NEW YORK, (PRNewswire) — The publication of Bob Woodward’s new book, “State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III,” will most likely renew
calls from Democrats and Republicans for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign. And a senior White House official, operating under the usual cover of anonymity, gave Newsweek a less than airtight guarantee of Rumsfeld’s job security. The president, normally one to rely on his inner circle, has been consulting outsiders. The official did not say which ones, but it is known that Bush speaks on occasion to Henry Kissinger and to his father’s former secretary of state, James A. Baker. The counsel of the outsiders, says this official, “so far has been that Rumsfeld should stay. But I can’t predict the future.”
In its October 9 cover story “The Price of Denial” (on newsstands Monday, October 2), Newsweek presents a special excerpt of Woodward’s book. Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas and Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe report on the potential fallout for President Bush and Rumsfeld and analyze the administration’s response. Highlights of the excerpt include:
* In midsummer 2005, General Jim Jones, the NATO commander, paid a call on his old friend General Pete Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It was virtually certain that Pace was going to move up to become chairman, the number one military position. The two Marine generals had been friends for more than three decades. They had been in Vietnam at about the same time, a searing and formative experience for both, and then served side-by-side as first lieutenants in 1970 at the Marine barracks in southeast Washington. Jones expressed chagrin that Pace
would even want to be chairman. “You’re going to face a debacle and be part of the debacle in Iraq,” he said. U.S. prestige was at a 50- or 75-
year low in the world. He said he was so worried about Iraq and the way Rumsfeld ran things that he wondered if he himself should not resign in
protest. “How do you have the stomach for eight years in the Pentagon?” he finally asked. Pace said that someone had to be chairman. Who else would do it? Jones did not have an answer. “Military advice is being influenced on a political level,” he said. The JCS had improperly “surrendered” to Rumsfeld. “You should not be the parrot on the secretary’s shoulder.”
* On January 20, 2003, President Bush signed a secret National Security Presidential Directive, NSPD-24. The subject: setting up an “Iraq
Postwar Planning Office” within the Defense Department for the expected invasion of Iraq. Rumsfeld picked Jay Garner, a 64-year-old retired
three-star general and defense industry executive to head the postwar office. Six weeks later, Garner went to the White House, mid-morning on
Friday, February 28, 2003, to meet President Bush for the first time. In the Situation Room, Garner passed around copies of his handout, an 11-
point presentation, and dove right in. He said four of the nine tasks his small team was supposed to be in charge of in Iraq under Bush’s
NSPD-24 were plainly beyond their capabilities, including dismantling weapons of mass destruction, defeating terrorists, reshaping the Iraqi
military and reshaping the other internal Iraqi security institutions. The president nodded. No one else intervened, though Garner had just
told them he couldn’t be responsible for crucial postwar tasks — the ones that had the most to do with the stated reasons for going to war in
the first place — because his team couldn’t do them. The import of what he had said seemed to sail over everyone’s heads. Garner next described how he intended to divide the country into regional groups, and moved on to the interagency plans. “Just a minute,” the president interrupted. “Where are you from?” “Florida, sir.” “Why do you talk like that?” he asked, apparently trying to place Garner’s accent. “Because I was born and raised on a ranch in Florida. My daddy was a rancher.” “You’re in,” the first rancher said approvingly. His brother Jeb was governor of the state, and the president visited regularly.
* “I’m the secretary of defense,” Rumsfeld insisted repeatedly in his first months in 2001. “I’m in the chain of command.” He — not the
generals, not the Joint Chiefs of Staff — would deal with the White House and the president on operational matters. Rumsfeld micromanaged
daily Pentagon life and rode roughshod over people. In one public confrontation at a hearing with Senator Susan Collins, the earnest Maine
Republican, Rumsfeld had put her down in a manner that was stunning even for him. Collins’s voice had quivered at one point. Later, Powell A.
Moore, Rumsfeld’s assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, suggested that he call her, try to smooth things over. “Hell,”
Rumsfeld said, “she needs to apologize to me.” On one occasion, he led a delegation from Congress to the funeral in Columbia, South Carolina, for
Representative Floyd Spence, a Republican who had been a pro-Pentagon hawk for three decades. Moore had arranged the seating on Rumsfeld’s plane the way everything was done in Congress, by seniority. “I don’t want this,” Rumsfeld declared, and personally rearranged the seating-
putting Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who would soon become the House Armed Services Committee chairman, in the
back.
Read entire cover story and excerpt at http://www.Newsweek.com.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15081915/site/newsweek/