Woodward's Plan of Attack Reveals Why Bush Started Unnecessary War on Iraq

By Richard H. Curtiss

Best-selling author Robert Woodward has written a dramatic book on President George W. Bush's decision to go to war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussain. Whether you oppose George Bush for starting an unnecessary war, or believe he was motivated by a real fear of weapons of mass destruction, you will find depth and insight in Plan of Attack. The book also will help you decide whether Bush believed he had a divine mission to wage that war.

When you finish the book, moreover, you will be very well informed about the various motivations of the people whom Woodward interviewed in depth. The author, who has a natural empathy and talent for getting it right, explores very frankly what each person has to say. Some of the players, particularly Vice President Richard Cheney, remain enigmatic, but it would be hard to find anyone who could do a better job than Woodward at putting it all together.

There still are some unsolved mysteries surrounding Woodward's own track record, starting as a Washington Post writer, along with his first collaborator, Carl Bernstein. Most notably, Woodward and Bernstein have never explained who was the informant, or informants, for their 1974 book, All The Presidents' Men about President Richard Nixon's White House during the Watergate scandal.

Even stranger is Woodward's book, Veil: Secret Wars of the CIA, for which he claimed to have interviewed former CIA director William Casey at his death bed. Others present seem to have seen nothing but an unconscious man who died almost immediately after Woodward claims to have interviewed him.

Woodward has now written 12 books, and is almost certain to win another Pulitzer Prize for this latest one. Written at breakneck speed, it was published in time for the first anniversary of the current Iraq war. At this point, no one knows how this war will end-as a disaster for the United States or an ultimately positive development.

Plan of Attack is so astonishing that it is hard to pick out the key highlights. One occurs just after the invasion of Iraq, as Vice President Cheney is elated when it is clear that he has triumphed in a war that he, more than anyone else in the world, had engineered.

Former Reagan administration official Kenneth Adelman, a prominent neoconservative, had authored an op-ed piece in the April 10, 2003 Washington Post entitled "Cake Walk Revisited," gloating over what appeared to be a quick victory in Iraq and reminding readers that, 14 months earlier, he had written that the war would be a "Cake Walk."

Cheney read the article and congratulated Adelman on his "clever column," which, he said, "really demolished them." Cheney and his wife, Lynne, invited the Adelmans to join the Cheneys on April 13 for a "small private dinner" with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby.

Adelman was so happy that he burst into tears at the door of the vice president's residence that Sunday. He hugged Cheney for the first time in the 30 years he had known him. "We're all together," Cheney said. "There should be no protocol; 'let's just talk.'"

Wolfowitz proceeded to embark on a long review of the 1991 Persian Gulf war. "Hold it, hold it," Adelman interjected. "Let's talk about this Gulf war. I have been blown away by how determined the president is. The war has been awesome."

Adelman said he had been "worried to death that there would be no war as time went on and support seemed to wane."

"Yes," agreed the vice president. "And it all began the first minutes of the presidency, when Bush said they were going to go full steam ahead�This guy was just totally different," Cheney said. "He just decided here's what I want to do and I'm going to do it."

Writes Woodward, "It was a pretty amazing accomplishment, they all agreed, particularly given the opposition to the war. Here was [Brent] Scowcroft, the pillar of the establishment foreign policy, widely seen as a surrogate for the president's father. There had been James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, insisting on a larger coalition of nations."

Talk turned to the current secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, and there were chuckles around the table. Cheney and Wolfowitz agreed that, as Cheney put it, Powell "was someone who just followed his poll ratings and bragged about his popularity. He sure likes to be popular. Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."

Cheney told his guests he had just had lunch with the president. "Democracy is a big deal for him," he stated. "It's what's driving him."

One of the most poignant sections of Woodward's book concerns Powell's desperate attempts to deal with the problems that George Bush was creating for himself. For a time in 2000, Powell had considered running for president himself. A genuine war hero who went all the way up the line from second lieutenant to chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Powell was persuasive, with a startling ability to empathize with others.

