WP, Bob Woodward: CIA Told Iraq Study Group Instability Seemed 'Irreversible'; Bush talked victory

[DeepModem Mom]

CIA Said Instability Seemed 'Irreversible'
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 12, 2007; Page A01


Despite the optimism expressed by President Bush, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden last year gave the Iraq Study Group a grim view of Baghdad. (By Charles Dharapak -- Associated Press)

Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House.

For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one panel member called a "Churchillian" vision of "victory" in Iraq and defend the country's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. "A constitutional order is emerging," he said.

Later that morning, around the same conference table, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group. Hayden said "the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around," according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

"The government is unable to govern," Hayden concluded. "We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function."

Later in the interview, he qualified the statement somewhat: "A government that can govern, sustain and defend itself is not achievable," he said, "in the short term."

Hayden's bleak assessment, which came just a week after Republicans had lost control of Congress and Bush had dismissed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was a pivotal moment in the study group's intensive examination of the Iraq war, and it helped shape its conclusion in its final report that the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/AR2007071102451.html?hpid=topnews

[aquart]

1. We recreated Somalia. Ain't we clever.

[pansypoo53219]

2. and yet georgie

still thinks he's churchill.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Even Morning Joe was talking this morning about the pattern...

of this administration shutting down any voice of dissent. Really, any voice of reason, or even any voice with facts they refuse to acknowledge.