Bush's Dysfunctional Presidency

For more than five years, bit and pieces have been coming through about the general dysfunction and incompetence of the Bush Administration. The idea that somehow a very stubborn president who doesn't listen well has all the answers is simply bankrupt. In America's history, it often takes both the Congress and the President to get things right and even the Supreme Court at times to restore our nation's balance. But Congress, under Republican rule, has simply become a rubber stamp while content to ride the coattails of Bush public relations machine, a machine that for a long time did a good job of hiding the many failures and blunders of the Bush Administration.

Bob Woodward has a new book out. Now I take a little of what he says with a grain of salt; he acted more like a stenographer for Bush and Cheney in his last two books. But Woodward's latest book validates much of what we already know with more details and it curiously has the advantage of Bush and Cheney refusing to give interviews this time around despite the great press Woodward gave them earlier. David E. Sanger of The New York Times has an article on Woodward's book and some of the revelations:

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 on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.

As late as November 2003, Mr. 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.”

"State of Denial" seems to be an apt name for the book. Was there any doubt three years ago that an insurgency was under way? But our president didn't think so. We are now seeing a civil war in Iraq and Bush is still in denial. Let's hear more from Sanger on Woodward's book:

Secretary of Defense Donald H. 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 President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.

Sanger doesn't mention when this was but I remember in the fall of 2003 Rumsfeld was obviously floundering. Bush turned some of the Iraq portfolio over to Condi Rice to see what she could do. Rumsfeld and Cheney both balked as Rice started pursuing an agenda designed to foster democracy in Iraq, something that had floundered badly in the first six months (among other blunders, too many faith was put in Iraqi exiles who had not lived in Iraq for decades). Rice gets some credit for finally promoting democracy but the effort was badly organized and not supported well by Rumsfeld. Some of Rice's agenda was abandoned in April of 2004 during the Fallujah fiasco and the revelations about Abu Ghraib which quite obviously made a mess of the democracy agenda in any case. Cheney and Rumsfeld regained the upper hand and Bush stuck by them despite the mounting failures.

Now for more from Sanger:

Robert D. 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 Ms. Rice. The book says Mr. Blackwill’s memorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as 40,000, were desperately needed.

It says that Mr. Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Ms. Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops during a secure teleconference from Iraq. It says the White House did nothing in response.

The problem with Woodward's last two books is not that they were inaccurate but that they were one-sided, simply representing for the most part what Bush and Cheney wanted presented with a few minor damaging items thrown in. What Woodward reports is usually accurate in its particulars (if not always in regards to the full picture). But if the above is accurate, it again confirms that Bush has repeatedly lied to the American people when he has told reporters that those in charge of Iraq have not been asking for more troops. Quite obviously they have. And the fiasco in Iraq continues.