As an investigative journalist, Bob Woodward has solid credentials.
He has produced eleven book-length analyses of personalities and events
in American politics, beginning in 1974 with All the President’s
Men, an inquiry into the Watergate scandal. In 2002, he published Bush
at War, examining the offensive against Afghanistan’s Taliban;
in 2004, Plan of Attack, focusing upon the decision to invade Iraq;
and most recently, State of Denial, dealing with the administration’s
widely rumored personnel and public relations problems.
From Woodward’s Plan of Attack, we learned that, when President Bush had
resolved to make war on Iraq, he first told it to the Saudis before he bothered
to tell it to his secretary of state, Colin Powell, or to solicit his opinion
about this momentous decision. Powell could merely warn that there would be "consequences," but
Bush did not ask him to detail them.
Before the war, the President had emphasized that it was his duty to defend the
United States. Yet, Woodward found little evidence that Bush and his aides considered
options other than a full-scale “Shock and Awe” attack. More than
once, the President stated that he has a "duty to free people," and
that "there is a higher father” to whom he prefers to appeal.
Hardly had Iraq been occupied, then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld arranged the President’s “Mission
Accomplished” landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and picked
Jay Garner, a retired three-star general, to head a newly created “Iraq
Postwar Planning Office.” At a White House meeting, Garner told the President
how grateful the Iraqis were to him and Prime Minister Blair for ridding them
of Saddam. “Oh, that’s good,” Bush said.
Woodward reports that “Bush slapped Garner on the back. ‘Hey Jay,
you want to do Iran?’” Garner responded: “Sir, the boys and
I talked about that, and we want to hold out for Cuba. We think the rum and the
cigars are a little better … The women are prettier.” Bush laughed. “You
got it. You got Cuba.”
Woodward found Vice President Cheney to be the "powerful, steamrolling force
obsessed with Saddam and taking him out." “Cheney had been Secretary
of Defense during the first Gulf War, and to him, Saddam was unfinished business--and
a threat to the United States.” Colin Powell told colleagues that “Cheney
has a fever. It is an absolute fever. It’s almost as if nothing else exists.”
Rumsfeld comes across as an arrogant, indecisive bumbler who refuses to admit
to any serious mistakes. As Woodward saw it, “Rumsfeld micromanaged daily
Pentagon life and rode roughshod over people.” When reminded that the number
of terrorist attacks in Iraq was going up, Rumsfeld shot back: “That’s
probably true. It is also probably true that our data’s better, and we’re
categorizing more things as attacks. A random round can be an attack and all
the way up to killing 50 people someplace. So you’ve got a whole fruit
bowl of different things--a banana and an apple and an orange.” Woodward
wondered what that statement said about the Secretary.
NATO commander Jim Jones complained that “Military advice is being influenced
on a political level.” He felt the Joint Chiefs of Staff had improperly “surrendered” to
Rumsfeld. “You should not be the parrot on the secretary’s shoulder.”
The ranks of those calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation included the president's
then Chief of Staff, Andy Card, apparently with the backing of First Lady Laura
Bush. By March 2005, however, it was Card who found it advisable to resign. Asked
if
the president had expressed his full support for him, Rumsfeld was certain: “Oh,
my Lord, yes.”
As Woodward studied America’s three most powerful decision-makers--Bush,
Cheney, and Rumsfeld--, he found them anxious, but unwilling to admit to any
serious setbacks or to see any need to change course. If there is anything uplifting
about Woodward’s book, it is the observation that America continues to
have diligent and courageous journalists.