Colin Powell on the Bush Administration’s Iraq War Mistakes

Colin Powell reflects on lessons from the battlefield to the halls of power—including the mistakes of the Iraq War, his infamous U.N. speech, and the crimes at Abu Ghraib.

by Colin Powell | May 13, 2012

Chaos in Baghdad

On the evening of Aug. 5, 2002, President Bush and I met in his residence at the White House to discuss the pros and cons of the Iraq crisis. Momentum within the administration was building toward military action, and the president was increasingly inclined in that direction.

I had no doubt that our military would easily crush a smaller Iraqi army, much weakened by Desert Storm and the sanctions and other actions that came afterward. But I was concerned about the unpredictable consequences of war. According to plans being confidently put forward, Iraq was expected to somehow transform itself into a stable country with democratic leaders 90 days after we took Baghdad. I believed such hopes were unrealistic. I was sure we would be in for a longer struggle.

I had come up with a simple expression that summarized this idea for the president: “If you break it, you own it.” It was shorthand for the profound reality that if we take out another country’s government by force, we instantly become the new government, responsible for governing the country and for the security of its people until we can turn all that over to a new, stable, and functioning government. We are now in charge. We have to be prepared to take charge.

“Taking Charge” is one of the first things a young Army recruit learns. The new soldier is taught how to pull guard duty—a mundane but essential task. Every recruit memorizes a set of rules describing how a guard performs his duty to standards. These rules are collectively known as the “General Orders.”

One of those guard-duty General Orders has stuck deeply in my head all these years and become a basic principle of my leadership style: a guard’s responsibility is “to take charge of this post and all government property in view.”

In the days, weeks, and months after the fall of Baghdad, we refused to react to what was happening before our eyes. We focused on expanding oil production, increasing electricity output, setting up a stock market, forming a new Iraqi government. These were all worth doing, but they had little meaning and were not achievable until we and the Iraqis took charge of this post and secured all property in view.

Colin Powell (Jake Chessum for Newsweek)

The Iraqis were glad to see Saddam Hussein gone. But they also had lives to live and families to take care of. The end of a monstrous regime didn’t feed their kids; it didn’t make it safe to cross town to get to a job. More than anything, Iraqis needed a sense of security and the knowledge that someone was in charge—someone in charge of keeping ministries from being burned down, museums from being looted, infrastructure from being destroyed, crime from exploding, and well-known sectarian differences from turning violent.

When we went in, we had a plan, which the president approved. We would not break up and disband the Iraqi Army. We would use the reconstituted Army with purged leadership to help us secure and maintain order throughout the country. We would dissolve the Baath Party, the ruling political party, but we would not throw every party member out on the street. In Hussein’s day, if you wanted to be a government official, a teacher, cop, or postal worker, you had to belong to the party. We were planning to eliminate top party leaders from positions of authority. But lower-level officials and workers had the education, skills, and training needed to run the country.

The plan the president had approved was not implemented. Instead, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, our man in charge in Iraq, disbanded the Army and fired Baath Party members down to teachers. We eliminated the very officials and institutions we should have been building on, and left thousands of the most highly skilled people in the country jobless and angry—prime recruits for insurgency. These actions surprised the president, National Security Adviser Condi Rice, and me, but once they had been set in motion, the president felt he had to support Secretary Rumsfeld and Ambassador Bremer.

We broke it, we owned it, but we didn’t take charge—at least until 2006, when President Bush ordered his now famous surge, and our troops, working with new Iraqi military and police forces, reversed the slide toward chaos.

Unreliable Sources

You can’t make good decisions unless you have good information and can separate facts from opinion and speculation. Facts are verified information, which is then presented as objective reality. The rub here is the verified. How do you verify verified? Facts are slippery, and so is verification. Today’s verification may not be tomorrow’s. It turns out that facts may not really be facts; they can change as the verification changes; they may only tell part of the story, not the whole story; or they may be so qualified by verifiers that they’re empty of information.

My warning radar always goes on alert when qualifiers are attached to facts. Qualifiers like: My best judgment … I think … As best I can tell … Usually reliable sources say … For the most part … We’ve been told … and the like. I don’t dismiss facts so qualified, but I’m cautious about taking them to the bank.

