Special report—Downing Street info!
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PART 2 — IT’S HARD TO DECIDE: Had Bush decided on war with Iraq by July 2002? The Downing Street memo suggests that he had, but this matter is hard to judge—in part due to the shadowy logic of decision-making itself. After all, as commander in chief, Bush could have aborted the war at any point, right through its start in March 2003. And since Bush was saying, all through 2002, that war with Iraq was his very last option, there was never a chance that he’d tell an outsider that he had settled on war by July. “Military action was now seen as inevitable,” Sir Richard Dearlove wrote in the July 23 memo, describing his recent meetings in Washington. “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action.” But if high officials had conveyed that to Dearlove, Bush wasn’t going to convey it to Woodward. Indeed, absent particular circumstances, it’s intrinsically hard to nail down the point at which a “decision” has truly been made. Had Bush decided by July 2002? The Downing Street memos suggest that he had. But such a matter is intrinsically hard to judge, and Bob Woodward’s ballyhooed Plan of Attack simply can’t settle this issue.
That isn’t to say that Woodward’s book doesn’t shed light on the question. As Woodward notes, some members of the Bush Admin favored war with Iraq from the start. According to Woodward, Paul Wolfowitz favored such military action in the administration’s first days, a plan Colin Powell viewed as “lunacy” (page 22). And in the immediate aftermath of September 11, Donald Rumsfeld had “asked if the terrorist attacks did not present an ‘opportunity’ to launch against Iraq” (page 25). According to Woodward, “The only strong advocate for attacking Iraq at that point was Wolfowitz, who thought war in Afghanistan would be dicey and uncertain” (page 26). But Bush decided against such a war—at least for the time being:
WOODWARD (page 26): The next afternoon, Sunday, September 16, [2001,] Bush told Rice that the first target of the war on terrorism was going to be Afghanistan. “We won’t do Iraq now,” the president said, “we’re putting Iraq off. But eventually we’ll have to return to that question.”
According to Woodward, the question re-emerged as early as November 2001. On November 21, Bush ordered Rumsfeld to get started on a war plan for Iraq. “[G]et Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to,” Bush is quoted saying, in a stirring statement which seems to be fashioned for history. By December, Rumsfeld is telling Franks that action may be needed fairly shortly:
WOODWARD (page 43): “You need to look at things that you could do even as early as April or May [2002].” That was four or five months away.
The suggestion took [Major General Gene] Renuart’s breath away. First Rumsfeld had implied there was no urgency, then implied it was all urgency. The thought of starting a war against Iraq in the spring was daunting.
“Yes, sir,” Franks said, “we’ll go back and take a look at it.”
According to Woodward, the time frame of the planning kept getting pushed back, although “extensive war planning efforts” continued. Indeed, by March 2002, Woodward says that Franks was sure that Bush had decided on war. This doesn’t mean it was so, of course. But Woodward says Franks was “convinced:”
WOODWARD (page 113): That day, March 21, [2002,] and the next, Franks gathered the component commanders of the services—Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines—at Ramstein Air Base in Germany...
Franks was poised for war. He was convinced that they were going to do this. By “do this,” he meant either Saddam Hussein and his family were going to leave [Iraq] and turn his country over, or the president was going to war. Would Saddam and his family leave? As a practical matter, he concluded that the answer was no.
“This is fucking serious,” Woodward quotes Franks telling the commanders. “You know, if you guys think this is not going to happen, you’re wrong. You need to get off your ass.” This doesn’t mean that Bush had decided. But, according to Woodward’s reporting, Franks now believed that he had.
