In an hourlong interview with Charlie Rose that aired Nov. 21, the night before Thanksgiving, the former presidential strategist (and now an occasional NEWSWEEK commentator) claimed that "one of the untold stories about the war" is that the White House never wanted the Congress to vote on the resolution authorizing the president to wage war in Iraq before the 2002 midterm elections. Rove said he would tell the full story in the book he is currently writing. But he offered the first eyebrow-raising glimpse in the Rose interview.

"I just told you the administration was opposed to voting on it [Iraq] in the fall of 2002," Rove said.

"Because?" Rose asked.

"Because we didn't think it belonged within the confines of the election. There was an election coming up within a matter of weeks. We thought it made it too political … It seemed to make things move too fast. There were things that needed to be done to bring along allies and potential allies abroad."

Rove's comments seem to fly in the face of a barrage of White House speeches and pronouncements pushing for a quick vote on the Iraq war resolution in the fall of 2002 to deal with what Bush called a threat of "unique urgency." The White House launched its campaign for an Iraq war resolution by calling congressional leaders to a meeting with the president on Sept. 4. At the meeting, just two months before the midterm elections, Bush first told them of his intention to press for an Iraq war resolution before they adjourned. Two weeks later, the White House sent its sweeping draft war resolution to Capitol Hill, and began pushing aggressively for a vote right away, before members went home to campaign. "I appreciate the fact that the leadership recognizes we've got to move before the elections," Bush said at a White House ceremony on Sept. 19. All of this was no accident: at an earlier Sept. 3 strategy meeting of top White House advisers, then White House chief of staff Andrew Card "said the game plan was to ask Congress to vote on a formal resolution authorizing military force in Iraq before the midterm elections," wrote journalist Bob Woodward in "Plan of Attack," a book about the run-up to the Iraq War that benefited from direct access to key participants.

In another account, laid out in "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War" (co-written by Isikoff), a top White House aide at the time said the president's advisers specifically wanted to use the pressure of the upcoming election to force skeptical Democrats to back the president—or face being portrayed by Bush as soft on national security. The campaign calendar was driving the timing of the vote on Iraq, said the former aide, who asked not to be identified talking about internal strategy sessions. "The election was the anvil and the president was the hammer," the aide said.
  
Rove's comments are even more surprising because much of the evidence for the White House political strategy was readily available at the time. It was Rove himself who laid out the administration's plans to emphasize national-security issues against the Democrats in the fall elections that year. "We can go to the country on this issue," Rove proclaimed at a Republican gathering that January, because the American people "trust the Republican Party to do a better job of strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America."