“We broke Iraq, we owned it, but we didn’t take charge,” says Powell. (Tim Sloan / AFP-Getty Images)

Over time I developed for my intelligence staffs a set of four rules to ensure that we saw the process from the same perspective and to take off their shoulders some of the burden of accountability:

Tell me what you know.

Tell me what you don’t know.

Then tell me what you think.

Always distinguish which is which.

What you know means you are reasonably sure that your facts are corroborated. At best, you know where they came from, and you can confirm them with multiple sources. At times you will not have this level of assurance, but you’re still pretty sure that your analysis is correct. It’s OK to go with that if it’s all you have, but in every case, tell me why you are sure and your level of assurance.

During the 1991 Gulf War, our intelligence community was absolutely certain that the Iraqi Army had chemical weapons. Not only had the Iraqi Army used them in the past against their own citizens and against Iran, but there was good evidence of their continued existence. Based on this assessment, we equipped our troops with detection equipment and protective gear, and we trained them to fight in such an environment.

What you don’t know is just as important. There is nothing worse than a leader believing he has accurate information when folks who know he doesn’t don’t tell him that he doesn’t. I found myself in trouble on more than one occasion because people kept silent when they should have spoken up. My infamous speech at the U.N. in 2003 about Iraqi WMD programs was not based on facts, though I thought it was.

The Iraqis were reported to have biological-agent production facilities mounted in mobile vans. I highlighted the vans in my speech, having been assured that the information about their existence was multiple-sourced and solid. After the speech, the mobile-van story fell apart—they didn’t exist. A pair of facts then emerged that I should have known before I gave the speech. One, our intelligence people had never actually talked to the single source—nicknamed Curveball—for the information about the vans, a source our intelligence people considered flaky and unreliable. (They should have had several sources for their information.) Two, based on this and other information no one passed along to me, a number of senior analysts were unsure whether or not the vans existed, and they believed Curveball was unreliable. They had big don’t knows that they never passed on. Some of these same analysts later wrote books claiming they were shocked that I had relied on such deeply flawed evidence.

Yes, the evidence was deeply flawed. So why did no one stand up and speak out during the intense hours we worked on the speech? “We really don’t know that! We can’t trust that! You can’t say that!” It takes courage to do that, especially if you are standing up to a view strongly held by a superior or to the generally prevailing view, or if you really don’t want to acknowledge ignorance when your boss is demanding answers.

The leader can’t be let off without blame in these situations. He too bears a burden. He has to relentlessly cross-examine the analysts until he is satisfied he’s got what they know and has sanded them down until they’ve told him what they don’t know. At the same time, the leader must realize that it takes courage for someone to stand up and say to him, “That’s wrong.” “You’re wrong.” Or: “We really don’t know that.” The leader should never shoot the messenger. Everybody is working together to find the right answer. If they’re not, then you’ve got even more serious problems.

Tell me what you think. Though verified facts are the golden nuggets of decision making, unverified information, hunches, and even wild beliefs may sometimes prove to be just as important. Many intelligence analysts and experts believed the Iraqis would use chemical weapons. That was their opinion. The facts could be taken either way. My own judgment was that they wouldn’t use them. There was too much to lose. We had communicated to them that we would respond in an asymmetric way if they did, and we left them to imagine what that might be. They were aware of our capabilities.

I further believed that we could fight through any Iraqi chemical attacks. The possible effects back home worried me—public outrage and near-hysterical reactions. But I felt we could manage these. In making these judgments, I was relying on my experience and instincts. If I was wrong, the responsibility and accountability would be upon me and not the intelligence community.

It turned out that the Iraqis did not use chemical weapons.

‘It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership’ by Colin Powell. 304p. Harper. $18.47

Always distinguish which is which. I want as many inputs as time, staff, and circumstances allow. I weigh them all—corroborated facts, analysis, opinions, hunches, informed instinct—and come up with a course of action. There’s no way I can do that unless you have carefully placed each of them—facts, opinions, analysis, hunches, instinct—in their proper boxes.

