Newsweek recaps the book
here
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Bush wanted to invade Iraq. What's striking, Bob Woodward's new book reports, is how little he discussed it with anyone
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y'know, you'd like to think that, before Bush made the decision to launch a war that killed thousands, affected millions more, cost billions, and will be a drain on the nation's resources for years (if not decades), he would have agonized over it...consulted everybody who is anybody about it...taken every conceivable step to avoid it...
but no. if Woodward has it correct, it was a done deal in his mind from day one and he hardly sought advice from anyone. the war was a foregone conclusion, and all the intelligence was gathered with intent of supporting that conclusion.
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Bush was so free of doubt about going to war that he didn't even ask most of his top advisers what they thought. Bush explained that he already knew that Vice President Dick Cheney was gung-ho, and he decided not to ask Powell or Rumsfeld. "I could tell what they thought," Bush told Woodward. "I didn't need to ask them their opinion about Saddam Hussein or how to deal with Saddam Hussein." Rumsfeld told Woodward that he couldn't recall whether Bush had ever asked him, "Do you think I should go to war?"
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war's easy when you know you're not going to die. i'm not enamored with Kerry, but i think there is a lot to be said for having a president who has been in a war and therefore might think twice before starting one.
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"Powell thought that Cheney had the fever," Woodward writes. "The vice president and Wolfowitz kept looking for the connection between Saddam and 9/11. It was a separate little government that was out there—Wolfowitz, [Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter)] Libby, [Under Secretary of Defense Douglas] Feith and Feith's 'Gestapo office,' as Powell privately called it. He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. The cool operator from the first gulf war just would not let go. Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation."
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"a separate little government"
these guys are every bit as scary as i imagined them to be. the GOP calls this behavior evidence of "character" and "conviction" in the Oval Office, but it sounds like something out of Dr. Strangelove.
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Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader says it's evidence that Bush is unstable.
"We are dealing with a messianic militarist," Nader told the Christian Science Monitor. "Talk about separation of church and state — it is not separated at all in Bush's brain and this is extremely disturbing."
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