Where's the Leak?

Hadley Makes the Rounds

Hadley was out spinning on all three broadcast networks yesterday morning. He avoided making any definitive statement on Bush's plans.

Charles Babington writes in The Washington Post: "Nearly four years after invading Iraq, President Bush is sorting through an array of options -- none of them easy -- for a way out, including a partial withdrawal of U.S. troops from violence-plagued cities and a redeployment near Iraq's borders with Iran and Syria, his top security aide said yesterday.

"Bush is open to several previously rejected possibilities because he realizes 'things are not proceeding well enough or fast enough in Iraq,' national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley told ABC News's 'This Week.' 'We have to make some changes.'"

Here is the transcript and video of Hadley's appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Host Tim Russert was appropriately aggressive -- and skeptical.

"MR. RUSSERT: Was the president saying one thing publicly to the voters while you and Donald Rumsfeld were saying another thing privately inside the White House?

"MR. HADLEY: The president has been talking about making changes, and has been making changes throughout."

And later:

"MR. RUSSERT: [I]n terms of trying to bring the country together, to bring Democrats -- who now control Congress -- to the table, could the president step forward and say, 'I acknowledge we were wrong about WMD, we were wrong about troop levels, we were wrong about the length of the war, we were wrong about the cost of the war, we were wrong about the financing of the war, we were wrong about the level of sectarian violence, we were wrong about being greeted as liberators. We made some fundamental misjudgments, and they were wrong, but now we're all in this together'? Could he do that?

"MR. HADLEY: He's done a lot of that. He's acknowledged that. . . .

"MR. RUSSERT: All those mistakes?

"MR. HADLEY: He has acknowledged that -- for example, that there were not stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."