A washingtonpost.com article Bush Planned for War as Diplomacy Continued [worth reading djf]

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Bush Planned for War as Diplomacy Continued

 By William Hamilton

  Beginning in late December, 2001, President Bush met repeatedly with 
Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on 
Iraq even as he and administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a 
diplomatic solution, according to a new book on the origins of the war.


 The intensive war planning throughout 2002 created its own momentum, 
according to "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, fueled in part by the CIA's 
conclusion Saddam Hussein could not be removed from power except through a 
war and CIA Director George J. Tenet's assurance to the president that it 
was a "slam dunk" case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.


 In three and a half hours of interviews with Woodward, an assistant 
managing editor at The Washington Post, Bush said the secret planning was 
necessary to avoid "enormous international angst and domestic speculation." 
He said, "War is my absolute last option."


  Adding to the momentum, Woodward writes, was the pressure from advocates 
of war inside the administration led by Vice President Cheney, whom 
Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force" who had developed 
what some of his colleagues felt was a "fever" about removing Hussein by force.


 By early January, 2003, Bush had made up his mind to take military action 
against Iraq, according to the book. But Bush was so concerned that the 
government of his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, might 
fall because of his support for Bush that he delayed the war's start until 
March 19 here--March 20 in Iraq--because Blair asked him to seek a second 
resolution from the United Nations. Bush later gave Blair the option of 
withholding British troops from combat, which Blair rejected.


  Woodward describes a relationship between Cheney and Secretary of State 
Colin L. Powell -- never close despite years of working together -- that 
became so strained that Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms. 
Cheney engaged in a bitter and eventually winning struggle over Iraq with 
Powell, an opponent of war who believed Cheney was obsessed with trying to 
establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and 
treated ambiguous intelligence as fact.


  Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, Lewis "Scooter" 
Libby, deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and undersecretary of 
defense for policy Douglas Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" 
office -- had established what amounted to a separate government. The vice 
president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with his own 
popularity and told friends at a private dinner he hosted a year ago to 
celebrate the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and "always had 
major reservations about what we were trying to do."


 Before the war with Iraq, Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent U.S. 
troops there "you're going to be owning this place." Powell and his deputy 
and closest friend, Richard L. Armitage, used to refer to what they called 
"the Pottery Barn rule" on Iraq -- "you break it, you own it," according to 
Woodward.


 But, when asked personally by the president, Powell agreed to present the 
U.S. case against Hussein at the United Nations in February, 2003 -- a 
presentation described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett 
as "the Powell buy-in." Bush wanted someone with Powell's credibility to 
present the evidence that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- 
a case the president had initially found less than convincing when 
presented to him by CIA deputy director John McLaughlin at a White House 
meeting on December 21, 2002.


 McLaughlin's version used communications intercepts, satellite photos, 
diagrams and other intelligence. "Nice try," Bush said when he was 
finished, according to the book. "I don't think this quite -- it's not 
something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of 
confidence from."


 He then turned to Tenet, McLaughlin's boss and said, "I've been told all 
this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?"


 "It's a slam dunk case," Tenet replied, throwing his arms in the air. 
Bush pressed him again. "George, how confident are you."


 "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," Tenet repeated.


  Tenet later told associates he realized he should have said the evidence 
on weapons was not ironclad, according to Woodward. After the CIA director 
made a rare public speech in February defending the CIA's handling of 
intelligence about Iraq, Bush called him to say he had done "a great job."


 In his previous book, "Bush at War," Woodward described the 
administration's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 -- 
its decision to attack the Taliban government in Afghanistan and its 
increasing focus on Iraq. His new book is a narrative history of how Bush 
and his administration launched the war on Iraq. It is based on interviews 
with more than 75 people, including Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. 
Rumsfeld.


 This week the president had to acknowledge that the violent uprising 
against U.S. troops in Iraq has resulted in "a tough, tough, series of 
weeks for the American people." But he insisted that his course of action 
in Iraq has been the correct one in language that echoed what he told 
Woodward more than four months ago.


 In two separate interviews with Woodward in December, Bush minimized the 
failure to find the weapons, expressed no doubts about his decision to 
invade Iraq, and enunciated an activist role for the United States based on 
it being "the beacon for freedom in the world."


  "I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Woodward. " I would 
hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty."


 The president described praying as he walked outside the Oval Office 
after giving the order to begin combat operations against Iraq on March, 
19, 2003, and the powerful role his religious belief played throughout that 
time.


 "Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's 
will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand 
that. Nevertheless, in my case 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."


 The president told Woodward that "I am prepared to risk my presidency to 
do what I think is right. I was going to act. And if it could cost the 
presidency, I fully realized that. But I felt so strongly that it was the 
right thing to do that I was prepared to do so."


 Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: 
"History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/admin/emailfriend?contentId=A17347-2004Apr16&sent=no&referrer=emailarticle

  

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/