In My Time - Dick Cheney [244]
The next morning, I picked up my copy of the New York Times to find another front-page story by David Sanger, this one titled “In White House, Debate Is Rising on Iraq Pullback.” It opened by saying that “White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them.” It reported that while the president and his aides once thought that decisions about the surge could wait until after General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker made a mid-September report on the effectiveness of the strategy, now some aides were recommending the president “announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback.”
As we sat in the Oval Office a few hours later for the daily communications session, no one challenged the substance of the piece, though there was speculation about who had leaked it. I made the case that the group was misreading the Congress. I didn’t think the situation was as grim as they thought it was. I went back to my office and called Trent Lott, the Senate Republican whip, who was not at all pessimistic. He said he thought the degree to which Republicans were falling away from the president had been hyped by the press. The situation wasn’t nearly as dire as the New York Times described it. Trent said he wanted to do a formal whip count before giving me a solid answer on the question of how many Republicans we could count on for any Iraq war vote. He told me he would run the traps and get back to me.
That afternoon, as White House discussions of the strategy continued, I again made the point that compromising now, before Petraeus had a chance to report back, was foolish. The Democrats would simply pocket whatever concessions we made and demand more later.
I also had an interesting visit from Henry Kissinger that day. He told me that he’d been approached by a couple of Republican senators who asked him if he would take a public position on Iraq, something different from the White House position, to give the Republicans something to endorse. He said they’d told him as many as ten Republican senators were prepared to embrace a new position so long as it was different from the White House view and one that Henry recommended. Henry had refused. He supported the president’s policy.
The next day, Tuesday, July 10, 2007, I attended the weekly Republican Senate Policy Lunch, and Iraq was the focus. John McCain was just back from Iraq and gave a terrific presentation about why we were on the right course and why it was so important to stay on it. When he finished I was asked to say a few words. My normal practice was just to listen at these lunches, but given the stakes of the Iraq war debate and the indications of dissatisfaction in the Republican Senate ranks, I decided to speak. I echoed John’s assessment that we needed to continue to back Petraeus. I talked about the consequences of failure for the United States and for our allies and the costs of premature withdrawal or retreat. I also reiterated the point that we could not in good conscience compromise on what we knew to be the right policy simply because of political pressure.
That night Lynne and I hosted some key Republican senators for dinner at the Vice President’s Residence. Trent and Tricia Lott were there, and Trent pulled me aside. He’d done his whip count and said, “You know, I think we’re going to be okay on the votes. I think we can win them all.” He anticipated we’d lose seven or eight Republicans, but he couldn’t see the Democrats getting the sixty votes they needed to block a filibuster on any measure they might put forward to tie our hands or change the strategy.
As dinner broke up, Republican Minority Leader