ABSTRACT
It is no secret that the relationship between the US military and civilians in the Bush administration had deteriorated markedly since the start of the Iraq War. In its December 2006 report, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group—of which Robert Gates was a member until President George W. Bush tapped him to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense (2006)—explicitly recommended that "the new Secretary of Defense should make every effort to build healthy civil-military relations, by creating an environment in which the senior military feel free to offer independent advice not only to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon but also to the President and the National Security Council." But Bush also entered the White House with an ambitious defense policy agenda, which made continuation of the civil-military conflict all, but inevitable. According to a Military Times poll, 42 percent of US troops disapproved of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.
