Fog of War Clouds Bush Campaign
President Bush and Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-TN) on Capitol Hill, May 20, 2004. Reuters hide caption
I was in Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago and met a man who asked me if I agreed with him that the war in Iraq seems "all helter-skelter." The impression of chaos -- of losing control -- in Iraq is very strong among voters now and it seems to be affecting political judgments. Polls are showing that President Bush's handling of the war is slipping into negative numbers. A majority of Americans now think he's not handling it very well.
The pictures of grinning U.S. soldiers posing with naked Iraqi prisoners considerably strengthened that negative feeling. Americans are uncomfortable with feeling that in the world's eyes and in our own eyes, we have allowed something bad to happen.
This week, three of the men in command of the war in Iraq sat down before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The committee chairman, Virginia Republican John Warner, told them, "It's time for you to face America and face the world." For several hours, the three generals -- John Abizaid, commander of American troops in the Middle East region; Ricardo Sanchez, commander in Iraq; and Geoffrey Miller, head of prison operations in Iraq -- answered questions about the abuses uncovered at Abu Ghraib prison, and why they did not know about those abuses.
The generals said that Abu Ghraib had been investigated several times, but the abuses shown in the now famous photographs were never reported up the chain of command. They acknowledged that the International Committee of the Red Cross had reported on the abuses, but said they'd not seen the reports. They outlined a measured set of rules and regulations intended to govern interrogation procedures, and acknowledged that the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib apparently show those procedures were not followed. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) finally said, with some exasperation, "People didn't just misunderstand you, they ignored you."
Gradually, as the lawmakers spent their allotted five minutes each alternately making speeches and forming questions for the generals, it became clear that nothing was going to become clear about why Abu Ghraib happened.
And it was certainly clear that nothing senators have learned about that prison from the civilian leadership of the Pentagon or the military leadership of the war has done much to ease the concerns of the American people.
The members of the Senate Armed Services Committee tried this week to speak to those broader concerns. They asked, as they often have, if the generals have what they need to carry on the war. Gen. Abizaid said he's comfortable with the number and quality of combat troops but that he needs more people trained to do the things that don't involve fighting. He predicted that Iraq will grow increasingly dangerous between now and the scheduled handoff of power on June 30.
None of this is good news for Bush's political prospects, except that all this is happening six months before the election -- enough time, perhaps, to turn it around. His current standing in the polls resembles that of other incumbents who've gone on to lose the election, including his father, as well as Jimmy Carter. And the growing sense that this administration did not plan for the circumstances U.S. forces now face in Iraq is more bad news for the president. Bush held a little pep rally on Capitol Hill this week; members of Congress are heading home for a week's recess and will very likely face questions like the one from the gentleman from Oklahoma. The president told congressional Republicans the U.S. will hand over power in Iraq on schedule. The Iraqis are "ready to take the training wheels off," he insisted.
Yet the frustration of the generals summoned to the Senate was clear. At one point, Gen. Abizaid, with four glittering stars on each shoulder, leaned toward the microphone and said, "Our doctrine is not right. There are so many things that are out there that are not right in the way we operate for this war." He added that things that are broken would need to be fixed "to fight this war and defeat this enemy."
"This is hard," he acknowledged.