President George W. Bush speaks on the phone with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad from his office Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008, at the ranch in Crawford, Texas, discussing ways to stop the violence in the Gaza Strip. White House photo by Eric Draper From The Washington Post:
White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley remember conferring with President Bush during the darkest days of the Iraq war, in 2005 and 2006, when violence was out of control. In daily 7 a.m. meetings in the Oval Office, Bush reviewed "blue sheets" detailing incidents involving U.S. soldiers; he would circle the casualty figures and press his top aides for details about the deaths.
"It was pretty grim news," Hadley recalled last week. For him, however, the sessions underscored the president's focus. "This notion that somehow the president didn't know what was going on, information was withheld from him in some way, he didn't have a picture of what was going on: He got that picture" -- Hadley smacked his palms together for emphasis -- "at 7 o'clock every morning."
Few officials have had a closer view of the Bush presidency over the past eight years than Bolten and Hadley, who are among the handful of senior staffers who entered the White House with Bush in 2001 and will exit with him Jan. 20. Though the two Washington veterans did not meet Bush until his first presidential campaign, they developed a special loyalty to the president, seeking to keep his administration on an even keel through the turmoil of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the financial crisis that struck last year. The two men remained, even as well-known members of Bush's longtime Texas mafia -- Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and others -- moved on.
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My Comment: No surprises here. If there is a surprise .... it is the Washington Post publishing this story.
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