In a sign of the growing fissure between the White House and its congressional allies over the war, NBC News reports tonight that 11 Republican members of Congress pleaded yesterday with President Bush and his senior aides to change course in Iraq.

The group of Republicans was led by Reps. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Charlie Dent (R-PA), and the meeting included Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, and Tony Snow. One member of Congress called the discussion the “most unvarnished conversation they’ve ever had with the president,” and NBC’s Tim Russert said it “may have been a defining pivotal moment” in the Iraq debate.

Russert described the conversation:

[O]ne said “My district is prepared for defeat. We need candor, we need honesty, Mr. President.” The president responded, “I don’t want to pass this off to another president. I don’t want to pass this off, particularly, to a Democratic president,” underscoring he understood how serious the situation was.

Brian, the Republican congressman then went on to say, “The word about the war and its progress cannot come from the White House or even you, Mr. President. There is no longer any credibility. It has to come from Gen. Petraeus.” The meeting lasted an hour and 15 minutes and was, in the words of one, “remarkable for the bluntness and no-holds-barred honesty in the message delivered by all these Republican congressmen.”

Watch the report:

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UPDATE: House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) also attended the meeting.

Transcript: Read more

In a January address announcing his escalation plan, President Bush unveiled a broad new plan to recruit U.S. government officials to move to Iraq to aid in reconstruction efforts:

We will double the number of provincial reconstruction teams. These teams bring together military and civilian experts to help local Iraqi communities pursue reconciliation, strengthen the moderates, and speed the transition to Iraqi self-reliance.

In an effort to carry out Bush’s call, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez sent an email to employees last week:

I am asking all Commerce employees to consider supporting this important effort. The Department of State is seeking highly motivated, action-oriented, resilient people with a strong desire to assist in the Iraqi rebuilding effort. Volunteers must demonstrate willingness and ability to work in a difficult foreign environment under challenging circumstances with access to few amenities.

Gutierrez received a dismal response. Of the 39,000 Commerce employees who received the email five days ago, just 40 people responded, and the department refused to note how many of those were “yes” answers.

The Washington Post noted in February that the administration’s recruitment efforts have been met with “outright refusal to fill certain vital posts” by several other departments. For example, so many State Department employees refused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s call to serve in Iraq that she was forced to request an already overstretched U.S. military to fill their positions.

As the New York Times notes, “The reluctance highlights a problem with the administration’s new strategy for Iraq…when the lack of security on the ground [in Iraq] makes it one of the last places people, particularly those with families, want to go.”

Read Gutierrez’s full email below: Read more

Yesterday, the National Security Archive (NSA) released a 3 page pre-war Pentagon memo and an accompanying slideshow presentation that revealed the Bush administration’s desire to create a “Rapid Reaction Media Team” (RRMT) to control major Iraqi media while providing an Iraqi “face” for its efforts.

Both the memo and the slide presentation were prepared by two Pentagon offices: 1) The Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, which specializes in psychological warfare, and 2) The Office of Special Plans under then undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith. The memo explained the mission of the rapid response teams as follows:

After the cessation of hostilities, having professional U.S.-trained Iraqi media teams immediately in place to portray a new Iraq (by Iraqis for Iraqis) with hopes for a prosperous, democratic future, will have a profound psychological and political impact on the Iraqi people. [...]

In addition, a re-constituted free Iraqi domestic media can serve as a model in the Middle East where so much Arab hate-media are themselves equivalent to weapons of mass destruction.

The memo envisioned deploying a team of U.S. and U.K. media experts with a team of “hand selected” Iraqi media experts to “communicate immediately with the Iraqi public upon liberation of Iraq.” These Iraqi experts would “train the Iraqi broadcasters and publishers (‘the face’) for the USG/coalition sponsored information effort,” while an “ensuing ‘strategic information campaign‘ would be part of a ‘likely 1-2 years…transition’ to a representative government.”

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UPDATE: The January 2003 Pentagon White Paper:

UPDATE II: Inter Press Service’s Jim Lobe reports, “The NSA Tuesday also released an audit by the Pentagon’s Inspector-General regarding two dozen, mostly non-competitive contracts totalling 122.5 million dollars awarded by the defence department to three defence contractors that carried out media-related activities in Iraq after the invasion.” Those contractors included the Rendon Group, the Lincoln Group, and Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the same company that employed World Bank communications staffer Shaha Ali Riza. SAIC has said it was directed by Doug Feith to hire Riza.

During today’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he doesn’t know whether the 2002 resolution authorizing force in Iraq is still valid, acknowledging that his view differs with that of President Bush.

During his questioning of Gates, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) noted that the authorization listed two purposes for the use of force: 1) to defend the United States against Saddam Hussein and 2) enforce U.N. resolutions against Hussein’s government. Byrd asked Gates, since Hussein’s government no longer exists, “do you agree that this authorization no longer applies to the ongoing conflict in Iraq?”

Gates responded: “I think the honest answer, Senator Byrd, is that I don’t know the answer to that question.” Gates admitted that his answer contradicts that of the President, who believes the resolution “still continues to authorize the actions that we are taking in Iraq.”

Watch it:

Byrd and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) have announced legislation “that would require the president to seek a reauthorization from Congress to extend the military effort in Iraq beyond October 11, 2007.”

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Transcript: Read more

Today, the New York Times highlights a visit to Capitol Hill by Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie and reports that al-Rubaie is “trying to persuade American lawmakers who have all but run out of patience that still more patience is required.”

The Times piece fails to note that in June 2006, Rubaie was calling for a significant troop reduction. He wrote in the Washington Post, “We envisage the U.S. troop presence by year’s end [2006] to be under 100,000, with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007.”

Rubaie’s call for “more patience” is increasingly out of touch with Iraqi opinion. AlterNet reports a significant development that has yet to be noted in the U.S. media — a majority of Iraqi parliament members have signed a petition calling for a U.S. withdrawal:

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

[...]

Reached by phone in Baghdad on Tuesday, Al-Rubaie said that he would present the petition, which is nonbinding, to the speaker of the Iraqi parliament and demand that a binding measure be put to a vote. Under Iraqi law, the speaker must present a resolution that’s called for by a majority of lawmakers, but there are significant loopholes and what will happen next is unclear.

A new Gallup poll finds a majority of Americans — roughly 60 percent — are united with the Iraqi parliament.