How George W Bush stared down his generals in Iraq

George W Bush trusted his generals in the early years of the Iraq War. But in 2006, he smelled failure with their main goals of Arabisation and troop withdrawals, and set in train an eventual escalation, bypassing the usual chain of command. So far, the US President appears to have been right. Bob Woodward reveals how the surge came about and why it has been succeeding, as Bush faces his last months in office

HALFWAY through the sixth year of his US presidency and more than three years into the Iraq War, George W. Bush stood on a veranda of the American embassy compound in Baghdad. He had flown through the night for a surprise visit to the new Iraqi Prime Minister. It was June 13, 2006. With so much at stake in Iraq, where success or failure had become the core of his legacy, Bush had been anxious to meet the man he had, in many ways, been waiting for since the invasion.

It was now evening. A hazy sunset had descended over the sweltering, violent capital. The President stepped aside for a private conversation with US Army General George W. Casey Jr, the 57-year-old commander of the 150,000 U.S. forces in the country. A 5-foot-8 (173cm), four-star general with wire-rim glasses, closely cropped graying hair and a soft voice, Casey had been the commander in Iraq for two years.

As American military units rotated in and out, rarely serving more than a year, Casey had remained the one constant, seeing it all, trying to understand - and end - this maddening war in this maddening land.

Recently, there had been some positive news in Iraq. A week earlier, US forces had killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man Osama bin Laden had declared the “Prince of Al-Qa'ida in Iraq” and the terrorist organisation's in-country operational commander. And the previous month, after three elections and months of delay, Nouri al-Maliki finally had taken office as the country's first permanent Prime Minister. Now, in the warm Baghdad dusk, the President and the general lit thin cigars.

“We have to win,” Bush insisted, repeating his public and private mantra. Casey had heard the President's line dozens of times. “I'm with you,” he replied. “I understand that. But to win, we have to draw down. We have to bring our force levels down to ones that are sustainable both for them and for us.”

Casey felt that the Iraqis, a proud people and resistant to the Western occupation, needed to take over. The large, visible US force was ultimately a sign of disrespect. Worse, the prolonged occupation was making the Iraqis dependent. Each time additional US troops arrived, they soon seemed indispensable. The Iraqis needed to take back their country and their self-respect, so central to Arab culture. They needed to fight their own war and run their own government; they were doing neither.

Casey studied Bush's face, now wrinkled and showing its 59 years, the right eye slightly more closed than the left under graying, full eyebrows.

The general had pushed for a drawdown for two years. And while the President had always approved the strategy, he no longer seemed to buy Casey's argument. “I know I've got work to do to convince you of that,” the general said, “but I firmly believe that.”

Bush looked sceptical. “I need to do a better job explaining to you” why winning means getting out, Casey said. “You do,” Bush replied.

Casey had long concluded that one big problem with the war was the President himself. He later told a colleague in private that he had the impression that Bush reflected the “radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, ‘Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeed.’” Since the beginning, the President had viewed the war in conventional terms, repeatedly asking how many of the various enemies had been captured or killed.

The real battle, Casey believed, was to prepare the Iraqis to protect and govern themselves.

This is an edited extract from The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, by Bob Woodward, published by Simon & Schuster,price to come. Read the full extract in The Weekend Australian tomorrow. (Petraeus, officially commanding general, Multi-National Force - Iraq, later this month assumes a promotion as commander of the US Central Command, which includes the Middle East and Central Asia.)

Fury in Iraq as Bob Woodward claims US spied on Nouri al-Maliki

Iraq is demanding an explanation from the United States after allegations that US intelligence agencies have been spying on Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister and other government officials.

If the claims, made in a new book by veteran investigative reporter Bob Woodward, prove to be true they will “cast a shadow” over relations between Baghdad and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US intelligence services, an Iraqi government spokesman said yesterday.

“If it is true, if it is a fact, it reflects that there is no trust and it reflects also that the institutions in the United States are used to spy on their friends and their enemies in the same way,” Dr Ali al-Dabbagh told The Times.

“If it is true it casts a shadow on the future relations with such institutions,” he said. “We will raise this with the American side and we will ask for an explanation.”

The comments came in response to excerpts from Mr Woodward's latest book, which claimed that US intelligence agencies “know everything” Mr al-Maliki says.

It also alleges that they have been spying on his staff and others within the Iraqi Government at a time when both sides were working together to defeat the bloody insurgency that consumed Iraq in 2006 and early 2007.

A US embassy spokeswoman in Baghdad declined to comment on the revelations in The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008.

The book, due to be published on Monday, also claims that a “surge” last year of almost 30,000 additional US troops into Baghdad and the surrounding area was not the primary reason behind a drop in the violence in recent months.

Instead, it alludes to “groundbreaking” new covert techniques that enabled US military and intelligence officials to pinpoint and kill key insurgent leaders, including senior members of al-Qaeda in Iraq. It declines to give more details, however, to avoid revealing state secrets.

Mr Woodward's book, his fourth on President Bush's handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, portrays the rifts that plagued the Bush Administration as the troop surge policy was devised against a backdrop of escalating bloodshed.

He writes that top generals staged a “near revolt” in late 2006, fearing that their advice was not reaching the President.

