Bush Leans On Petraeus as War Dissent Deepens

"This is an administration that wants to blame the generals," Korb said.

It is not unusual for presidents to duck behind generals when wars go bad, Kohn said. Previous examples, he said, include President Harry S. Truman relying on Gen. Omar Bradley and the other members of the Joint Chiefs to counter the impact of his split with Gen. Douglas MacArthur over the Korean War, and President Lyndon B. Johnson bringing Gen. William Westmoreland back to address Congress in 1967 to respond to the growing antiwar movement.

Petraeus, however, was not always Bush's main man. As commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the first year of the U.S.-led occupation of the country, the general clashed with Bush's viceroy, L. Paul Bremer, over several issues, including a decision to bar many former Baathists from government jobs.

Bush's current deference to Petraeus may buy both men a couple of months of relief from intensifying political pressure to set a timeline for withdrawal, but it also propels Petraeus into the political arena. Petraeus, who was confirmed by the Senate with an 81 to 0 vote in February, got a taste of the political battlefield last month when Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Petraeus "isn't in touch with what's going on in Baghdad."

Reid also questioned the candor Petraeus had shown in his testimony to Congress. Noting that the general, who is on his third tour of duty in Iraq, oversaw the training of Iraqi troops during his second stint there, the Senate majority leader said, "He told us it was going great; as we've looked back, it didn't go so well."

Petraeus has not recoiled from the administration's effort to use him to promote the decision to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq this year. Shortly before he left for Baghdad in February, he held meetings with members of Congress in the offices of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to tout the plan.

For Petraeus, the pivotal moment may come in just two months, when he and Crocker return to Washington to testify on the state of the war. A senior officer in Iraq said Petraeus will point toward several kinds of progress, such as improving security in Baghdad and the shift of tribal alliances in Anbar province away from the insurgency.

But others note that those points were made in the interim report released by the White House on Thursday, without much effect on the political debate. "I am sure in September he will report some progress, but probably not enough to stop the tide to get out now," predicted Brian Linn, a military historian at Texas A&M University.

Research director Lucy Shackelford and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.