Embattled, Bush Held To Plan to Salvage Iraq

The plan had the appeal of not pulling U.S. troops out of the country while still allowing Iraqis to settle their own differences. But Bush worried that such a move might mean losing the war.

"He became convinced that that was not sustainable," Hadley said in an interview. "Let's assume that the sectarian violence does escalate. Are the American military really going to stand outside the city while sectarian violence rages in Baghdad? I don't think so."

The Bush team concluded that the previous Baghdad security plans had failed for four reasons: The Iraqis never took ownership over security, Maliki placed political constraints on military operations, there were not enough reliable Iraqi and U.S. forces, and there was no serious effort to rebuild areas taken back from insurgents or militias.

Bush spent hours in conversation with Maliki, on the phone and in videoconference, probing to determine whether he could count on the prime minister. "The president decided we need to bring this issue to a head," one senior adviser said. "We need to clarify whether this government is really a partner or not."

Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, said Maliki's presentation of a new plan in Amman was a sign of his heightened interest in tackling Baghdad's security problems.

"We all recognized that it was too ambitious," he said. "What the president liked was the intent and the willingness to take on more responsibility."

Another problem for Bush was that the military did not necessarily want more troops. Army Gens. John P. Abizaid, the Middle East commander, and George W. Casey Jr., the commander in Iraq, opposed an influx of U.S. forces because they were unconvinced it would change the dynamics on the ground.

Resistance from Casey and the Joint Chiefs of Staff flared throughout the process. On Dec. 13, Bush went to the super-secure "tank" at the Pentagon to listen to his top generals, only to walk away convinced that some of them were trying to manage defeat rather than find a way to victory.

Bush decided to placate some of the concerns expressed by the generals about the overextended military and told The Washington Post six days later that he would expand the size of the Army and Marines. When Gates went to Baghdad that week, he came back with Casey's agreement for more troops based on the understanding that the commander would no longer be held back by the Iraqi government and that the United States would address the country's economic needs.

"He was not overriding his commanders," one Bush aide said of the president. "But he was pushing them to identify what went wrong and what do we need to change what happened."

Still, Bush and the military came at the plan from different perspectives. Casey asked for two more brigades for Baghdad, plus a third that would be stationed in Kuwait as a reserve and two others that would be put on call back in the United States.

Bush decided that was not enough. His advisers studied the experience in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul under Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who successfully undercut the insurgency there, and they decided they could not risk having too few troops. Bush had already decided to replace Casey with Petraeus, and through intermediaries the president reached out to Petraeus, who was supportive of more troops than Casey requested.

So the president reversed Casey's plan, deciding that all five brigades would go to Baghdad in a phased deployment. "The president came out and said, 'Let's err on the side of making sure they have everything they need,' " said a senior official.