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Bush calls back former defense, state department heads to discuss Iraq
It will be an unusual sight on Thursday in the Roosevelt Room of White House, and deliberately so: President Bush will engage in a consultation of sorts with a bipartisan collection of former secretaries of state and defense.Among them will be several who have left little doubt that they think Mr. Bush has dangerously mishandled Iraq, ignored other looming crises, and put critical alliances at risk. The meeting was called by the White House, which sent out invitations just before Christmas to everyone who once held those jobs. The invitees were told that they were being asked to attend a briefing on Iraq and other issues. It was unclear, one recipient said, "how interested they are in what we are thinking." Among those planning to attend are Colin L. Powell, Mr. Bush's first secretary of state and the administration's best-known and most careful dissident voice, and Madeleine K. Albright, Mr. Powell's predecessor. William Perry, who was secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, is flying in from California; he helped formulate foreign policy positions for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in the race for president in 2004. "This should be interesting," said another former secretary who received an invitation, but asked not to be identified until he had heard Mr. Bush's arguments. "It's not exactly as if these guys have reached out to hear a lot of outside opinions." In fact, no one inside the White House could recall a meeting quite like this during Mr. Bush's first five years in office. At moments he has called upon past presidents - notably his father and Bill Clinton - for aid missions to countries hit by the 2004 tsunami, and then to cities and towns hit by Hurricane Katrina. Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III was recruited to lead efforts to get debt relief for Iraq, and Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser, headed up a White House panel that reviews foreign intelligence issues, only to be dis-invited after he became a critic of the decision to invade Iraq. But never before has Mr. Bush asked such a broad array of former senior officials to show up together, presumably armed with strong opinions about issues like whether the moment has come to begin an exit from Iraq and what the United States should be doing with North Korea, Iran, Sudan or public diplomacy. Several of the officials, mostly Democrats, said they were concerned about being used as props in an effort to portray Mr. Bush as seeking what the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, recently called "common ground" on Iraq. But they said they suspected that the president was seeking to close the gap with officials of both parties who are influential in Congress, and often comment on Iraq and other issues on television and on op-ed pages. Perhaps the most interesting dynamic will be between Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell. Since leaving office a year ago, Mr. Powell has been careful to avoid direct criticism of his former boss, though some of his former aides have been blistering in their descriptions of Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (who presumably has an invitation because he served as secretary of defense under Gerald R. Ford). In May, Mr. Bush traveled to Mr. Powell's house in McLean, Va., for a quiet dinner, but Mr. Powell publicly parted company with the administration on the issue of interrogation techniques for suspected terrorists, backing an amendment sponsored last year by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, when the White House still opposed it. Mr. Bush's guests will be briefed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the American commander in Iraq, and Zalmay M. Khalilzad, the American ambassador there. "We invited them so they could hear from General Casey and Ambassador Khalilzad, so that they could hear about the progress we are making on our plan for victory in Iraq, from the military and civilian leaders on the ground," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday evening, calling the meeting part of Mr. Bush's broader effort for "outreach on the strategy." "There will be opportunity for them to ask questions and have a discussion," he said. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-01-04 |
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