Years ago, one of my best friends, then–major general Butch Saint, got thrown out of the Army chief of staff’s office for delivering bad news about one of the chief’s favorite programs. Butch knew before he walked in that he was entering the lion’s den, and he wasn’t surprised when he got thrown out. Word quickly spread around the Pentagon, as it always does when things like that happen. Not long after I heard about it I ran into Butch in a hallway. As we walked along, I offered him comforting words. “Hey,” he said quietly, “he don’t pay me to give him happy talk.” I have never forgotten that. Butch retired as a four-star general.

The Burning Fuse of Abu Ghraib

THERE’S an old Army story about a brand-new second lieutenant just out of airborne jumpmaster school who is supervising his first drop-zone exercise. He is standing there by the drop zone—a big, open field—watching the approaching planes. Standing next to him is a grizzled old sergeant who has been through this hundreds of times. The lead planes will be dropping artillery, trucks, and ammunition.

Everything is looking good and the lieutenant gives the OK to drop. The first chute comes out and deploys fully. The second one is a streamer and doesn’t deploy. It hits the first one, which collapses. Subsequent chutes get caught up in the mess and they all start hitting the ground at full speed. Pieces of wreckage are flying everywhere, gasoline fires break out, touching off the ammunition and starting a brush fire that rapidly spreads into the surrounding woods.

The young lieutenant stands there contemplating the disaster. He finally says to the sergeant, “Umm, Sarge, do you think we should call someone?” His patient reply, “Well, Lieutenant, I don’t rightly know how you are going to keep it a secret.”

Staffs try like the devil to delay as long as possible passing bad news to the boss. That suits some bosses, but it never suited me. I had a standing rule for my staffs: “Let me know about a problem as soon as you know about it.” Everyone knows the old adage: bad news, unlike wine, doesn’t get better with time.

In 2003 American soldiers and interrogators in charge of Iraq prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad subjected prisoners to horrendous abuse, torture, and humiliation. Their actions were shocking and clearly illegal.

Late that year, one of the soldiers stationed at the prison reported the abuses to his superiors and said that photos had been taken by the abusers. The commanders in Iraq immediately took action and took steps to launch an investigation. Soon after, the news reached Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told the president in early January 2004 that incidents at Abu Ghraib were being looked into. It seems that nobody told these senior leaders that these incidents were truly horrendous. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the overall military commander in Iraq, announced the investigation on Jan. 12. Soldiers were suspended from duty during pending disciplinary action.

The machinery was working, but not all of it. The pipes leading up to the senior leader were never turned on. The Abu Ghraib photos were available to senior Pentagon leaders, but it does not appear that Secretary Rumsfeld saw them, nor were they shown at the White House. A fuse was burning, but no one made the senior leadership aware that a bomb was about to go off.

In late April, CBS’s 60 Minutes broke the story wide open. They had obtained the photos and showed them on the air. The bomb went off and all hell broke loose.

I was shocked when I saw the photos. How could American soldiers do this? How could the implications of their eventually becoming public not set off alarm bells at the Pentagon and White House? Why was there no action at the top? Don Rumsfeld had been around a long time. If they had known what was going on, he and his staff would have immediately realized the dimensions of the crisis. So would the president’s staff. And yet nearly four months went by and no one had elevated the material up the chain to the secretary or the president.

If that had happened, the problem would not have been magically solved, but the people at the top would have had time to decide how to deal with the disaster and get to the bottom of it. The president was not told early.

Leaders should train their staffs that whenever the question reaches the surface of their mind—“Umm, you think we should call someone?”—the answers is almost always, “Yes, and five minutes ago.” And that’s a pretty good rule for life, if you haven’t yet set your woods on fire.

With early notification, we can all gang up on the problem from our different perspectives and not lose time.

As I have told my staff many times over the years, if you want to work for me, don’t surprise me. And when you tell me, tell me everything.

From the book It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership by Colin Powell. To be published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. ©2012 by Colin Powell.

Military Strike On Iran Should Be Last Resort
By Tyrus W. Cobb
Reno resident and former Special Assistant to President Reagan for
National Security Affairs

Does everyone believe that Tehran is hell-bent to develop and field a nuclear weapons arsenal? Many experts don’t. The Director of National Intelligence,  General James Clapper, testified that “We don’t believe they’ve actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon”. CIA Director David Petraeus nodded concurrence.

