How Bush Uses His Generals

For instance, "when a reporter traveling with Mr. Bush in Europe asked him if he had seen any progress toward national reconciliation in Iraq, he said, 'Yes, look, they're close to getting an oil deal done.'

"But in addressing progress toward the oil law, the report concluded, 'The current status is unsatisfactory, but it is too early to tell whether the government of Iraq will enact and implement legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources to all Iraqis.'"

Rutenberg concludes: "That apparent contradiction highlights the difficulties the White House is facing in balancing the president's desire to rally a pessimistic public behind the war effort with his political need to demonstrate that he is following a realistic approach, after years of optimistic predictions from the administration and its allies that did not bear out."

Dangerous Optimism

Peter Eisler, Blake Morrison and Tom Vanden Brook write for USA Today about why the Pentagon resisted pleas from commanders in Iraq to get more Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, for patrols and combat missions -- even as they bought them for the Iraqi army.

"One reason officials put off buying MRAPs in significant quantities: They never expected the war to last this long. Bush set the tone on May 1, 2003, six weeks after the U.S. invasion, when he declared on board the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that 'major combat operations in Iraq have ended.'

"Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq from June 2004 until February this year, repeatedly said that troop levels in Iraq would be cut just as soon as Iraqi troops took more responsibility for security. In March 2005, he predicted 'very substantial reductions' in U.S. troops by early 2006. He said virtually the same thing a year later.

"Casey wasn't the only optimist. In May 2005, Vice President Cheney declared that the insurgency was 'in its last throes.'

"Given the view that the war would end soon, the Pentagon had little use for expensive new vehicles such as the MRAP, at least not in large quantities. The MRAPs ordered for the Iraqis were intended to speed the day when, to use Bush's words, Iraqi forces could 'stand up' and the United States could 'stand down.'"

The toll? "In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates late last month, two U.S. senators said the delays cost the lives of an estimated '621 to 742 Americans' who would have survived explosions had they been in MRAPs rather than Humvees."

Is Iran Next?

Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger write in the Guardian: "The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned. . . .

"Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: 'Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.' . . .

"The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

"Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. 'The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern,' the source said this week."

The Pat Tillman Dodge

This could be the sleeper story of the weekend. Is the White House, in its latest assertion of executive privilege, essentially conceding that it was involved in trying to cover up the real circumstances of football hero Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan?

Scott Lindlaw writes for the Associated Press: "Two influential lawmakers investigating how and when the Bush administration learned the circumstances of Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death and how those details were disclosed accused the White House and Pentagon on Friday of withholding key documents and renewed their demand for the material.

"The White House and Defense Department have turned over nearly 10,000 pages of papers -- mostly press clippings -- but the White House cited ' executive branch confidentiality interests' in refusing to provide other documents. . . .

"Tillman's family and others have said they believe the erroneous information peddled by the Pentagon was part of a deliberate cover-up that may have reached all the way to President Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. . . .

"Executive 'confidentiality' is a lesser claim than 'executive privilege' -- more a polite way of declining than a firm refusal -- and thus still leaves room for negotiation, congressional staffers involved in the matter said."

Josh White writes in The Washington Post: "Tillman's celebrity, as one who gave up a professional football contract to join the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, made his death major news. The military at first concocted a heroic story about how [he] had been killed in a fierce firefight with the enemy, despite obvious evidence that he had been shot by his own men at close range. . . .

"'The main focus of the committee's investigation is to examine what the White House and the leadership of the Department of Defense knew about Corporal Tillman's death and when they knew it,' [the two congressmen] said in a letter to Fielding. 'Unfortunately, the document production from the White House sheds virtually no light on these matters.'"

Here's more from the House Oversight Committee.

Opinion Watch

Kate O'Beirne and Rich Lowry write for the National Review about an apparently newsless meeting Bush held with conservative journalists on Friday afternoon. They write: "He marveled at one of the media's lines of questioning at his Thursday press conference, 'They asked me yesterday "Are you sure it's al Qaeda [in Iraq]?" "Yeah, how do you know?" "Because they swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden is how I know. Yeah, it's al Qaeda." My point though to people is that it is the same crowd that killed 3,000 that is trying to drive us out of Iraq.'"

