Voices From History Echo Anew

Afterward, Brown said in an interview that he is skeptical about the prospects of success in Iraq. "I can think of more ways for it to come out badly than for it come out well," he said. "But that does not mean it cannot come out acceptably."

Former senator William S. Cohen (R-Maine), who ran the Pentagon under Clinton, said he grilled Bush about a recent Washington Post report on a lack of Sunni participation in the Iraq military. Bush, Cohen said in an interview, vowed to monitor the situation and "make sure there was competence" among the ethnic groups in the Iraqi military.

Cohen, like the others, described the president as pleasantly engaging and at times feisty.

As the meeting took place, reports from Iraq were describing one of the bloodiest days since the U.S.-led invasion, with more than 130 people killed in attacks.

But Bush, much as he does in public speeches, told the former Cabinet secretaries that Iraqis are optimistic about creating a free government and building a military that can withstand insurgents and other threats without U.S. assistance.

Presidential aides distributed a briefing sheet to the former secretaries describing progress in Iraq. Bush frequently turned to Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the U.S. commander there, and Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to answer questions about troop levels and training, participants said.

In an unusual scene, they said, the former government executives frequently interrupted each other and the White House officials because, as Albright explained, they all ran Cabinet departments and were used to running the show. Except for a few sharp comments, the discussions were described as civil and detailed.

"When you are in the presence of the president of the United States, I don't care if you've been a devout Democrat for the last hundred years, you're likely to pull your punches to some degree," Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush, told reporters.

The current President Bush has never invited such a large group of former Cabinet secretaries to the White House, but Ronald Reagan did so to discuss the sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia in 1981 and Carter did so to discuss the Soviet combat brigade in Cuba in the late '70s.

James R. Schlesinger, secretary of defense under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, said Bush essentially cut off the debate over the Iraq invasion by encouraging a discussion about the future, not the past. "Needless to say," Schlesinger said, there was "little debate given the implied ground rules."

Some participants said they had little to debate with Bush. "I think the president has taken the absolutely correct position, contrary to a number of Washington politicians," Alexander M. Haig Jr., secretary of state for President Reagan, told reporters.

Added Eagleburger: "Every time we talk about withdrawal you can see the ears of Osama [bin Laden] and his friends perking up."

Still, it was a sense of the span of history in the room -- as much as the future of Iraq -- that left a lasting impression for many in attendance. "It was a sense that when we walked into the room and you see the personalities as far back as McNamara . . . that it was a good feeling among people who have shouldered considerable responsibility in the past and understand what this administration now confronts," Cohen said.