Inside Bush's Surge

In Monday's installment, Woodward describes how the Joint Chiefs of Staff were shunted aside by Bush and Cheney.

He writes, for instance, about Adm. Michael Mullen, then chief of naval operations, warning in a December 2006 meeting with Bush that "the all-volunteer force might break under the strain of extended and repeated deployments. 'I am still searching for the grand strategy here,' Mullen said. 'How does a five-brigade surge over the next few months fit into the larger picture? We have so many other issues and challenges: Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and places we are not even thinking about today.' . . .

"Several of the chiefs noted that the five brigades were effectively the strategic reserve of the U.S. military, the forces on hand in case of flare-ups elsewhere in the world. Surprise was a way of international life, the chiefs were saying. For years, Bush had been making the point that it was a dangerous world. Did he want to leave the United States in the position of not being able to deal with the next manifestation of that danger?

"Bush told the chiefs that they had to win the war at hand. He turned [to Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief]. 'Pete, you don't agree with me, do you?'

"'No,' Schoomaker said. 'I just don't see it. I just don't. But I know right now that it's going to be 15 brigades. And how we're going to get those 15 brigades, I don't know. This is going to require more than we can generate. You're stressing the force, Mr. President, and these kids just see deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan for the indefinite future.'"

Then Woodward describes how Bush in January 2007 "went to Fort Benning, Ga., to address military personnel and their families. His decision had been opposed by Casey and Abizaid, his military commanders in Iraq. [Chairman Peter] Pace and the Joint Chiefs, his top military advisers, had suggested a smaller increase, if any at all. Schoomaker, the Army chief, had made it clear that the five brigades didn't really exist under the Army's current policy of 12-month rotations. But on this morning, the president delivered his own version of history."

Said Bush: "The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to -- by the way, that's what you want your commander-in-chief to do. You don't want decisions being made based upon politics or focus groups or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. They analyzed the plan, and they said to me and to the Iraqi government: 'This won't work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence.' . . .

"And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, 'Mr. President, it's not going to work until -- unless we support -- provide more troops.'"

In today's installment, Woodward writes about the significance of back channels.

Woodward and Larry King

Here's the transcript of Woodward's appearance with CNN's Larry King last night.

The big picture, Woodward said, "is that [Bush] never found a way to level with the American people and say, 'Look, I know it's not working. We're going to fix it.' He would go out and say it's tough, but then he would say things like we're absolutely winning, we're winning -- when he knew we were not, when the generals knew we were not."

King: "You assert in your book that: 'The president rarely was the voice of realism on the Iraq War.' The obvious question, then, is why? Was he not well-informed?"