The President Who Wouldn’t Listen…

NEWSWEEK…………………….TIMEFLASHBACK…Bush: “I’m The Decider”…

Newsweek December 3, 2006 11:18 AM

Newsweek:

George W. Bush was doing everything he doesn't usually like to do. He was traveling in foreign lands (when Bush campaigns, he likes to fly home every night to sleep in his own bed). The carefully choreographed president was hit with a sudden change in schedule. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, America's thin hope to create a stable government in Iraq, had seemingly snubbed Bush and was now standing frostily a few feet away at a press conference after a mini-summit meeting, held at a fancy hotel in Jordan because, nearly four years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, it is still too dangerous to meet in Iraq. Maliki was reportedly sore because someone high in the Bush administration had leaked a secret memo from national-security adviser Steve Hadley to the president saying, in essence, that Maliki was well intentioned but either out of touch, weak or deceitful.

Time:

George Bush has a history of long-overdue u-turns. He waited until he woke up, hungover, one morning at age 40 before giving up booze cold. He fought the idea of a homeland-security agency for eight months after 9/11 and then scampered aboard and called it his idea. He dumped Donald Rumsfeld last month as Defense Secretary, although lawmakers and even some generals had been calling for his head since 2005. Bush's biggest reversals usually come after months--even years--of stubborn resistance, when just about everyone has given up...

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