csua.org/u/h1z -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092900368.html
William Hamilton Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 29, 2006; Card made his first attempt after Bush was reelected in November, 2004, arguing that the administration needed a fresh start and recommending that Bush replace Rumsfeld with former secretary of state James A Baker III. Woodward writes that Bush considered the move, but was persuaded by Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, that it would be seen as an expression of doubt about the course of the war and would expose Bush himself to criticism. "State of Denial" Excerpts from Bob Woodward's new book, "State of Denial," will be available Saturday, Sept.
Card tried again around Thanksgiving, 2005, this time with the support of First Lady Laura Bush, who according to Woodward, felt that Rumsfeld's overbearing manner was damaging to her husband. Bush refused for a second time, and Card left the administration last March, convinced that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam and that history would record that no senior administration officials had raised their voices in opposition to the conduct of the war. The book is the third that Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, has written on the Bush administration since the terrorist attacks of September, 11, 2001. The first two were attacked by critics of the Bush administration as depicting the president in a heroic light. But the new book's title, "State of Denial," conveys the different picture that Woodward paints of the Bush administration since the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. Excerpts of the book will be published in the Sunday and Monday editions of The Post. Woodward writes that there was a vast difference between what the White House and Pentagon had known about the situation in Iraq and what they were saying publicly. In memos, reports and internal debates administration officials have voiced their concern about the conduct of the war, even while Bush and cabinet members such as Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have insisted that the war was going well. Last May, Woodward writes, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence estimate predicting that violence will not only continue for the rest of this year in Iraq but increase in 2007. "Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year," said the report, which was distributed to the White House, State Department and other intelligence agencies. The report presented a similarly bleak assessment of oil production, electricity generation and the political situation in Iraq. "Threats of Shia ascendancy could harden and expand Shia militant opposition and increase calls for coalition withdrawal," the report said. Woodward writes that Rice and Rumsfeld have been warned repeatedly about the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Returning from his assignment as the first head of the Iraq Postwar Planning Office, retired Lt. Jay Garner told Rumsfeld on June 23, 2003, that the United States had made "three tragic mistakes" in Iraq. The first two, he said, were the orders his successor, L Paul "Jerry" Bremer, had given banning members of the Baath Party from government jobs and disbanding the Iraqi military. The third was Bremer's dismissal of an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term.
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