Plan of Attack

Rating:
Summary: Conspiracy of truth - Revelation of facts!
Review: The only FREE PRESS we have left is the individual author and researcher like Woodward, who makes us think and evaluate our biased corporate-media feed and mal-nurtured minds. As a life long moderate Republican, I cannot let my ideology and prejudices obscure the fact that our President is the most ignorant, deceitful, flippant, embarrassing, and shameful President during my lifetime. I'm 60+ and have voted Republican since Eisenhower. Infringement of our Constitution and Bill of Rights all under the guise of National Security does not bode well for the US and our children's future.

The author clearly knows his facts and can prove them. He outlines and reveals the massive lies, propaganda, and deceit of Bush and the neo-cons leading up to the Iraq war. An un-called for war, and a war that put U.S. Soldiers in harms way, needlessly. All the while the Bush administration was cutting military pay, combat pay, and Veterans benefits. Not to mention the billions he cut from the Veteran's Administration budget, denying aid to newly disabled veterans. Shame on them, but mostly shame on our President.

The frantic, blind, and zealous followers of King Bush, (King because he was appointed by the Supreme Court and not elected),
Rant and Rave that this is yet another lying assault on their hero.

If this is a book of lies, then why does President Bush endorse the book on his re-election site? Perhaps because, our "Republicant and donut read wells." (Sorry, my attempt at humor)

Seems like the standards of Presidential excellence; the ability to orate and write brilliantly, the deep understanding of history, politics, and the Constitution/Bill of Rights, have died. Shamefully this President has the lowest IQ of ANY President in the history of our country. Several independent studies have evaluated his IQ or lack thereof. It appears a President can start an illegal war, invade a foreign country based on outright lies and deceit, and be a hero to about 50% of Americans. What does that say about that particular segment of our citizens? People who refuse to find and seek the truth and act on it; people who value bluster, bragging, showing off, insincerity, lying, passing the buck, and puffery over intellect, truthfulness, and fairness. Read Woodward, and astute, intelligent, logical author with actual facts.

Woodward, Clarke, Dean, and the list goes on; are heroes, even if I don't always agree with them, they all have one thing in common. They give us different points of views, decent, alternative arguments, which make ourselves objective and aware. Soldiers, firemen, and policemen are heroes because the risk their lives for us every day, usually unappreciated and underpaid. Why has my president dishonored my fellow American Veterans by not having time to attend NOT ONE funeral of a soldier from a war he started. Yet he's taken more vacations and spent more time at home than ANY President in history. You cannot discount Woodward, he is a savvy Washington reporter and insider who can back up his FACTS, FACTS, and more FACTS!

On other conspiracies: if you are open minded and looking for those books begging for its pages to be turned...look no further. I just read a copy of Alien Rapture, by Edgar Fouche, which also blew me away. Fouche was a Top Secret Black Program 'insider', whose credibility has been verified over and over. I also really liked Dan Brown's 'Deception Point,; and 'Angels and Demons.' Want to be shocked, check out Dr. Paul Hill's; 'Unconventional Flying Objects,' which N-NASA tried to ban, and always read the Amazon reviews.

Rating:
Summary: Kudos for Woodward : Raspberries for Bush
Review: There are over 80 reviews of this book on the Amazon list.
Therefore, in this succinct space I will give you my brief impressions of this long book on what is turning into a long war in the quagmire of Iraq.
Bush and his team wanted to get Saddam in reprisal for the Gulf War of 1991. Mr. Bush sought to link Saddam with the 9-11 horror at the World Trade Center.
Bush pursued a policy of working on covert efforts to oust Saddam from power while at the same time working for a peaceful

diplomatic solution to the problem working through the UN.
Here is how the cabinet members stack up:
Powell-He and undersecretary of state Richard Armitage are my favorites in the Bush administration. They sought a judicious plan of working through our allies and the UN to deal with Saddam.
Donald Rumsfeld the Secretary of Defense is a technocratic but innovative Secretary of Defense. He does what he is paid to do and does it well in getting the military shaped up to deal with the nation's three pronged war against 1. gloabal terror; 2.Afghanistan and 3. Iraq.
Dick Cheney is a right wing hawk who urged Bush to go to war against Iraq.
Condie Rice's purpose in life seems to be to keep peace between Cheney and Colin Powell at State.
Woodward tells the story of our involvement in the Iraqui war from early planning to the day the war began in March, 2003.
Bob Woodward is an outstanding reporter. I consider him the best journalist on the scene. He knows the players, the issues and the Washington scene based on over three decades in D.C.
Woodward's reporting is reason for we Americans to thank our
Constitution for guaranteeing us a free press.
Bob Woodward has done a wonderful job for the American people in describing our descent into war. Excellentlly done!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, and maddening
Review: Brilliant, as one would expect from Woodward, and maddening to see how right Powell and Franks were, yet how easily they gave up the battle to reign in the zealots. A must read for anyone with even a shred of open mindedness.

