Bush keeping company with Kissinger

Woodward: Kissinger pays regular visits to President Bush; Every 15 minutes Iraqi insurgents attack troops

RAW STORY
Published: Thursday September 28, 2006

According to Pulitzer-winning Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger makes regular visits to see President Bush. Woodward also blasts the Bush Administration for not telling the truth about the violence in Iraq.

Woodward is set to appear on Sunday's edition of 60 Minutes to talk about his new book, State of Denial: Bush at War III, which will hit bookstores on Monday.

"According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret," CBS News reports.

"It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week," Woodward tells Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes.

"That's more than 100 a day," says Woodward. "That is four an hour attacking our forces."

Gossip columnist Liz Smith first reported the scoop about Kissinger in her column published earlier today in The New York Post.

"One thing the book will tell us is that former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger is a regular visitor to President Bush," wrote Smith.

"The president likes to receive visits from Nixon's former and most famous aide, and he urges Dr. Kissinger to call him anytime he is in Washington," the column continued.

"This will come as a surprise to the many who think the president doesn't listen to anybody," Smith wrote.

Kissinger served as National Security Advisor under President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973, then became Secretary of State. He continued in that position with President Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned in 1974, remaining until Ford's term of office ended in 1977.

Nixon's resignation came in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, which Woodward had broken with his former writing partner Carl Bernstein.

In November of 2002, President Bush appointed Kissinger to head the independent 9/11 Commission, but Kissinger stepped down after many 9/11 families complained, citing possible conflicts of interest due to his consulting firm.

Excerpts from CBS report:

The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. "The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better,'" he tells Wallace. "Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know," says Woodward.

"The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are. Who doesn't know? The American public," Woodward tells Wallace.

Woodward also reports that the president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, "Now what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'" Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."

President Bush is absolutely certain that he has the U.S. and Iraq on the right course, says Woodward. So certain is the president on this matter, Woodward says, that when Mr. Bush had key Republicans to the White House to discuss Iraq, he told them, "I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me."

source: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Woodward_Henry_Kissinger_pays_regular_visits_0928.html
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Military Men Are Dumb, Stupid Animals
author: doubleplusgood
many people have asked about the origin of a quote from Henry Kissinger regarding military men, which came from Woodward and Bernstein's "The Final Days" (1976). Here is the complete paragraph--and for context, the one following--excerpted from pages 194-195 of the second Touchstone paperback edition (1994).

Alexander Haig, newly appointed White House chief of staff, greets newsmen in H. R. Haldeman's former office on May 4, 1973. (UPI / Bettmann)
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In their December 1975 Foreword to "The Final Days", Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein state that the book is based on interviews and re-interviews with 394 people, concentrating on the last 100 days of Nixon's administration. None of the quotes or information in the book is individually footnoted or referenced--they do mention that "we did not accord equal weight to all sources," and that "nothing in this book has been reconstructed without accounts from at least two people."

Authors Woodward and Bernstein also note that "The Final Days" is "the work of four people. Scott Armstrong, a former Senate Watergate Committee investigator, and Al Kamen, a free-lance writer/researcher, assisted us full time in the reporting, research and some of the writing."

Kissinger's quote regarding miltary men comes from Chapter 14, which extensively discusses Al Haig, Kissinger and other Nixon staff advisors' negotiations and differences over national security issues during the 1969-1974 period.

The exact, direct quote marks begin with the word 'dumb' and terminate after the word 'used'.

Here is the FULL KISSINGER QUOTE verbatim from the bottom two lines of page 194 to line 14 of page 195:

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[paragraph]
In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. Kissinger often took up a post outside the doorway to Haig's office and dressed him down in front of the secretaries for alleged acts of incompetence with which Haig was not even remotely involved. Once when the Air Force was authorized to resume bombing of North Vietnam, the planes did not fly on certain days because of bad weather. Kissinger assailed Haig. He complained bitterly that the generals had been screamin for the limits to be taken off but that now their pilots were afraid to go up in a little fog. The country needed generals who could win battles, Kissinger said, not good briefers like Haig.

[paragraph]
On another occasion, when Haig was leaving for a trip to Cambodia to meet with Premier Lon Nol, Kissinger escorted him to a staff car, where reporters and a retinue of aides waited. As Haig bent to get into the automobile, Kissinger stopped him and began polishing the single star on his shoulder. "Al, if you're a good boy, I'll get you another one," he said.
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SOURCE:

Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
The Final Days
second Touchstone paperback edition (1994)
Chapter 14, pp. 194-195

source: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/266114.shtml