Others note that the Iranian program is still under the supervision of IAEA inspectors and Iran has not moved toward “breaking out” and producing weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium. They add that Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it has not violated. By contrast, Israel is not a signatory to the NPT and has refused to provide any access to its nuclear facilities to the IAEA. Israel probably has 200+ nuclear weapons, and three means to deliver them, and nothing is controlled by any international treaty.

This does not mean that we should not worry about Iran having nuclear weapons. As President Obama has clearly warned, “The risks of an Iranian nuclear weapon falling into the hands of a terrorist organization are profound”.  So if sanctions and diplomacy fail, then a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program could spare the region and relieve the world of a very real threat.

And we should have no illusions about the nature of the regime in Tehran. Iran is the major sponsor of global terrorism, and seeks hegemony in the Middle East. A nuclear Iran could intimidate its neighbors, and probably compel them to develop nuclear weapons themselves, Tehran might disperse nuclear devices to terrorist organizations, apart from any actions against Israel. Thousands of American soldiers have been killed or maimed by incendiary devices manufactured in Iran. The regime is an avowed enemy not only of Israel, but of the U.S.

Still, we must be extremely cautious about rushing toward a military strike on Iran. Many experts believe that the economic and financial sanctions that have been imposed on Iran, as well as covert actions, have had a very significant impact and caused severe degradation to the Iranian economy. This has weakened the position of the Mullahs and led to internal strife within the government’s top leadership. Thus, some argue, given time, the sanctions will force the Iranians to negotiate or abandon any nuclear weapons program.

How successful would an Israeli strike against Iran be?

Despite these words of caution, many anticipate that an Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities will occur soon. If so, how successful would such an attack be?

Most experts believe that any conceivable air campaign would at best only delay and damage the program. They point out that Iran has withered the attack by the Stuxnet virus, the assassinations of some of its nuclear scientists, and economic sanctions, and are now installing advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges. The elements of the program—principally the centrifuges– are being placed deep underground, too deep for any bunker busting bomb to penetrate.

An air campaign would stretch the Israeli air forces capabilities to the maximum. The key targets are located at the furthest range of its fighter-bombers. And the pilots would have to violate the airspace of at least Iraq, if not Jordan, Turley or Saudi Arabia. While it is not militarily a challenge now to fly over Iraq (Iraq does not have any air defense capability to speak of), it would, of course, further drive the Iraqi populace closer to a tighter relationship with Tehran.

American military experts have also pointed out that there is no such thing as a “surgical strike”, but warn that any conflict would involve extensive civilian casualties and be very messy. Former Vice-Chairman of the JCS James Cartwright testified that any strike would also “solidify domestic support for the regime”. He also agreed that the only way to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapons program was “to occupy the country”.

What would the Iranian response be? Perhaps it would encourage the Hezbollah in Lebanon to launch some of the thousands of rockets it has in the inventory, and push its new partner, Hamas in Gaza, to conduct incursions against Israel. It may take actions to close the vital Hormuz straits, through which flow much of the world’s oil supplies. And sensing that the U.S. is complicit, Iran would certainly send out swarms of its Swift boats against the U.S. Navy presence in the Gulf and likely employ numerous mini-drones to hamper U.S. activities.

Such an attack would at a minimum disrupt global oil markets and lead to a rapid escalation of petroleum prices and a global economic downturn.

What is unknown is what the global repercussions will be? Will this further drive China, and possibly Russia, into greater support for Iran? Would such a strike please the Saudis, or will it cause anger in the Muslim world? These questions also must be addressed.

The military option should not be taken off the table, but it must be the last resort should sanctions fail. This is what our professional Intelligence and Military leaders are saying—advice we should heed!

–Tyrus W. Cobb, a Reno resident, served as a Special Assistant to President Reagan for national security affairs.

Raising Veterans Health Care Fees:

 Breaking the Faith or Fiscal Imperative?

The Obama administration has proposed dramatic fee hikes for all military retirees and is considering a thorough overall of the current retirement system. Annual fees for TRICARE participation, the health system now in place for retirees, would go up by a factor of at least three, copays or pharmaceuticals would increase sharply, and retirees would be encouraged to seek alternative providers as proposed in the “Obamacare” legislation. Simultaneously the administration has asked Congress to look into replacing the current military retirement system by a “civilianized” 401(K)-like defined contribution system and ending the currently allowed option of retiring after just 20 years service.

