Woodward: US spied on Iraqi leaders

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(Chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-09-05 17:37

The Bush administration spied extensively on Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as well as other top officials in the Iraqi government, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, the famous muckraking investigative reporter of Water Gate scandal.

Woodward's book, "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008", says the military "surge" of nearly 30,000 additional US combat forces and support troops to Iraq was not the primary reason behind the steep drop in violence there during the past 16 months. Rather, "groundbreaking" new covert techniques helped locate and kill insurgent leaders and key members of extremist groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq, Woodward writes.

According to the Post report, in response to Woodward's question about how the White House settled on a troop surge of five brigades after the military leadership in Washington had said it could provide only two, Bush said: "Okay, I don't know this. I'm not in these meetings, you'll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do." Woodward conducted two on-the-record interviews with Bush in May.

During the interviews with Woodward on Iraqi war, Bush said "And it should be. And the reason it should be: It is the place from which a deadly attack emanated. And it is the place where further deadly attacks could emanate." The US president also conceded: "This war has created a lot of really harsh emotion, out of which comes a lot of harsh rhetoric. One of my failures has been to change the tone in Washington."

Based on about 150 interviews Woodward conducted with key players in the Bush administration, intelligence and military establishment, his new book concludes that Bush was not getting an adequate picture from his aides of problems in Iraq. Woodward's three recent books, Bush at War (2002), Plan of Attack (2004), and State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (2006), covered detailed accounts of the Bush leadership and governing style, including the response to the September 11 terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Post report says Woodward's new book portrays an administration torn by dissension, either unwilling or slow to face the deterioration of its strategy in Iraq during the summer and early fall of 2006. Publicly, Bush maintained that US forces were "winning". However, privately, he came to believe that the US military's long-term strategy of training Iraq security forces and handing over responsibility to the new Iraqi government was failing.

White House spokesman Blair Jones said he had no immediate comment. While the book is scheduled for release on Monday, the Washington Post says it will run a four-part series based on the book beginning Sunday.

As a muckraking investigative reporter with Post, Woodward, working with fellow reporter Carl Bernstein, helped uncover the Water Gate scandal that led to former US President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974.