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