Rating:
Summary: An inside look at the administration of Larry, Curly and Moe
Review: I'm still trying to figure out how George W. Bush and the people who get paid to do his thinking could not have been able to figure out that a close, inside look at the inner workings of his administration would show what a mess he has made of the presidency. Woodward doesn't have to use venom or invective, the straight story will do just fine, thank you. And I suppose when you bring together a reporter with Woodward's skill and credentials and a cocky, stubborn president who lacks intellectual vigor, you have the ingredients that can lead to a book like this.

And, what a book it is! Apparently the Bushniks let Woodward run loose among them gathering so much truth about what happened within the administration leading up to and during the Iraq war that they'll have a hard time covering up the embarassing story about what a bunch of shallow thinking, simple minded mutts they really are. I think their problem is that they spend so much time in their cocoon where no one dares utter a discouraging word or dares question the direction the true believers have already decided to take, that they really expect people to agree with them in spite of the stupid moves they make.

And, guess what? I voted for George W. I just wish I would have had an idea, confirmed by this book along with Paul O'Neill's, about what an intellectually bankrupt administration he would run. I never though W. was smart or accomplished, but I did think he would hire good people, listen to reasoned arguments about issues and make good decisions. As Woodward and O'Neill tell it, Bush, in spite of having no academic or work record that would suggest he knows what he's doing, already has all the answers (shaped only by Cheney and Rove) and doesn't have the time or energy to examine options or take the time to get it right. Ready, fire, aim!!

I congratulate Woodward for getting this far inside the administration and doing a great job of serving as tour guide for readers through the administration of Larry, Curly and Moe. Or is it Bush, Cheney and Rove? Same difference. Happy reading.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent early history of the path to Iraq
Review: Normally I don't read anything by Bob Woodward since he is one of the pioneers of journalism's modern ipse dixit syndrome. Ipse dixit is an unsupported assertion, usually by a person of standing. Woodward has specialized in this brand of 'journalism" since his "All The President's Men." The unidentified source whom we are to accept because Woodward (and at that time, Carl Bernstein) say so. Oviously that approach can lend itself to all manner of mischief, if not duplicity. In "Plan Of Attack," Woodward relies on attributed interviews with some of the primary players, including President Bush, but he also relies upon 75 unattributed sources whose veracity is unprovable, except for Woodward's claims of truthfulness. Ipse dixit: we are supposed to trust Bob Woodward alone. Sorry, but in my view, that's gossip; not history, not journalism.

The mainstream media attempted to play up this book as yet another in the parade of anti-Bush, anti-Iraq War books. Woodward, to his credit, denied that such was his intent, despite the words The New York Times and others attempted to attribute to him. (Ipsedixitism gone wrong.)

Woodward has actually produced a worthwhile, informative oral history of the path to the decision to invade Iraq. His biases are clear: this man is no Bush partisan and he is willing to bend the truth when it comes to protecting the reputations of his beloved Democrats. Early in the book, Woodward whitewashes the Bay Of Pigs disaster by calling it a CIA failure. In fact, it was a failure on the part of President John F. Kennedy who essentially betrayed the Cuban resistance with his last minute cancellation of air and other support. Not many pages later, however, Woodward spares little detail in describing President George H. W. Bush's failure to provide support to Iraqis rebelling against Saddam in 1991. Woodward does indeed have his axes to grind, though he does not make a big show of it.

Woodward's "Plan Of Attack" will not make Bush-bashers happy. He portrays the lead up to the decision to attack Iraq as an ultimately well reasoned process in which few stones were left unturned in a quest to resolve the issues without resort to armed force.

One may disagree with the motivations of the Bush administration; one may in hindsight criticize the inteligence failures that produced claims of WDM for many years prior, but in Woodward's description of events, one would be hard-pressed to find fault with Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell or any of the other key players in the Executive Branch. These were serious, intelligent people faced with a serious problem that had to be resolved: the neutralization or removal of Saddam Hussein or for that matter, any hostile government that might rule Iraq with its oil wealth and potential for creating trouble.

