Inside Bush's Surge

In Sunday's installment, Woodward writes that in 2006, by which point Iraqis were enduring 1,000 attacks a week, "the administration's efforts to develop a new Iraq strategy were crippled by dissension among the president's advisers, delayed by political calculations and undermined by a widening and sometimes bitter rift in civilian-military relations."

One particularly interesting section suggests that Bush had a consistently naive sense of what victory entailed. Woodward describes how the eventually-ousted U.S. commander in Iraq, George W. Casey Jr., "had concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself. Since the beginning, Casey felt, the president had viewed the war in conventional terms, repeatedly asking how many of the various enemies had been captured or killed. Casey later confided to a colleague that he had the impression that Bush reflected the 'radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, "Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeed."'

"Casey was troubled by the thought that the president didn't understand the nature of the fight they were in. The large, heavily armed Western force was on borrowed time, he believed. The president often paid lip service to winning over the Iraqi people, but then he would lean in with greater interest and ask about raids and military operations, grilling Casey about killings and captures. . . .

"Asked later about Casey's perceptions, Bush insisted in an interview that he understood the nature of the war, whatever Casey might have thought. 'I mean, of all people to understand that, it's me,' he said."

Let's just pause there, for dramatic purposes, and recall what we know about Bush's idea of sacrifice.

Woodward continues: "But several of his on-the-record comments lend credence to Casey's concern that the president was overly focused on the number of enemy killed."

In a sidebar, Woodward criticizes the conventional wisdom that the surge worked. "[T]he full story was more complicated. At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge. These factors either have not been reported publicly or have received less attention than the influx of troops.

"Beginning in the late spring of 2007, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies launched a series of top-secret operations that enabled them to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or so-called special groups. The operations incorporated some of the most highly classified techniques and information in the U.S. government. . . .

"A second important factor in the lessening of violence was the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces."

(Woodward neglects to mention the $25 million a month that the U.S. government is paying those Sunni gunmen for their services.)

"A third significant break came Aug. 29, when militant Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his powerful Mahdi Army to suspend operations, including attacks against U.S. troops," Woodward writes.

And there are some other factors Woodward leaves out. Consider, for instance, the possibility that years of ethnic cleansing have left a formerly integrated country fragmented into internally peaceful but heavily armed pieces. And there is growing evidence that all sides are now just patiently waiting until we leave to start fighting again -- this time with plenty of American money and weapons on every side.