Bush vs. the Pentagon

Do you get the feeling that the Pentagon is sick of being stuck in Iraq? The gulf between administration zealots and commanders must be huge. One statement which particularly caught my eye was the one about "Reagan..being hard as nails." Please. When I was kid, I lived in Jacksonville, NC, home of Camp Lejune Marine Corps base. I was having my tenth birthday on Oct 23, 1983. That morning news came out that 248 marines were killed when their barracks in Beirut was blown up. A couple of kids couldn't come to my birthday party because their dads were in Beirut. (One of the kids' dad was killed.) Was Reagan hard as nails about staying in Beirut. Hell no. the first thing he did was invade Grenada 5 days later to look like war president. (Three aircraft carriers and a few thousand men to knock over a fruit stand.) Then he packed up all those marines in Beirut and left. After they all got out, the USS New Jersey shelled the hills above the city. Then we contracted the Saudi's to put a hit on a radical leader in Beirut. The Saudi's got the guy but it took a car bomb in front of a mosque, killing bunches of innocent people and wounds dozens more, to do it. So not only did Reagan look weak, he ham handly lashed out killing innocent people.

War Messages That Don't Quite Match
The president and top Defense officials have given conflicting statements on bringing troops home from Iraq. Some see a policy split.

By Ronald Brownstein and Mark Mazzetti, Times Staff Writers

This dissonance on message is unusual in an administration that prides itself on coordination and discipline.

"The president has now twice in effect overruled or corrected" the Pentagon, said Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard. "I think the president realizes how much damage was being done by the appearance coming out of the Pentagon of seeking urgently to get out" of Iraq.

One GOP strategist familiar with White House thinking said that, on both issues, the president had moved to regain control of the administration message to erase any doubt that he is committed to his course in Iraq and the broader struggle against terrorism.

So instead of encouraging talk of troop withdrawal to salve public anxiety about the war, the White House upended conventional wisdom by reaffirming the president's resolve — which they see as the cornerstone of his public support.

"Will the president pull stakes and leave because of political pressure?" one White House official said. "The answer is absolutely no. If you look at presidents for the past 50 years, you'd be hard pressed to find someone — maybe Ronald Reagan — who would be as hard as nails on this."