Fred Barnes wrote a must-read article for the new issue of The Weekly Standard on how Bush made the decision for The Surge. You really get a feel for the different competing ideas on winning in Iraq, some good, some very bad like the State Departments version:
In Washington, the president got little satisfaction from the interagency review of Iraq policy. Instead of a surge, the State Department favored a strategy of pulling troops out of Baghdad and allowing the Sunnis and Shia to finish their bloody struggle. When Bush heard about this idea, he rejected it out of hand. “I don’t believe you can have political reconciliation if your capital city is burning,” he said.
Typical liberal point of view. It’s their fight, just let Rome burn.