But then, according to Woodward’s implication, Bush’s judgment to go to war may have been made a few months earlier, in January 2002, by the time of the State of the Union—the address at which Bush first decried the three-member “axis of evil.” Here, we’re relying on Woodward’s judgment. But, for what that judgment is worth, Woodward seems to wink at his readers, suggesting that the “axis of evil” speech was a virtual declaration of war—on Iraq. Woodward seems to be mind-reading in this passage. But his view of Bush’s intention seems fairly clear:
WOODWARD (page 95): Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, caught the understory, calling Bush’s speech an “astonishingly bold address,” and adding, “Iraq is what this speech was about. If there was a serious internal debate within the administration over what to do about Iraq, that debate is over. The speech was just short of a declaration of war.”
The president appreciated the impact of Axis of Evil, as he recalled later. “It just kind of resonates.” It was way above the normal noise level. “When I edited it, or when I went on the prompter, I don’t remember anyone saying, ‘By the way, Mr. President, when you say axis of evil, you’re fixin’ to make headlines.’ It was just one of those phrases that caught.”
It served a dual purpose for Bush. On one hand, it sounded tough. Since Reagan, no president had so blatantly rattled the sword. On the other hand, the speech blurred the focus by including North Korea and Iran, providing additional cover for the secret planning for covert action in Iraq, and war.
That doesn’t mean that Bush had decided. But seven weeks later, Franks thought he had. “You know, if you guys think this is not going to happen, you’re wrong,” he told his commanders. That doesn’t mean that Franks was right. But it does provide some context to our murky question—a question Woodward simply can’t settle in his ballyhooed but little-read book.
Had Bush decided on war by July? Woodward doesn’t tell us. He does say that Cheney had settled on war by mid-August. Some major Republicans were talking about pursuing diplomacy through the UN. Cheney saw that as disaster:
WOODWARD (page 163): Cheney saw he was rapidly losing ground. Talk of the U.N., diplomacy and now patience was wrong in his view. Nothing could more effectively down the march to war—a war he deemed necessary. It was the only way.
According to Woodward, Cheney “deemed a war necessary” by mid-August. But there is no point where Woodward shows that Bush had settled on war by this point—and of course, in theory, war could have been stopped at any time up to March 2003.
Finally, of course, the question arises—why did Bush take that diplomatic route, the route through the UN? The Downing Street memos and Woodward’s book answer that question fairly clear. Bush very much wanted British allies in a war with Iraq. And the Brits were very firm—they had to go through the UN. Woodward describes the state of play around August 16—and he says that Tony Blair thought Bush was “committed to action:”
WOODWARD (page 161): [Powell] met privately with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who had wanted to come over for a day since Iraq was heating up. In Blair’s conversations with Bush, it was increasingly clear to the prime minister how committed Bush was to action. Straw had some of the same concerns as Powell. His message was in essence, If you are really thinking about war and you want us Brits to be a player, we cannot be unless you go to the United Nations.
Powell knew this would add to the pressure on Bush, who absolutely had to have Blair on board.
So that’s the situation Woodward portrays around the time of the Downing Street memos. Bush decides to go to the UN because he needs Blair for a war with Iraq. Cheney is troubled by this turn, because he has flatly deemed the war necessary. But nowhere does Woodward define Bush’s intention this clearly—although Franks had believed that war would come since all the way back in March.
When did Bush decide on war? Absent clear statements from Bush himself, it’s impossible to settle such a question. Throughout the summer and fall of 2002, Bush was publicly saying he hoped to avoid war; given that fact, there was no chance that he’d tell Woodward different. But one thing is clear in Plan of Attack; right around the time of the Downing Street memo, Woodward clearly portrays the Admin starting to “fix” the intelligence. Did the Bush Admin “fix the facts and the intelligence” around the time of the Downing Street memo? On that question, Plan of Attack is quite clear. Was the nation lied into war? The Downing Street memo suggests that it was—and Woodward’s book backs up that suggestion. Woodward shows the bald dissembling starting in August—dissembling that the liberal and Democratic establishments haven’t yet been bright enough to nail down.
TOMORROW—PART 3: Pimping the nukes
FRIDAY—PART 4: Bungling the argument
SATURDAY: Attack’s widely-pimped misdirection
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