Frank Rich writes in his New York Times opinion column: "The administration knows that its last stated mission for the war -- 'an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself' -- is as doomed as the Iraqi army that would 'stand up' so we could stand down. So now there's a new 'mission' -- or at least new boilerplate. 'Victory is defeating Al Qaeda,' Tony Snow said last week, because 'Al Qaeda continues to be the chief organizer of mayhem within Iraq.' What's more, its members are, in Mr. Bush's words, 'the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.'

"This is hooey, of course. Not only did Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia not exist before we invaded Iraq in 2003, but it isn't even the chief organizer of the war's mayhem today. ABC News reported this month that this group may be responsible for no more than 15 percent of the attacks in Iraq. Bob Woodward wrote in The Washington Post on Thursday that Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, told Mr. Bush last November that Al Qaeda was only the fifth most pressing threat in Iraq, after the insurgency, sectarian strife, criminality and general anarchy.

"So what if the Qaeda that's operating with impunity out of Pakistan, North Africa and other non-Iraq havens actually is the most pressing threat to America? This president is never one to let facts get in the way of a political agenda. That agenda is to avoid taking responsibility for losing a war, no matter how many more Americans are tossed into its carnage. From here on in, you can be sure that whomever we're fighting in Iraq on any given day will be no more than one degree of separation from bin Laden."

Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal: "As I watched the [Thursday] news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits. He's in a good mood. There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president's since polling began. . . .

"Is it defiance? Denial? Is it that he's right and you're wrong, which is your problem? Is he faking a certain steely good cheer to show his foes from Washington to Baghdad that the American president is neither beaten nor bowed? Fair enough: Presidents can't sit around and moan. But it doesn't look like an act. People would feel better to know his lack of success sometimes gets to him. It gets to them."

William Kristol writes in a Washington Post opinion piece: "George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one."

Despite "unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds," and aides who don't understand the war is winnable, Kristol writes: "Bush has the good fortune of having finally found his Ulysses S. Grant, or his Creighton Abrams, in Gen. David H. Petraeus. If the president stands with Petraeus and progress continues on the ground, Bush will be able to prevent a sellout in Washington. And then he could leave office with the nation on course to a successful (though painful and difficult) outcome in Iraq. With that, the rest of the Middle East, where so much hangs in the balance, could start to tip in the direction of our friends and away from the jihadists, the mullahs and the dictators."

Book Watch

Karen DeYoung reviews Stephen F. Hayes's new Cheney bio in The Washington Post: "Hayes, a staff writer for the Weekly Standard, wrote a previous book attempting to prove a close pre-war connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Here, he offers highly selective versions of this and other Bush-era controversies, from unwarranted wiretapping to Hussein's alleged nuclear weapons programs. . . .

"Hayes writes that he conducted 600 interviews for the book, and a few of them contain revealing nuggets, even if those nuggets remain unexplored. For instance, shortly before accepting the job of director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell seemed to side with those who believe that the administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq for political purposes before the 2003 invasion. But Haynes fails to look deeper into it."

Michael A. Fletcher writes in The Washington Post: "If much of the public views the unpopular Cheney as a kind of Darth Vader of the West Wing, Hayes is more simpatico with the vice president. The author's long series of conversations with Cheney yielded a few nuggets, including that Cheney opposed Bush's decision to oust his former boss and longtime friend Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld after last fall's midterm elections."

There's an excerpt from the book on the Weekly Standard Web site.

Impeachment Watch

Bill Moyers talks with Bruce Fein and John Nichols about impeachment.

Helen Thomas Watch

From Friday's briefing:

"Q Do we have one-man rule in this country?

"MR. SNOW: No.

"Q The President --

"MR. SNOW: But thank you for asking."

Bush's Taste in Food

Veronica Lorraine writes for the Sun, a British tabloid: "George Bush's chef has revealed the US President's favourite supper -- a cheeseburger pizza. . . .

"Chef Cristeta Comerford spilled the beans at an annual gathering of the cooks to world statesmen and royals.

"She said: 'For dinner the President loves what we call home-made cheeseburger pizzas because every ingredient of a cheeseburger is on top of a margherita pizza. . . .

"Toppings include ground beef and cheese, ketchup, pickles, gherkins, fried onions, bacon and tomatoes."

Late Night Humor

Jimmy Kimmel, via U.S. News: "President Bush held a press conference yesterday to discuss the latest report out of Iraq. He says there's plenty of reason for optimism. Although, I'm starting to feel he doesn't know what that word means."

Cartoon Watch

Stuart Carlson on Bush's gall; Ann Telnaes on Bush's gambling; Mike Luckovich on the three branches.