The invasion of Iraq may, in coming years, truly be viewed in perspective as a mistake. But opponents of the President and his policies will find no comfort or support for their views in Woodward's "Plan of Attack." What one will find is a revealing portrait of intelligent people, recognizing a threat to their nation (among many other threats) and approaching it with honesty in circumstances where not all the facts are or could be known.

It's a worthwhile early history and, for any serious student of world affairs, a must-read.

Jerry

Rating:
Summary: Haiku Review
Review: Lips curled in a
Snarl of contentious envy,
"Oil, my huge veins!"

Rating:
Summary: Surely not accomplices to evil through inaction
Review: Historian Victor Davis Hanson has argued that leaders and nations can "become accomplices to evil through inaction". However, if the US (or any other country) were to go to war with every regime that told lies or behaved badly, there would be nothing but war.
In Bob Woodwards new book (Plan of Attack) we get the inside on why President Bush launched an attack on Iraq to topple Saddam and occupy Iraq.
And as the news from Iraq gets ever more muddy Woodwards book is a brilliant and necessary recapitulation on why and how the invasion of Iraq happened.

When Bush moved into the White House CIA director Tenet had listed three major threats to American National security: a) The Al Qaeda terror network of Osama Bin Laden working out of Afghanistan. b) The increasing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and finally c) the rise of China (especially its military), but that problem was 5 to 15 years away, whereas the others were immediate concerns.
British secret intelligence service, MI6, passed on the results of 2001 operations in Pakistan, were it became abundantly clear that nuclear technology were being sold to the likes of Iran, North Korea and Libya. And obviously nukes in the hands of Al Qaeda could take out London or New York.

Certainly, that would seem like more than enough problems to deal with for most people. But in Woodwards account we see how Iraq enters the equation as yet another major problem to be dealt with.
From the highly personal level, where Bush complains that Saddam tried to kill his dad - a reference to the 1993 plot to assassinate Bush senior on a trip to the Middle East, which failed and ended with president Clinton ordering a cruise missile attack on Baghdad - to the intelligence reports that Iraq would have nuclear weapons by 2007 to 2009, Woodward takes us through the events that led to the conclusion that Saddam had to be removed.

Currently, there is much talk in the news about the fact that WMD was never found in Iraq by the Hans Blix U.N. team, nor by coalition forces, but following Woodwards account the worry was originally as least as much on future production as on present weapons. Once the threat of war was lifted Saddam had hundreds of millions of dollars, billions, to buy WMD. And Saddam had a complete weapons programs, including the scientists for the job. And worst of all, Saddam had demonstrated before that armed with WMD he didn't hesitate to use them.
And Bush were not alone in finding this troublesome: Among those who agreed with Bush we find Elie Wiesel, survivor of Auschwitz, who came on his own initiative to see Bush and tell the president that Iraq was a terrorist state and that the moral imperative was for intervention. 79 year old Henry Kissenger came to see Condoleezza Rice and tell her to invade etc.

The only thing I find missing in Woodwards account is the concern around the world of the "Pax Americana", where the U.N. is as meaningless as the League of Nations were. The end of the cold war meant the dramatic spread of liberty to many eastern block countries. The idea of democracy and liberty in the Middle East is probably to radical for most people to understand - but Woodward just take this as the Bush position, and never goes into a deeper discussion of what this actually means and why people around the world might be sceptical.

Certainly, Bush is now on the Al Quada hit list, but what history will say is not Woodwards business, nor Bushs. The book ends with the Bush quote: "We won't know. We'll all be dead."

A brilliant book though.

-Simon

Rating:
Summary: Machiavellian he may be, but no less a genius...
Review: We all know that the House of Bush fixed the election in 2000. But now, it seems that the only hope for America IS Bush. Woodward's original "Bush At War" sheds light on actions of the Bush administration as it related to the context of Afghanistan and the War On Terror. But some of those conversations and events are cast in a much different light with "Plan of Attack" as it relates to the context of the oft-disputed War in Iraq.

Many critics dislike his secrecy and distrust Bush's relationship with Saudi Arabia. What we are seeing is a strategic shift in the world balance of power. Long spearheading Middle Eastern criticisms and derogation of the West and particularly the United States, the primary concern of the Arab world and especially Saudi Arabia is the instability of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. They want to revive the Road Map peace talks. Knowing modernization is inevitable, the Saudis want to do it their way and in peace. The only problem is the unpredictable rogue element of Saddam Hussein, who threatened constantly to escalate the violence by attacking Israel, thus forcing the involvement of the US. In this regard, it was in the Saudis best interests to ally themselves with the US to remove Hussein from power.

