Watergate reporter exposes Iraq 'failures'

By Tom Baldwin
A new book tells of a rift in the US leadership as President faces fresh criticism over conduct in Iraq
GEORGE BUSH suffered further setbacks yesterday in his battle to keep the focus of voters on the threat of terrorism — rather than on the mounting carnage in Iraq.
Instead he was facing scathing criticism of his Administration’s record in Iraq in a new book by Bob Woodward, the veteran Watergate investigative journalist, as well as suggestions from a senior serving officer that the violence would not recede until American troops had been brought home.
NI_MPU('middle');
Although the President was briefly buoyed by Thursday’s Senate decision to approve bitterly contested new rules on the trial and treatment of terror suspects, the White House acknowledges that it will be impossible for any high-profile prosecution to proceed this side of the midterm congressional elections on November 7. This deprives Republicans of the prospect of seeing detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind 9/11, being put on trial before voters deliver their verdict this autumn.
Mr Woodward’s book, State of Denial, being published on Monday, says that the White House ignored urgent warnings about inadequate troop numbers in Iraq and that an almost dysfunctional relationship has existed between senior figures within the Administration. It says that Mr Bush’s top advisers were often barely on speaking terms with one another — but shared a tendency to dismiss assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq as being too pessimistic.
At one stage Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, was said to be so hostile towards Condoleezza Rice, then the National Security Adviser, that Mr Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. General John Abizaid, the US commander for the Middle East, is quoted as saying last year that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility any more” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.
Although criticism from former military leaders has been commonplace, there appeared to be carefully coded dissent yesterday from an officer serving in Iraq. Colonel Sean MacFarland, who leads a brigade, said that the situation was “beginning to spiral”.
He suggested that Iraqi forces would be better able to vanquish insurgents because “they will always be perceived as more legitimate than an external force like our own”.
President Bush, delivering the latest in a series of speeches on the war on terrorism yesterday, again lashed out at critics “who make a case that by fighting the terrorists we’re making our people less secure here at home”. He said: “This argument buys into the enemy’s propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we’re provoking them.”
With six weeks to go before congressional elections, Mr Bush has been striking back at Democrats who have trumpeted this week a government intelligence assessment that the Iraq war has helped to recruit more terrorists.
Terrorism “is not our fault,” he said, quoting remarks made by Tony Blair this week, “You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism.
“If that ever becomes the mindset of the policymakers in Washington, it means we’ll go back to the old days of waiting to be attacked — and then respond.” On Thursday he adopted an even more partisan tone, saying that the Democrats were using the leaked National Intelligence Estimate to “mislead the American people and justify their policy of withdrawal from Iraq”.
The document, an analysis of terror trends put together by the nation’s top intelligence analysts across 16 spy agencies, concluded that Iraq was contributing to a growth in the jihadist movement around the world.