Perspective: A 2-Month Debate on Iraq, Capped by ‘the Big Push’

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — Even before the November elections, President Bush and his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, were informally discussing what Mr. Hadley was calling “the big push” — whether it made sense to make a show of increased American force in Baghdad to take back the city.

But when Mr. Hadley traveled to Iraq in late October, the commander there, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., repeated his frequent warning that to send more troops to Iraq could be counterproductive, because it might make the Iraqi government less likely to defend itself. By the time Mr. Bush met Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki in Jordan on Nov. 30, Mr. Maliki was insisting upon taking control over all Iraqi troops and urging the Americans to withdraw to the outskirts of his capital.

Over the past two months those diametrically opposed options — adding American troops, or pulling back to let the Iraqi factions fight it out — marked the boundaries of a vigorous debate inside the Bush administration. At one point, as Mr. Bush, Mr. Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the newly appointed secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, weighed their options, the president asked his deputies, in effect: “Why can’t we just pull out of Baghdad and let the factions fight it out themselves?”

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