Posted on 04/16/2004 6:54:38 PM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy
President's men bitterly split on Iraq
David Teather in New York Saturday April 17, 2004 The Guardian
The Watergate journalist Bob Woodward is no stranger to publishing sensations, and his latest book again unearths deeply inconvenient details for the man in the White House - and his key ally in Downing Street. The book, Plan of Attack, portrays a pre-war White House as a scheming and divided place, presided over by a sometimes hapless George Bush, driven towards war by a forceful vice-president, Dick Cheney, and an overly confident CIA.
Mr Woodward was given wide access to the White House for the 468-page book, including three-and-a-half hours with President Bush.
Tellingly, the book depicts Mr Bush as being initially sceptical over evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In December 2002, less than three months before the invasion, the CIA presented its case that Iraq had WMD, including communications intercepts, satellite photographs and diagrams.
According to a report on the book serialised in today's Washington Post, Mr Bush said: "Nice try. I don't think this quite - it's not something that Joe Public would understand or gain a lot of confidence from."
He turned to the CIA director, George Tenet, and asked: "I've been told all this intelligence about [Iraq] having WMD and this is the best we've got?" Mr Tenet replied: "Don't worry. It's a slam-dunk case."
Some of the central revelations of the book directly touch on Tony Blair, such as the admission by Mr Bush that he delayed the start of war by more than two months just to allow the British prime minister to go through the motions of appealing for broad UN backing for the campaign.
But most of the insight concerns the machinations of the Bush White House, including the early germination of the idea for an Iraq war, and the bitter power struggle to ensure that this idea stayed at the top of the administration's agenda.
Woodward lifts the lid on the personal animosity between Mr Cheney, described as a "powerful steamrolling force" who developed a "fever" about removing Saddam Hussein, and the secretary of state, Colin Powell, who was sceptical. Relations between them chilled to a point where they were barely on speaking terms, the book says.
Mr Powell believed that Mr Cheney was obsessed with drawing a link between the al-Qaida terrorist network and Baghdad, the book claims.
The secretary of state is said to have felt that Mr Cheney and his coterie had "established what amounted to a separate government". The vice-president, for his part, believed that Mr Powell was mainly concerned with his own popularity.
Mr Cheney told friends at a private dinner he hosted to celebrate the outcome of the war that Mr Powell was a problem and "always had major reservations about what we were trying to do".
When on March 19 2003, the White House was deciding whether to move against Saddam before the expiration of a 48-hour deadline for him to leave the country, Mr Cheney was again bullish, against the advice of General Tommy Franks, who was to lead the invasion of Iraq. The president only made the decision to go ahead after clearing everyone from the Oval Office except Mr Cheney, who is quoted saying: "I think we ought to go for it".
Mr Bush persuaded Mr Powell to give the address to the UN pressing the case for war because he had credibility, the Washington Post said.
In one revelation, the book says Mr Bush told his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to draw up a war plan for Iraq as early as November 2001. Meetings with Gen Franks and his war cabinet were held throughout the next month. Yet months later the White House was still insisting that war was not inevitable.
The president, fearful of how the decision might play in public, kept details of the meetings secret from members of his own cabinet, including the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. The CIA was also initially kept out of the loop.
In one of his interviews for the book, Mr Bush said it would have caused "enormous international angst and domestic speculation" if the plans had leaked.
Gen Franks was said to have uttered "a string of obscenities" when asked to come up with a war plan while fighting the Afghanistan conflict.
Mr Bush himself comes across in the book as strong on faith but weak on his sense of history. He said he was prepared to "risk my presidency to do what I think is right", and described praying as he walked outside the Oval Office after giving the order to begin combat operations against Iraq on March 19 2003.
But asked how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."
If they don't, he just makes stuff up and attributes it to them.
They discredit and belittle those lost in action fighting for their freedoms and dishonor their ultimate sacrifice.
I thought that's what you happens when you do talk to him.
Because they all knew that Colin Powell has made a career out of leaking stuff to Woodward, so it was better for them to talk to Woodward to get their side of the story out there.
I don't think the book contains anything particularly startling.
Bush asked for a new Iraq war plan because the old one was out of date (during a time when Iraq was routinely shooting at planes in the no-fly zone and not complying with UN resolutions). Bush wanted to make sure that the WMD evidence would be easily understood by "Joe Public". Cheney and Powell disagreed about what to do about Iraq. Bush delayed things to provide cover for Blair. Just about all of this was already known.
Woodward is going on 60 Minutes this Sunday, I believe.
So if only Bush and Cheney were in the room, who could quote Cheney?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.