NIE, reviewing the extent of Soviet power, was authorized by then Director of Central Intelligence George Herbert Walker Bush, the current president's father. The National Intelligence Estimate on Soviet Strategic Objectives was developed when Gerald Ford was in the White House and found that the CIA had grossly underestimated the power of the Soviet Union, says historian Zelizer, who is writing a book on the history of national security policy. In 1977, after Jimmy Carter took over, conservatives used the findings to fault Carter for failing to confront the Soviets. The findings also hardened the views of conservatives and enhanced the credibility of a cold warrior named Ronald Reagan.
The new Iraq report is also in the mold of the "Pentagon Papers," an internal government report that was leaked to the New York Times in 1971. That study found that the Vietnam War was not going well and contradicted the Nixon administration's repeated rosy assessments of the conflict. President Nixon, of course, refused to leave Vietnam until he could do so on his own terms, although he ended up leaving the South, which was then taken over by the Communist North. And, strangely enough, Woodward reveals that President Bush and Vice President Cheney often receive counsel from none other than Henry Kissinger, who was Nixon's secretary of state and whose advice today is to insist on victory. "Kissinger's fighting the Vietnam War again because in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will," Woodward says.
As for Bush, he is even more resolute in private than in public. "I will not withdraw," the president told key Republicans at a White House meeting, "even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me." Laura, of course, is his wife. Barney is his dog.
With Kevin Whitelaw, Silla Brush and Anna Mulrine
This story appears in the October 9, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.