Bush, recognizing the only way to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, to restore respectability to his family name (recall Dana Carvey GHW Bush criticism on SNL, "Don't wanna be a one-termer"), and to sate the blood-lust of former Reagan disciple and anti-communist Dick Cheney, he not only had to go after Iraq, but needed Saudi Arabia's help to do it.

The result: US and Saudi Arabia in bed together, Saudi Arabia promising to increase oil production for the first 10 months of the Iraq war to keep global economy stable, and an unprecedented alliance between the Martyrs and the Infidels. So shocking was this that the traditional US-Europe (particularly Germany and France) alliance was strained, maybe irreparably. In this regard, because of the long history of the Bushes in the oil industry and with Saudi Arabia, he may be the only one who CAN lead America because of the strength of the relationships he has with Saudi leaders. This is all demonstrated in the book.

Strategically, the alliance and the strong bonds between Bush and Saudi Arabia ensure that US will have oil when it wants it and at reasonable prices. The Saudis took a risk, breaking with Arab policy of denouncing and frustrating the Americans with the ultimate mission being closer relations with the West and resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Popularly, the view of the Arab world and Islam is that it is negative and there is nothing of any value that they can offer. Taking this view, the War on Terror and especially in Iraq is absurd, and it is jeopardizing America's security and soft power. George W. Bush should not be re-elected. However, if we can re-frame the situation and look favorably upon US-Arab alliance, as does George W. Bush, himself breaking with US policy of viewing the Arab world as a threat or a cancer, then the benefits could be innumerable. Oil won't last forever and ultimately Arab states will have to modernize. At that time, they will be completely dependent on the West. At least now, they can strategically use oil as their bargaining chip, acquiring modern power without enhancing its own dependence on the West.

In this regard, bin Laden is no different from the American public: he despises the "infidels" who encroach on Islamic fundamentalism, believing that there is no goodness that can come from Western culture. The American public despises the "martyrs" and Islamic fundamentalists, believing that there is no goodness that can come from Muslim culture. Both the House of Bush and House of Saud are risking their own legacies by breaking with traditional policy to form an alliance. Bush said he is "prepared to sacrifice his presidency for this war."

In the meantime, Arab modernization and Middle East regional peace is in America's best interests. This way, we get our oil and play a leading role in modernization. The strength of a US-Arab alliance frankly frightens the EU, especially France and Germany, which is why we have seen them vehemently protest these wars. Being so economically dependent on Iraq and other Arab states, France and Germany are rightly uneasy about the US acquisition of controlling interests in the region. England and Spain are reluctantly supporting us, diminishing each day as European regional consequences are becoming more clear. Is it not surprising that it is so important to European states that the United Nations be involved?

All this can be deduced from the book (fair and unbiased Woodward must be so he can't draw these conclusions himself). It is a phenomenal and revealing read. It is vital that you read this before the election.

Rating:
Summary: Tremendous cast, plot and play. Unknown ending
Review: Although the plot of Woodward's story is so well known, I couldn't help being petrified of the suspense by reading it. Plan of Attack has a lot in common with the best of Forsyth or le Carre. Written as a novel, with dialogue and a strict chronological order of play, you are really getting into the hearts and minds of Bush, Powell and Rumsfeld. Additional spice is provided by in-the-field reports from CIA agents operating in northern Iraq. The book is also very easy to read, even for a guy who doesn't have English as his mother tongue.

The main question, however is Why did the administration go to war against Iraq? That question is only partially answered by Woodward. Powell claims Cheney's fever about Saddam plays a very large part, and in Plan of Attack the VP is something like the Prince of Darkness. And the Prince didn't talk to Woodward, as the other main characters did. "Things didn't really get decided until the president had met with Cheney alone," as Powell noted (p. 392). The book doesn't give a clear picture of Condi Rice's position either. She seems a bit weak, but her own attitudes are very rarely exposed.

Anyway: read the book. Especially the first part of the book, detailing how Rumsfeld turned the Pentagon upside down, questioning all the assumptions in all the war plans is very interesting. The ambitions of the American army with state-of-the-art technology against an enemy without it, are pretty high. General Hayden wanted "the Iraqi military so thoroughly covered that the man in the Humvee would have more real-time situational awareness about where the Iraqis were than the Iraqis would have about themselves" (p. 217). The second part, about developing a diplomatic strategy, ("seeking support, not permission,") is also a great read.

Rating:
Summary: Essential Reading
Review: With the elections coming up, its crucial that people read and learn whats going on in the bowels of Washington. This book takes commitment but its well worth the read. A truly informative and interesting book.