By Special Guest Blogger, Bob Woodward
In my new book, State Of Denial, I chronicle the Bush administration's tragic failures in Iraq. As usual in my investigative work, I conducted hundreds of interviews in a two-year-long quest to learn the truth, as both current and former government officials see it. But not all of these discussions made it into print. Only now can I reveal the content of some of my exchanges, such as an alarming conversation I had in April of this year.
More or less by accident, I happened to make the acquaintance of a longtime Republican office-holder, a member of the House leadership who had loyally supported the president. But this GOP stalwart was beginning to have serious reservations about the administration's conduct of Iraq policy. The source insisted on speaking to me exclusively through communications over the Internet, and would identify himself only by his AOL Instant Messenger username "Maf54." What he would reveal in these conversations shocked me.
Over the course of our two-hour chat, "54" repeatedly made his concern explicit: the Administration was badly failing the troops. Like his colleagues, he had dutifully voted for war appropriations requests, even when he felt there were far more pressing matters immediately at hand. But now his doubts - bubbling just beneath the surface for years - had grown, to the point where, in his words, they had "reached rock."
The Republican told me he had initiated contact with many young servicemen, and to a person, they expressed unease. He had tried to reach out to numerous others, but indicated that several seemed so disillusioned by the government's conduct of the Iraq mission that they refused to speak with him, either online or when he offered to visit them in person. This situation so profoundly saddened him that he recalled multiple occasions where he literally welled up at the plight of these brave young men - some just barely out of high school - who had signed up to serve their country.
As a man who took special interest in the personal security of American youth, he was particularly incensed that so many in the military seemed to lack the proper equipment to protect their bodies, and had been forced to rely heavily on their "great legs running" to escape physical harm. He told me shocking stories of soldiers so desperate to raise cash for body armor that they consented to selling lurid photos of themselves to older men on the Internet. He was unsure of how common this practice was but committed himself to doing the research necessary to bring this shame to public light in future congressional hearings.
After this portion of our talks, "Maf54" signed off abruptly. I would not speak to him again, though a Washington Post researcher later bumped into him while browsing the electronic games section of a DC-area Sam Goody's.
The source has now been publicly identified as a former Florida congressman.
You will have the opportunity to read the complete transcripts of my conversations with "Maf54" in future printings of State Of Denial, and more transcripts will appear in the paperback edition of State Of Denial, which will be released sometime next year.