But Powell's efforts were frustrated by Cheney at every turn. After spending what he called time in the "deep freeze of the administration" for its first 16 months, Powell thought he had achieved a breakthrough of sorts on Aug. 5, 2002, when Bush invited Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to the White House. The meeting expanded to include dinner in the family dining room, and later continued in the president's office.

Powell's notes filled three or four pages. "War could destabilize friendly governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, Powell said. It could divert energy from almost everything else, not just the war on terrorism, but dramatically affect the supply and price of oil.

"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Powell warned the president. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You can still make a pitch for a coalition or U.N. action to do what needs to be done," he said. "The United Nations is the only way, but some way has to be found to recruit allies, to internationalize the problem."

Powell's B�te Noir

But Cheney continued to be Powell's b�te noir. According to Woodward, relations became so strained that the two could not sit down together for lunch or for any discussions about their differences.

Compared to Powell, the tragic hero, or the �minence gris Cheney, President Bush seems simplistic-and, sad to say, apparently is. Torn between Powell fighting for the reputation of the United States and Cheney, who always slipped back into the Oval Office after everyone else had left the room in order to make a totally personal aside on every question covered, the president's indecision meant that Powell never stood a chance. Like a Pavlovian dog, Bush always agreed with the last person to whom he spoke-which was always Cheney.

Bush himself seems somewhat one-dimensional in the book, because he does not seem to have normal self-doubts. The president clearly checked virtually everything with Cheney in private.

There is a certain grandeur in the president's final words in deciding to go ahead with war. "For the peace of the world and the benefit and freedom of the Iraqi people," Bush said, "I hereby give the order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. May God bless the troops."

"Tears welled up in Bush's eyes," Woodward writes.

Bush later told the author, "I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will�I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness."

Astonishingly-at least according to the evidence in Woodward's book-George Herbert Walker Bush, the president's father, seemed to have virtually no input in his son's decisions. In fact, it appears that the current president answered "only to God" and, except in moments of tension and crisis, no mortal other than himself. Bush did turn to others at those times, but only for reinforcement of what he wanted to believe, and, time after time, only after a quick private word with Cheney.

Donald Rumsfeld does not come across in Woodward's book as being as influential as one might suppose. The secretary of defense talked too much and talked too long.

A good friend of the Bush family, Condoleezza Rice became the Bush administration's national security adviser-and figures prominently in Woodward's book. A physical fitness devotee and willing presidential jogging partner both at the presidential ranch and at Camp David, Rice was always at hand. In one of their trips to the ranch, Rice became the first person Bush told that he had decided to go to war in Iraq.

Another influential person in the early part of the book is Bush adviser Karen Hughes. She might have been the most influential of all except that, due to family considerations, she moved back to Texas just when the book's most important developments were occurring. That is too bad, because Cheney's influence might have been less decisive had Hughes been around when she was needed.

Surprisingly, British Prime Minister Tony Blair stuck with Bush even though it put his own political career at risk. Despite the fact that the British public was against the war by a ratio of 2 to 1, Blair told Bush, "I am with you."

CIA Director George Tenet was a holdover from the Clinton administration, but stayed on because Bush felt comfortable with him. Tenet sometimes briefed Bush personally, but usually did not express strong opinions beyond his notes. Just before the war began, Tenet rushed to the White House to inform the president that there was a strong possibility that Saddam Hussain and his two sons might be at the same place at the same time.

This, of course, would be an opportunity to kill all three principals in one fell swoop. Although it would mean launching the war a little earlier than planned, Bush agreed to go ahead, sending a proliferation of "smart" bombs and blockbuster bombs that could penetrate deep underground to eliminate bunkers.

Thus the war began with spectacular explosions, all in an area near the Tigris River called Dora Farms, owned by Saddam's wife. For whatever reason, however, the plan misfired. Saddam's two sons, Uday and Qusay, survived, while the Iraqi leader himself, who apparently was nearly suffocated, was revived with oxygen before being taken to a hospital.

As Bush was deciding whether to launch an attack, Tenet twice reassured him, "It's a slam dunk case."

Unfortunately it was not, and the war on Iraq remains unresolved.

Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.