General David Petraeus, the current top military commander in Iraq, is portrayed in a positive light. However, as the man who implemented Mr Bush's new policy on the ground, his predecessor, General George Casey, is seen as falling out of favour with the President.

Away from the political and military wranglings in Washington, the book describes the development of a close working relationship between Mr Bush and the Iraqi Prime Minister, with the American President encouraging Mr al-Maliki to take decisive action against sectarianism.

Mr Woodward, an associate editor at The Washington Post, wrote that one official with knowledge of the surveillance activities recognised the sensitivity of the issue and then asked, “Would it be better if we didn't?”.

A senior aide to Mr al-Maliki expressed regret at the spying allegations if they were valid.

“If it's correct I feel sorry because the relation between Iraq and the United States should be on a level of trust and of co-operation rather than of spying and a lack of trust,” Sadiq alRikabi told The Times.

The aide said that he would not be able to tell if his whole office was full of bugging devices, adding: “I am not a professional in that field.”

It is unclear what damage the spying allegations will do to relations between Iraq and the United States if proved to be true.

At present, Mr al-Maliki's offices as well as other key government buildings are just down the road from the US Embassy inside the fortified green zone in Baghdad.

US advisers work side by side with their Iraqi counterparts at various Iraqi ministries, while US, British and other coalition officials attend weekly top-level security meetings with the Iraqi leader and other senior government officials.

Mr al-Maliki, who was sworn in as Prime Minister in May 2006, has led Iraq through some of its most turbulent postwar months and, more recently, a dramatic drop in the violence.

He was seen initially by the Bush Administration as weak and ineffective as daily bombings and sectarian killings raged across the country at the hands of Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda and the Shia al-Mahdi Army. But that image changed thanks in part to the surge.

Boosting his secular credentials, the Shia Prime Minister, 58, has also headed crackdowns on Shia militants in the southern city of Basra as well as the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, while attacking al-Qaeda strongholds in the north.

The words of Woodward

— Bob Woodward's career as a journalist began badly. In a trial fortnight at The Washington Post in 1970 he wrote 17 stories and had none published

— He unearthed the Watergate scandal after only nine months at The Washington Post, while working night shifts. He was assigned to cover the story along with a younger but more experienced reporter, Carl Bernstein.

— Much of their information came from one of Woodward's contacts, named Deep Throat.

— He was later revealed, although not by Woodward, to be W. Mark Felt Sr, an FBI agent

— Through the years he has accumulated some critics: one dubbed him a “mindless Sir Edmund Hillary: he climbs for the detail because it is there, gettable by him, even if it tells us nothing”.

— In the late 1980s his reputation suffered a blow with claims that he had faked or exaggerated a deathbed interview with William Casey, a former Director of the CIA

—More recently he has built a formidable reputation on the strength and depth of his contacts. High ranking officials in the White House and the security services talk to him in depth on and off the record. He has written 15 books

Iraq politician Ahmad Chalabi survives assassination attempt

A suicide bomber tried to assassinate politician Ahmad Chalabi on Friday night, killing six of his guards when he rammed his car into the Shiite Muslim politician's speeding convoy, Chalabi's spokesman said.

Chalabi, who has survived at least three previous attempts on his life, was returning to his home in the west Baghdad district of Mansour when the bomber in a sport utility vehicle struck, spokesman Iyad Kadhim Sabti said. At least 17 people were wounded, including nine of Chalabi's guards, police said. Chalabi was unharmed.

It was not clear who was behind the attack, Sabti added. The blast, not far from the politician's compound, was heard across the capital.

Chalabi, a former exile who returned to Iraq during the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, travels around Baghdad regularly in heavily protected convoys. Until last month, he headed a committee on public services for the capital, and had served during parts of 2005 and 2006 as deputy prime minister and acting oil minister.

A longtime darling of Washington neoconservatives in and out of the Bush administration, Chalabi provided much of the faulty intelligence on the late dictator Saddam Hussein's weapons program that President Bush used to justify the invasion. His relationship with the White House faltered after U.S. forces failed to find any evidence that Hussein had an active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons program and the information Chalabi supplied was discredited.

Chalabi ran for election on his own slate in Iraq's last national balloting but failed to win a seat in parliament. He has managed to remain a player in Iraq's political arena because of his chairmanship of the country's de-Baathification commission, which purged members of Hussein's regime from state jobs, and his ability to juggle disparate alliances. Chalabi has forged relationships with anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's populist movement, as well as some members of the largely Sunni Arab, U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq paramilitary program.

Despite a drop in violence in the last year, assassination attempts targeting civil servants and prominent individuals continue to occur routinely in Baghdad. Earlier Friday, gunmen with silencers killed a civilian advisor to the Defense Ministry, Abdul Amir Hassan Abbas, as he drove through east Baghdad, police said.

Also Friday, the government said it would question U.S. officials about allegations, in a new book by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, that America has been spying on Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

"If it is true, if it is a fact, it reflects that there is no trust and it reflects also that the institutions in the United States are used to spy on their friends and their enemies in the same way," government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said in an e-mailed statement.

He warned that the news could imperil future relations with the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. "We will raise this with the American side and we will ask for an explanation," he said.

The allegations were first reported by the Washington Post on Friday in an article about Woodward's book, "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008."