The New York Times > Books > Books of the Times | 'Plan of Attack': A Heady Mix of Pride and Prejudice Led to War: "In reporting that General Franks said in September 2002 that his people had been 'looking for Scud missiles and other weapons of mass destruction for 10 years and haven't found any yet,' Mr. Woodward adds: 'It could, and should, have been a warning that if the intelligence was not good enough to make bombing decisions, it probably was not good enough to make the broad assertion, in public or in formal intelligence documents, that there was `no doubt' Saddam had WMD.' Vice President Dick Cheney had done exactly that just days before.
... Woodward describes Mr. Cheney as having been a "powerful, steamrolling force" for military intervention, "a rock," in President Bush's words, who was "steadfast and steady in his view that Saddam was a threat to America and we had to deal with him." The "self-appointed special examiner of worst-case scenarios," Mr. Cheney, who had been defense secretary during the first gulf war in 1991, harbored "a deep sense of unfinished business about Iraq," Mr. Woodward writes, and in January 2001, before the inauguration, he passed a message to the outgoing defense secretary, William S. Cohen, stipulating that Topic A in Mr. Bush's foreign policy briefing should be Iraq.
... President Bush, the object of so much jockeying for position among cabinet members, emerges from this book as a more ambiguous figure than the commanding leader portrayed by Mr. Woodward in 'Bush at War.' In some scenes he is depicted as genuinely decisive (as in his choice to go to United Nations in 2002). In others he seems merely childish (eyeing Gen. Henry Shelton's peppermint during a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, until the general passed it over.)
Sometimes Mr. Bush comes across as instinctive and shrewd (dismissing a C.I.A. presentation on weapons of mass destruction as 'not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from'). Sometimes he sounds petulant and defensive (saying of Mr. Powell, 'I didn't need his permission' to go to war). And sometimes he simply seems like someone trying to live up to the 'Persona' outlined by his political adviser Karl Rove in a campaign brief: a 'Strong Leader' with a penchant for 'Bold Action' and 'Big Ideas.'
Mr. Bush and the people around him - most notably Mr. Rove, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - are constantly talking about the importance of showing resolve, of standing firm, of talking the talk and walking the walk. And as plans for war advance, this posture becomes part of the momentum toward war. As Mr. Bush himself says of the weeks leading up to the war: 'I began to be concerned at the blowback coming out of America: `Bush won't act. The leader that we thought was strong and straightforward and clear-headed has now got himself in a position where he can't act.'"
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