The rationale for these proposals is based on emerging fiscal constraints and rapidly growing military health care and retirement costs. The cost of military health care has risen from $17.8 billion in 2000 to $43.5 billion in 2010, a growth rate about twice that of economy-wide medical inflation. As a share of the Defense Department budget, military health care costs went from 4.5 cents of every dollar spent by the Pentagon in 2000 to 6.1 cents in 2010. The TRICARE-eligible beneficiary population has grown 43% in the last decade, due to demographic trends, an expansion of permitted access to the program, and more generous eligibility terms. The TRICARE range of services and benefits has expanded and there has been a marked increase in the proportion of care that fell in the most expensive range.

Likewise military retirement costs have grown substantially, albeit not as fast as health care allocations. This has generated proposals to revamp the current system by, on the one hand, providing some benefits to those who leave the force before becoming retirement eligible, and on the other, doing away with the current system that permits retiring after 20 years of service at half one’s basic pay.

The proposals have generated outcries on the part of many veterans groups and service associations, such as the MOAA, the VFW and USAA. They regard these proposals as nothing less than a “breach of faith”, a reneging of promises made over decades to those who “have risked and sacrificed more than their fair share”. Others note, correctly, that the changes will impact efforts to continue to recruit and maintain an all-volunteer force. “Would you stay with an insurance company that raised your premiums by 345% in five years?”, one critic noted. They also charge that similar reductions on the DOD civilian force are not being requested.

Those who believe these proposals represent a breach of promises and will have a negative impact on retention and recruitment are right. Others have correctly pointed out that service in the military is unique and should not and cannot be compared to government service in general. For example, many – like myself – served multiple combat tours, separated from our families for a year at a time, and received no extra benefits. No one in the military has ever received overtime, and none are able to jam overtime, sick leave, and other forms of compensation into a retirement that sometimes exceed their last year’s salary! The strain that recent events have shown our soldiers to be under – after four, five or more deployments to the warzone – is unique, while compensation lags far behind their public sector counterparts.

Those who believe, conversely, that current fiscal constraints impose the necessity of reducing military health care costs and revamping the early retirement system are also correct. Unless such reductions are instituted, the Services will be unable to field the forces in numbers required to implement the nation’s strategic imperatives, nor buy the weapons systems necessary to insure our servicemen and women have the best equipment to conduct combat operations.

The administration’s proposals for retirement and health care revision deserve serious consideration. Both systems are growing more expensive and costs will accelerate in the near future. This is especially the case as the costs represented by the wounded, mentally as well as physically, of the current wars begin to impact the defense budget more. And that is an area that cannot—and should not—be compromised in any manner! Yes, cut the health benefits and retirement costs of those of us who are retired, but do not diminish the care and commitment to those wounded in the campaigns in the War on Terror.

However—and this is a big however—none of these revisions and reductions should be implemented unless they are part and parcel of a national commitment to trim back entitlements across the board—Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare programs, etc. Those who served our country should be a full participant in the imperative to reign in the nation’s growing debt and annual deficits. They should not be singled out nor left to bear this burden alone.

The current fiscal crisis mandates a national belt-tightening and sharing of the sacrifices needed to bring fiscal sanity to this country.

Anybody with me?

Tyrus W. Cobb

Former Special Assistant to President Reagan

twcobb@aol.com

Where the 21st Century

Conflicts Will be Fought

  Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confided to reporters while on the way to a NATO conference that the U.S. would end its combat role in Afghanistan a year earlier than expected, and will soon begin to shift responsibility increasingly to CIA and DOD Special Operations Forces rather than large, conventional ground forces. The announcement surprised—and alarmed—the Afghan government and key American allies. The White House has spent a lot of energy trying to walk this comment back, and have expressed irritation that this major revision of policy should have emanated from the White House.

