Intelligence

Times - Bush told to tame his warring aides

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

Tony Allen-Mills, Washingon

ASKED recently which of his squabbling aides was in charge of policy towards Iraq, President George W Bush replied: “The person who is in charge is me.”
After a month of bureaucratic backstabbing, malicious leaks and steadily disintegrating discipline at the heart of his administration, Bush will come under pressure this week to prove that he is not losing his grip.

A series of embarrassing rows over his handling of both the international war against terrorism and the economy has raised new questions about Bush’s ability to forge a coherent policy that will secure his re-election next year.

Returning to Washington on Friday after a week-long tour of Asia, Bush found the capital seething with resentment and revolt at the increasingly erratic antics of Donald Rumsfeld, his veteran defence secretary.

The Treasury secretary, John Snow, was also in bad odour after remarks about possible interest rate rises triggered a wave of selling in government bonds and obliged the White House to issue a correction.

Compounding the sense of raggedness in a once formidable administration, 19 Republican senators defied the White House by voting to reject Bush’s policy of restrictions on Americans travelling to Cuba; an even bigger Republican revolt added $1 billion to his budget deficit problems in a vote increasing aid for local election costs.

With attacks mounting on US forces in Iraq — five soldiers were injured yesterday when a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down by ground fire near Tikrit — and yet another row over a Pentagon general who compared Islamic militants to satanic forces, some of the president’s supporters were urging him to crack his whip.

“The president has to come back and get his house in order,” said a Washington source close to the administration. “He has to call these guys in and tell them: this is the policy, now get behind it.”

The main threat to the president’s authority last week came from the Pentagon, where Rumsfeld has been fighting a losing battle to control the war against terrorism. Earlier this month Rumsfeld was snubbed when Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, rearranged responsibilities for Iraq and Afghanistan without consulting the Pentagon.

Rummy’s revenge — as many insiders in Washington saw it — came in the form of a leaked memo in which the 71-year-old defence secretary questioned whether America was “winning or losing” the war on terror. In a startling departure from his previous insistence that everything has gone according to plan, Rumsfeld admitted to “mixed results” against Al-Qaeda and warned that ultimate victory would require “a long, hard slog”.

For White House aides who have been battling to persuade America that it has been misled by the media focus on bad news from Iraq, Rumsfeld’s memo amounted to a slap in the face. For the rest of Washington, the fact that it was leaked at all signalled a dangerous new phase in administration infighting.

Some reports suggested Rumsfeld was “furious” that a memo addressed to only four people should have turned up in USA Today, a national newspaper. Others suspected Washington’s wiliest operator had orchestrated the leak himself.

Several commentators noted that the memo showed Rumsfeld in a good light. Criticised in the past for triumphalist views, he instead appeared to be offering an honest assessment of the problems that still lie ahead. Putting a brave face on the leak last week, Rumsfeld said of his handiwork: “I reread the memo in the paper, and thought, ‘Not bad’.”

The problem for Bush is that his defence secretary is still trying to direct a policy debate that is now Rice’s responsibility. The new tension between the White House and the Pentagon is further confusing US policy objectives and overshadowing a long-standing rivalry between Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, the secretary of state.

Adding to the president’s headache are continuing complaints from Capitol Hill about Rumsfeld’s cavalier disregard for bureaucratic niceties. When the evangelical Christian views of Lieutenant-General William Boykin were made public this month, Senator John Warner, a leading Republican, wrote a private letter to Rumsfeld, questioning the appropriateness of a senior army officer publicly denigrating Islam.

Rumsfeld not only failed to reply but declared he had not bothered to read the letter. “It may be somewhere around the building,” he said. One senior congressional official was quoted last week as warning the White House that Rumsfeld had become “a millstone around the president’s neck”.

With FBI agents combing the White House for signs of a mole who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent, and with Bush’s Democratic rivals feasting on evidence of disarray, senior Republicans are beginning to call for some form of mid-term shake-up.

Few Republicans would complain if the president decided to sack Rumsfeld. Other sources doubt Bush would even consider it — not least because it would amount to an admission that Iraq has become a mess.

October 26, 2003 at 01:36 PM in Special Relationship | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home