A November 28 web-only Time.com article about the news conference scheduled for November 30 in Amman, Jordan, with President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki carried the headline “The President Takes Charge on Iraq,” but the article itself went on to note that the news conference is “unlikely to produce any major announcement or development,” and that “Bush is not offering himself as the Answer Man.” The article did note that the White House nevertheless hopes the news conference will allow Bush to “once again show himself to be in command” and that he is “focused intently on Iraq.” The article also quoted National Security adviser Stephen J. Hadley saying, “We're not at the point where the President is going to be in a position to lay out a comprehensive plan at this point.” While the article claimed that White House aides are eager to portray Bush as “taking charge” on Iraq, it provided no basis for the contention, except that 1) the president continues to assert that Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war despite the contrary opinion of an increasing number of military officials and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and 2) the White House has indicated that Bush will assure al-Maliki that former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, chairman of the Iraq Study Group, will not be “calling the shots” on the administration's policy.

At the same time that the article appeared on Time.com, the site's cover story -- also posted November 28 -- was headlined “The Five Fatal Mistakes of Bush's Mideast Policy,” an analysis by Cairo bureau chief Scott MacLeod. The analysis detailed five missteps in the administration's foreign policy since Bush took office in 2001, including the invasion of Iraq itself, as well as ceasing mediation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 2001, and alienating Muslims through “involvement in or perceived support of military campaigns against Iraqis, Palestinians and Lebanese.”

From the November 29 Time.com article “The President Takes Charge on Iraq”:

Get used to seeing the Four Seasons Amman. That's the site of Thursday's breakfast and news conference for President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the U.S. networks are sending their news anchors there, ensuring massive coverage of an event that the White House has said is unlikely to produce any major announcement or development. But the White House, which is eager to show that the President is focused intently on Iraq, is welcoming the coverage.

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Perhaps wisely, Bush is not offering himself as the Answer Man. Instead, his aim is to remind Iraqis that he wants to support them in solving their problems, not taking ownership of them. National Security Adviser Steve Hadley told reporters on Air Force One on the way to Estonia that Bush will be a good listener at the meeting. “We're not at the point where the President is going to be in a position to lay out a comprehensive plan at this point,” Hadley said. Instead, Republican officials have said, the President plans to announce “a way forward” for Iraq in coming weeks based on input from Congress, an administration-wide review and the Baker commission.

Bush's aides have begun to chafe at the idea that Baker is needed as some sort of savior for Iraq. Hadley made it clear that the President hopes his Jordan foray will erase any such notion. “It's important, I think,” Hadley said, “for the President to send the message to Prime Minister Maliki that while he is listening to all of these voices for ideas, is open to ideas, that in the end of the day to reassure Prime Minister Maliki that it is the President who will be crafting the way forward on Iraq and to reassure Prime Minister Maliki it will be done in a way that is cooperative with Iraq, rather than imposed on Iraq.” In other words: Baker is a consultant, not calling the shots.

Asked about all the diplomatic and military crises facing the administration after the drubbing Republicans took in the midterm congressional elections, Hadley said the President is “a very resilient guy” who has taken to heart his own message that the struggle against terrorism will be long. “Look,” Hadley said, “it's a new Middle East that is emerging. And I think he sees it as a real opportunity, but also [its] challenges.”

The first question at the news conference was about the term “civil war,” which Bush continues to reject, saying there is a lot of “speculation” at a time when terrorists had vowed to foment sectarian violence. Hadley, while also refusing to accept the term “civil war,” finally said: “It is what it is.” It was a step toward bluntness at a time when good news for the President is in short supply. In Jordan, his team hopes, he'll once again show himself to be in command.

From the November 28 Time.com article “The Five Fatal Mistakes of Bush's Mideast Policy”:

President Bush travels to Jordan this week amid a consensus among U.S. allies in the Middle East that the region is monumentally worse off now than it was when he took office six years ago. In Iraq, there seems little prospect of achieving anything that could be construed as a U.S. victory -- and as a result, it is unlikely to send the promised tidal wave of freedom crashing across the Arab world. Instead, Iraq has effectively disintegrated into a Sunni-Shi'ite civil war that threatens to spread instability throughout the region.

But the Bush Administration made five fatal mistakes that contributed to the crisis in which it now finds itself.

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Up until the week that Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were still trying to work out an ambitious end-of-conflict agreement. True, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had unleashed an intifadeh, and the Israelis were on the verge of electing Ariel Sharon -- an avowed enemy of the Oslo peace process -- as prime minister, but the two sides were still talking. When Bush became president, he ended crucial American mediation, repudiated Arafat and backed Sharon, who proceeded to expand Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. With the conflict becoming bloodier than ever, Arafat died, and Hamas, the fundamentalist party that adamantly refuses to even recognize Israel, much less negotiate with it, ousted the late Palestinian leader's party from power. Besides angering Arab opinion, the lack of an Arab-Israeli peace process that would also address Israel's occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights has encouraged mischief-making by Damascus, which is suspected of aiding anti-U.S. insurgents in Iraq and committing political assassinations in Lebanon.

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After 9/11, Bush became convinced that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons and represented a mortal threat to the West. He also came to believe that ousting Saddam would turn Iraq into a democracy that would become the model for the rest of the Arab world. Saddam turned out not to have nuclear weapons, and Iraq turned out to be more prone to civil war than democracy. It runs the risk of becoming a failed state from which terrorists run global operations, and/or breaking into ethnic mini-states that inspire secessionist trouble throughout the region.

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It was an honest misstep, but the problem began when Bush promised to wage a “crusade” against al-Qaeda after September 11, effectively equating his war on terrorism with an earlier Christian invasion of the Middle East that remains etched in the collective memory of Muslims. Since then, the Bush Administration's involvement in or perceived support of military campaigns against Iraqis, Palestinians and Lebanese heightened Muslim anger at the U.S. and undermined the political position of moderate, pro-American Arabs, including old U.S. allies like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia -- and, of course, King Abdullah II of Jordan, the host of Bush's Middle East visit this week.