'You're Not Accountable, Jack'

"This is a difficult session for me," Mullen said, "but I don't want you going to Iraq anymore and helping Petraeus."

"What the hell? What are you talking about?" Keane asked.

"You've diminished the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs," Mullen said. It wasn't clear to the American people who was actually in charge of the military, he said.

"C'mon, stop it," Keane said. "The American people don't even know who the hell I am. This is Washington, D.C., stuff. You can't be serious."

"Yeah, I am," Mullen said.

Keane tried to tell Mullen how his contacts with the White House had begun, how he had gone to Pace and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in late 2006 with his complaints about the Iraq war strategy and had wound up meeting with the president because Pace and the vice president had recommended that Bush hear from Keane directly.

Mullen, formerly chief of naval operations, had not favored the surge; Keane had, publicly and vocally. Mullen told Keane he had become acutely aware of the strains on the Army and the Marine Corps. Military families were shouldering the strain, and the military was losing quality officers.

"Mike, all of that's true," Keane said. "But this is true every time we fight a war of any consequence." Wars break armies, and they have to be put back together, he said. That's the price of war. But the price was worth it. "You've not talked one time about winning here, Mike. Not one time have you mentioned 'I want to win in Iraq.' I mean, do you?"

It was an insulting question to put to a fellow military man.

"Of course I want to win," Mullen said.

"I assume you do," Keane replied, "but to the degree that you're putting pressure on Petraeus to reduce forces, you're taking far too much risk, and that risk is in losing and not winning."

"Well," Mullen said, "we're just going to disagree."