War of Nerves; The politicians say we're winning. The generals aren't so sure. How Bush hopes to persuade a wary nation to stay the course.(U.S. President George W. Bush on the war in Iraq)

Byline: John Barry, Richard Wolffe and Evan Thomas (With Howard Fineman and Holly Bailey in Washington and Melinda Liu and Scott Johnson in Iraq)

Generals must always speak truth to civilian power. That is the conclusion of a book considered to be required reading by many senior officers in the Pentagon. "Dereliction of Duty," by Maj. (now Col.) H. R. McMaster, argues that the Joint Chiefs of Staff failed to do their duty by failing to level with the president, the Congress and the American people about the true costs and requirements of fighting the Vietnam War. McMaster, who is now commanding the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq, has briefed at least one gathering of four-star generals. "You need to hear this," former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry Shelton told McMaster's audience, America's top 17 four-stars, over a breakfast in January 1998. The message these senior officers were supposed to take away is to be honest about foreign interventions like Iraq--to always tell the hard realities to their civilian masters.

But do they? Almost every week, President George W. Bush holds a regularly scheduled video teleconference with Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq. Presumably, this would be the time for some truth-telling. Indeed, White House aides say that it is. "The president interrupts a lot and asks questions," a White House spokesman told NEWSWEEK.

How, then, to explain the very different versions of reality in Iraq that come out of the mouths of top Bush administration officials and of senior generals on the ground in Iraq? On Memorial Day, Vice President Dick Cheney declared that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes." Yet last week, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Abizaid said that, actually, the insurgency has not grown weaker over the last six months and that the number of foreign terrorists infiltrating Iraq…