Plan of Attack Book

Average Rating:

Reading this book is a bit like watching sausage being made; it's a tad revolting. After finishing Bob Woodward's opus I walked away with the troubling impression that G.W. Bush is not the strong leader he keeps telling us he is. He's more the spoiled, insensitive, self-centered, stubborn, hyperactive little boy with attention deficit disorder who likes to play cowboys and indians.

Bush is often out of touch and out of the loop, partly because of his inability to grasp complex (and sometimes even simple) issues and partly because of the control, by the people who surround him, of the flow of information that actually reaches the president. There's a line about Colin Powell's observation that no decion gets made until the president has met alone with Vice President Dick Cheney. This and other parts of the narrative serve to raise questions about who is really in charge in this administration. (Members of the 9/11 commission have recently expressed serious doubt that Cheney's order to shoot down hijacked airliners that day actually came from the president, as Bush and Cheney both testified in their joint closed-door session with the panel. A major reason for their disbelief is that the commission found no record of this alleged Bush-Cheney communication, though established protocols require that such contacts be recorded).

Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, are the lone voices of reason straining to be heard above the cacophony of trigger-happy madmen. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz comes up with a plan to overrun and seize Iraq's southern oil fields, with the expectation that the Iraqis will rally around U.S. forces and rise up to overthrow Saddam's government...the Bay of Pigs assumption. Powell, shaking his head, keeps saying "this is lunacy". In his opinion, "it was one of the most absurd, strategically unsound proposals he had ever heard."

General Tommy Franks was initially another figure who questioned the idea of going into Iraq. When asked to develop a war plan for invading that country, he was incredulous. They were in the midst of one war, Afghanistan, and they wanted detailed planning for another, Iraq? "Goddam," Franks said, "what the f___ are they talking about?"

But the headlong rush to war, vigorously promoted by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, (Saudi prince/embassador) Bandar, and others, picked up momentum and reached the point of no return. Despite clear indications that a resolution to invade Iraq would not pass muster in the U.N. Security Council, and despite the overt opposition to the adventure by France, Russia, Germany, and a host of other countries, Bush ordered the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state.

It's my impression that there's a subtle undertow, barely a hint, that sinister forces might have been at play in Bush's decision to go forward with the invasion. For example, when former embassador and Africa expert Joseph C. Wilson is sent to investigate the rumor that Saddam had tried to buy weapons-grade nuclear fuel from an African nation, he comes back from the war-torn continent with the unambiguous conclusion that the rumor was unfounded. Based on Wilson's report, a line referring to Saddam's attempt to buy fissionable materials is deleted from an early draft of the president's upcoming State of the Union address.

But the sentence mysteriously reappears in the final speech that makes it to the teleprompter for Bush to read to the world. (Wilson later [July 6, 2003] published an article in the New York Times titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa", which opened with the question "Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?" As punishment for daring to speak out, Wilson's wife was "outed" as a covert CIA agent, effectively ending her career and placing her life, and the lives of her overseas contacts, in jeopardy.)

It's hard to fathom how Bob Woodward managed, with the cooperation of this famously secretive administration, to gather all the intricate details revealed in his fascinating tome. The book is replete with candid takes of the principals and other participants in this not-very-pretty story of how the U.S. got into the sticky, bloody mess from which it may never completely extricate itself. I suspect that Woodward exploited the good will he created when he presented Bush, et al, as couragious heros in his previous book, "Bush at War". The cynic in me says that he wrote that book in order to gain the confidence of the Bush gang, laying the groundwork that would allow him the access to people, documents, and other resources essential to the preparation of the current book, a hard-hitting indictment of a dysfunctional administration.

"Plan of Attack" is a very instructive must-read for those interested in government, politics, history, organizational behavior, military strategy, international relations, diplomacy, covert operations, hanging with the big dogs, the making of sausage, and perhaps most importantly, the importance of voting intelligently.

***

The book begins shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The story continues through the planning for invasion, the buildup of intelligence, the failed UN diplomacy, and the politics at home of building public support for war with Iraq.

It is amazing how much infighting there was within the administration. How the warhawks like Cheney drove for war, and how the "reluctant warrior" Colin Powell tried to avert it. In hindsight, the intelligence failures seem obvious - but Woodward details how the administration took its assumptions about Iraq's WMD and fit those assumptions to the shaky intelligence.

Woodward does a good job of avoiding personal politics. The book is a just-the-facts relating of how the US ended up at war in Iraq. The sad thing is, there is very little in the book about the plan of withdraw.

"For example, when former ambassador and Africa expert Joseph C. Wilson is sent to investigate the rumor that Saddam had tried to buy weapons-grade nuclear fuel from an African nation, he comes back from the war-torn continent with the unambiguous conclusion that the rumor was unfounded."

Now, in fact, we know that Joe Wilson was partisan liar, and Bush was telling the truth all along: Multiple intelligence agencies and sources have been reviewed, the evidence confirmed (eg the Butler report) and determined that it was well-founded: Saddam was indeed tryng to buy uranium from Niger.

Lesson? Dont buy Joe Wilson's book. And dont believe the phony mantra of him and others on the left, bashing Bush as a liar.

More and more facts show that in fact Bush acted in good faith. Indeed "Plan of Attack" clearly backs up that thesis. This was about assessing and defeating a threat to United States. Nothing about oil, kowtowing to saudis, or some neocon rule the world plot (sorry mikey moore you're full of it). Just Bush and his team trying to protect national security in a post 9/11 world, with many uncertainties and assumptions that necessarily entails.

So the real lying partisan liars are in the anybody but Bush brigade yelling 'Bush lied'. They are wrong.

Woodward's work? It's a good book. Dunno if its a "slam dunk" though. :-) Take some of the 'private conversations' with grain of salt.