How Bush Uses His Generals

"Q Thank you, sir. You have spoken passionately about the consequences of failure in Iraq. Your critics say you failed to send enough troops there at the start, failed to keep al Qaeda from stepping into the void created by the collapse of Saddam's army, failed to put enough pressure on Iraq's government to make the political reconciliation necessary to keep the sectarian violence the country is suffering from now from occurring. So why should the American people feel you have the vision for victory in Iraq, sir?

"THE PRESIDENT: Those are all legitimate questions that I'm sure historians will analyze. I mean, one of the questions is, should we have sent more in the beginning? Well, I asked that question, do you need more, to General Tommy Franks. In the first phase of this operation, General Franks was obviously in charge, and during our discussions in the run up to the decision to remove Saddam Hussein after he ignored the Security Council resolutions. My primary question to General Franks was, do you have what it takes to succeed? And do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein? And his answer was, yes.

"Now, history is going to look back to determine whether or not there might have been a different decision made. But at the time, the only thing I can tell you, Wendell, is that I relied upon our military commander to make the proper decision about troop strength. And I can remember a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, who said, we've reviewed the plan. I remember -- and seemed satisfied with it. I remember sitting in the PEOC, or the Situation Room, downstairs here at the White House, and I went to commander and commander that were all responsible of different aspects of the operation to remove Saddam. I said to each one of them, do you have what it takes? Are you satisfied with the strategy? And the answer was, yes."

Ironically, Franks -- and the joint chiefs -- were widely seen as having been compromised by their acquiescence to then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld.

As Ricks said in an interview in 2004, Rumsfeld was the person behind the small-force argument. "Tommy Franks was kind of a pivotal figure in this, because he was seen as a classic muddy-boots army general who somehow began agreeing with Rumsfeld during the course of this argument. As one officer put it to me one day, 'Tommy Franks has drunk the Kool-Aid.' They did wind up with a much smaller force."

Is He Listening?

If Bush really were listening to his commanders, he'd probably be doing something else entirely.

On his washingtonpost.com blog, William M. Arkin notes that Bush did not mention any of "the president's statutory military advisers" in his press conference and writes:

"Some Bush critics and war opponents may conclude that the president is avoiding widespread dissent in the Pentagon by creating his own command structure and stacking it with yes men and weak leaders. I read it exactly the opposite: The brass is avoiding the president and the war in Iraq -- and doing so in the passive-aggressive way that has come to characterize our current civilian-military relations.

The generals have spoken. They think the war is lost. I'm not referring to the numbskulls who waited till they retired to join the political fray. I'm referring to the military leadership that is left waiting for this administration and this war to pass into history.

"Here's the lineup of military commanders and 'military thinkers and planners' that the president is listening to: Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq."

And as for the meeting that Bush described in 2003, in which the military commanders all said they had enough troops?

"I know something of this session," Arkin writes. "I've talked to two of the flag officers involved, and both give the same description of events: It was a multi-star photo-op. The commander-in-chief, at the eleventh hour, gathered his commanders for a pep session, script in hand, and everyone performed as planned. Even then, in March 2003, there were dissenters and skeptics as to whether there were enough troops and whether the 'peace' had been adequately planned for. There were even some general officers who thought the war was a mistake."