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Petraeus said he’d need a minimum of five and that’s what he got. “I decided to go robust,” Bush said. A senior adviser added: “If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly.”

What was the decision-making process that led to the demise of Gen. Casey’s “small footprint, Iraqis have to reconcile first” strategy? If Fred Barnes’ first draft of history is correct, George W. Bush had a lot more to do with the development of the new strategy, beginning in 2006, than the general media presentation. At 5,000 words this is short as history, but long in comparison to the superficial reportage we’ve seen so far.

What Barnes makes clear is how stuck-in-the-mud and deeply wrong-head the pre-Patraeus Pentagon chiefs were. Bush faced a very delicate management challenge to enforce his decision to radically change strategy.

…But, as Bush was to hear firsthand during his visit to the Tank, the military wasn’t favorably disposed to a surge either. During the review, Joint Chiefs of Staff representatives stuck to the line that political reconciliation, not a troop buildup, was the key to reducing violence in Iraq. They also said a greater civilian effort was needed in Iraq. As for the U.S. military, the status quo in Iraq was fine.

Bush wasn’t buying that. On December 11, Bush had five military experts to the Oval Office to talk about the Iraq war. Keane, a friend of Cheney but almost unknown to Bush, made the strongest impression, arguing that “train and leave” wasn’t a strategy for winning. He laid out a case for the surge, reinforcing Bush’s strong inclination. Retired generals Wayne Downing and Barry McCaffrey opposed the surge. (McCaffrey later changed his mind.) Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Democrat, criticized the gradual retreat urged by the Baker-Hamilton Commission. And Eliot Cohen talked about civil-military aspects of the Iraq war and said Bush should talk to younger officers, not just the generals.

That afternoon, Keane and Frederick Kagan gave Cheney a full briefing, including a slide show, on their surge plan. It had been developed at AEI with help from Keane’s network of officers. Cheney didn’t need much encouraging. Bush told Cheney biographer (and WEEKLY STANDARD senior writer) Stephen F. Hayes last year that the vice president had always been a “more troops guy.” The surge neatly fit Cheney’s specifications. Keane and Kagan became a sought-after pair in Washington, a gravelly voiced general and a young professor with a plan to win in Iraq. They gave briefings to Hadley and Pentagon officials, among others.
Bush was originally scheduled to deliver a nationally televised speech on Iraq the second week in December, a day or so after the Tank session. But the president wasn’t ready. He wanted to give Gates time to visit Iraq. And a key decision–about sending troops to Anbar, home of the Sunni Awakening–was still to be made. The speech was put off until after New Year’s.

When Gates returned from Iraq just before Christmas, he brought Casey’s recommendation for a surge of one or two brigades–a mini-surge. Bush felt that wouldn’t work. He had agreed with Hadley and Crouch that Anbar was an opportunity worth seizing. He didn’t want to “piecemeal the operation” by tackling the province later. Once he’d “made the decision to cleanse Anbar and settle down Baghdad at the same time,” Bush said, it had to be five brigades.

By this time, Petraeus was a factor in the decision-making. Both Gates and Rumsfeld had recommended him. He was already a favorite of Cheney, who’d spent a day at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with Petraeus while the general was writing the new Army counterinsurgency manual. Petraeus gave a pre-publication copy of the manual to Cheney.

Though he was replacing Casey and jettisoning his strategy, the president didn’t want to embarrass him. Bush admires Casey and rejects the Lincoln analogy: that like President Lincoln he fired generals until he found one who would win the war. When I raised the analogy, Bush interrupted. “McClellan and Casey,” he said. “That’s not accurate.” Lincoln fired General George McClellan and ultimately made Ulysses Grant his top commander. According to the analogy, Petraeus is Bush’s Grant. “I wouldn’t go there,” Bush told me. He promoted Casey to Army chief of staff.

Recommended.

UPDATE: John Wixted has more analysis.