The plan would represent a major shift in operational strategy, resulting in the removal of the 32,000 “surge” forces sent in to reinforce our struggling counter-insurgency/nation-building (COIN) effort. The new focus will rely more on SOF/paramilitary units to counter residual terrorist threats, elite commando teams that will target insurgent commanders and terrorist leaders. U.S. forces will continue to train Afghan military and police units, on whom more of the day by day burden of fighting the war will fall.

The Washington Post reports that Panetta’s remarks also “poured fuel” on an ongoing debate within the administration over the right mix of negotiating with the Taliban and killing them. Some officials feel that the revelation weakens the NATO/US hand before more talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar later this month.

The United States now has about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, with about 22,000 slated to come home by fall. Previously the administration had said that 2014 would see the end of U.S. combat operations, and now that timetable appears to have been moved up at least a year.

The revised strategy would appear to represent a reversal of President Obama’s description of the Afghan conflict as the war that needed to be fought (as opposed to Iraq) and the surge of troop strength he committed just last year to the war. Political and military realities have now superseded any previous assessments, as the American public wearies of the war in an election year and the Afghan partnership is fraying. Civilian and military leaders alike are disappointed by the continued incompetence and corruption of the Karzai government, the abysmal performance by police units, and the tenacity of the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

While the war has always been unpopular with Obama’s base, the conflict is enduring a lessening of support from Republicans and Independents as well. All are tiring of the seemingly endless conflict and the difficulties in changing the Afghan culture. More are gravitating to the approach advocated earlier by Vice-President Joe Biden which would rely more on Special Operations forces, raids, drone attacks, and “targeted assassinations” of key Taliban leaders.

The Panetta “announcement” also comes alongside the unauthorized leak of a NATO study that predicts a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan following the departure of ISAF forces (US/Europe). The estimate provides further fuel to stoke the disgruntlement of the American populace with the costs of the war, both in terms of lives and money, and the seemingly improbable quest for a successful outcome. Panetta’s statement will be greeted with shock, initially, on the part of our Allies, but most will be only too glad to see an earlier departure timetable.

Most likely the new approach will be resisted by the military commanders on the ground, who feel they are making progress and need more time, more money, and more troops. That’s not likely to happen, making General John Allen’s task as the ISAF commanding general much more challenging than it is even today.

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Speaking of Secretary Panetta’s bluntness, two other recent comments by the SecDef have also generated surprise and some shock. First it was the revelation that a Pakistani doctor (name provided!) was instrumental in assisting the U.S. in ascertaining Osama bin Laden’s residence and his location. This was done before the doctor could be spirited out of the country and it is far from clear why Panetta revealed this doctor’s role.

Panetta also hinted strongly that there is a strong likelihood that Israel would strike Iran as early as April, a highly unusual muse by a Defense Secretary. I’m personally not sure if this isn’t just part of a coherent “public diplomacy” (disinformation) campaign being conducted by the West to convince the Iranian leadership that an Israeli attack is imminent and they’d better become more accommodating with respect to their nuclear program. Whichever, we are witnessing a flurry of “insider leaks” from Israel and the U.S. that seem to indicate that the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran is becoming more likely. Certainly the comments from Tel Aviv are also pointed in that direction.

Meanwhile, In Tehran, the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in a defiant address, said that nothing would impede his regime from its objective of acquiring nuclear weapons. “Sanctions will not have any impact on our determination to pursue our nuclear course”, he proclaimed. Khamenei seemed buoyed by the possibility of an Israeli strike, in fact, and almost welcomes it.

What worries me is that he just might. With the Iranian economy in a tailspin, the populace increasingly disgruntled with the religious and civilian leadership, and social media stirring up the youth, the mullahs and the military may feel that the only thing that could salvage their position and unite the Iranian people would be an attack by Israel and, by implication, the U.S.

And, here in the U.S., as the 2012 presidential election moves closer, the question of which candidate is closer to Israel will be a key campaign debating point. That means that the impetus for the administration and the GOP candidate to appear fully supportive of Israel at this crucial juncture will drive positions further toward backing whatever Tel Aviv decides to do. I suspect the Israeli leadership knows that full well, and that factor may also enter into their own calculations on the timetable and advisability of a strike this year.

Keep watching—this will only get more interesting!

• Tyrus W. Cobb,

Former Special Assistant to President Reagan

February 5, 2012