A friend involved in national security policy writes:
"As you might have seen, Bob Kagan just sent a lengthy email to National Review about Romney and his lackluster, qualified, and conditional support of the surge through 2007. There's another part of the story, however, that hasn't yet come to light.
"Throughout 2006, Romney requested and received briefings on Iraq from the very same defense and security policy analysts who are the architects of the surge. They flew up to Boston and met with then-Governor Romney and talked to him at length about the situation in Iraq, and made the case for more troops and a proper counterinsurgency strategy. He sat on it.
"Either Romney didn't fully assimilate what these military experts were telling him, or he just decided that the political risks of embracing their ideas were simply too high. Either way, the notion that Romney was out of the loop on the arguments that folks like Fred Kagan were desperately making, at the top of their lungs, throughout 2006 - as he tried to suggest when asked for his opinion on Iraq in December 2006, as recently recounted by Steve Hayes - simply isn't true. He got the brief - and he chose to ignore it.
"McCain also got the brief - and in contrast to Romney, he understood it, embraced it, and then fought for it with every ounce of political capital he had at his disposal."
