There are quite a few noteworthy tidbits in today’s front-page piece in the Washington Post about internal Bush administration divisions over Iraq policy, but this one is probably the key piece to remember:
Another new arrival in the West Wing set up a rapid-response PR unit hard-wired into Petraeus’s shop. Ed Gillespie, the new presidential counselor, organized daily conference calls at 7:45 a.m. and again late in the afternoon between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Embassy and military in Baghdad to map out ways of selling the surge.
From the start of the Bush plan, the White House communications office had been blitzing an e-mail list of as many as 5,000 journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, conservative bloggers, military groups and others with talking points or rebuttals of criticism. Between Jan. 10 and last week, the office put out 94 such documents in various categories — “Myths/Facts” or “Setting the Record Straight” to take issue with negative news articles, and “In Case You Missed It” to distribute positive articles or speeches.
Now, it isn’t exactly a big surprise that a Gillespie-run public-relations team in the White House would be fully integrated into Gen. Petraeus’ team, but it does reinforce what observers have known for quite a while now: Petraeus is a part of the president’s political operation. That’s not necessarily a criticism. It is, however, a realization that Petraeus’ testimony is not that of a neutral, dispassionate observer.
As Ezra said the other day, “Next week, Petraeus will not be acting as a general and he will not be acting as a soldier; he will be acting as a media campaign. He is the White House’s press strategy, and the degree to which the press and the Democrats internalize this will largely dictate how the testimony is received.”
A few other gems from the WaPo article:
The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, officials said, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops.
One of those plans, according to a Centcom officer, involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010. In an interview, Fallon disputed that description but declined to offer details. Nonetheless, his efforts offended Petraeus’s team, which saw them as unwelcome intrusion on their own long-term planning. The profoundly different views of the U.S. role in Iraq only exacerbated the schism between the two men.
“Bad relations?” said a senior civilian official with a laugh. “That’s the understatement of the century. . . . If you think Armageddon was a riot, that’s one way of looking at it.”
I had no idea Fallon and Petraeus were so bitterly divided over war policy. Interesting.
There was also this one:
[T]he Maliki government pressed the Americans to sit down with Iranian officials in hopes of stopping Tehran from funding and arming Shiite militias. Bush had rejected proposals by the Iraq Study Group and others to talk with Iran, but Rice decided it was time.
When Rice told Crocker to get ready for talks with Iran, he asked her the “blindingly obvious” question of whether Vice President Cheney would allow it, a U.S. official said. Rice, according to the official, told Crocker that it “wasn’t your lane,” adding, “I’ll work it back here. That’s not your problem.”
You know, it’s almost as if Cheney were running the show, and it was more important to convince the Vice President than the President. Imagine that.