-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37785-2002Aug19.html
washingtonpost.com Bush's Summer Reading List Hints at Iraq By Dana Milbank Tuesday, August 20, 2002; Page A11 Looking for signs about President Bush's thinking on an Iraq attack? Check out his vacation reading. This vital intelligence comes from an interview with the industrious Associated Press reporter Scott Lindlaw, who went on a brush-clearing, pickup-riding, sweating-and-bleeding tour of the Bush ranch outside Waco last week. The president disclosed that he has been reading "Supreme Command," a new book by Eliot A. Cohen, a neoconservative hardliner on Iraq with the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. In his reading choice, Bush seems to be following the advice of Bill Kristol, the arch- neoconservative who has been using his Weekly Standard magazine to chide Bush for being too soft on Saddam Hussein. It is Kristol's blurb, after all, on the back cover of Cohen's book suggesting: "If I could ask President Bush to read one book, this would be it." Former Quayle man Kristol, suspected of playing puppeteer to a number of hawkish officials in the Bush Pentagon and National Security Council, appears to have added the marionette-in- chief to his act. "I was tickled pink," Cohen said of the president's summer reading selection, although Bush is no Oprah. "The Amazon numbers spiked for a little bit then went back down." (Monday's Amazon.com sales rank: 5,498) Cohen's central message is the same as Clemenceau's: "War is too important to be left to the generals." It is a study about the importance of civilian leadership and its responsibility to probe and harass the military brass, who are chronically full of reservations about any war. Cohen said this does not necessarily mean the bombing begins at noon. The book is the result of 15 years of work and is meant, he says, to apply to any military action -- not necessarily Iraq. But other hawks see particular relevance for Cohen's book now as Bush confronts doubts from the Pentagon brass about an assault on Iraq. Kristol wasn't recommending the book so Bush could have a fuller understanding of Appomattox. Kristol, in his current issue, accuses those raising doubts about a U.S. attack on Iraq of trying "to stop President Bush from setting American foreign policy on a course of moral clarity and global leadership." Kristol is gloating about Bush's reading. "I stand by my blurb," he said. Cohen himself, in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal last week titled "Generals, Politicians and Iraq," criticized people in the Pentagon for their tendency "to whinge to the press" about their doubts surrounding an Iraq attack. Bush's disclosure of his summer reading seemed deliberate during an interview in which he was otherwise less forthcoming. As the AP reporternoted: "Spotting a herd of cattle, he says simply, 'Bovine.' Minutes pass before he says another word." It is noteworthy that Bush should devote his precious time to reading Cohen's book about the importance of civilian leadership resisting whining generals, instead of paying attention to the whining general whose op-ed article appeared in the Journal the day after Cohen's: Brent Scowcroft. Retired Gen. Scowcroft argued that a U.S. attack on Iraq could backfire badly and devastate the war on terrorism. Of the dueling opinion pieces, Scowcroft's article got by far the most attention, including lead- story treatment in the New York Times. That's because Scowcroft, who was national security adviser in the first Bush administration, is extremely close to the current president's father. The informed speculation in Washington is that Bush did not ask Scowcroft to voice those views, but that Scowcroft acted on his own after hearing the former president's worry that his son was being led by hardliners into an ill-advised attack on Iraq. When it comes to foreign policy, Bush and Scowcroft, who collaborated on the former president's memoirs, have always appeared to be a case of human cloning. With Scowcroft's establishment wing of Republican foreign policy in open revolt, the Iraq policy has become a proxy war for the 30-year feud between Republican hardliners and moderates on foreign policy. The question remains whether Bush will side with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the neoconservative civilian leadership at the Pentagon or Colin L. Powell, the establishment types at State and the cautious Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of the deciding votes, Vice President Cheney, appears already to have turned his back on his old colleagues from the first Bush administration and sided with the hardliners. The other deciding vote, Bush himself, is in Texas reading a neoconservative guide to warfare. If Saddam Hussein collapses as quickly as the skeptics of an Iraq attack, everything will work out fine. � 2002 The Washington Post Company ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; I don't believe everything I read or send (but that doesn't stop me from considering it; obviously SOMEBODY thinks it's important) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. 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