Mickey Herskowitz, the writer who originally started ghostwriting George W. Bush's biography
A Charge to Keep, says that Bush was thinking about invading Iraq 2 years before 9/11 even happened.
From an interview with Russ Baker:
"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz."It was on his mind. He said to me: `One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, `My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, `If I have a chance to invade....if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."
Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow.
After meeting with Bush about 20 times and finishing 2/3 of the book, Herskowitz was fired and replaced by Karen Hughes as Bush's ghostwriter. The Bush political team didn't think Herskowitz was portraying him in "sufficiently positive light."
The Bush campaign is going to have trouble painting Herskowitz as a bitter enemy with an axe to grind since he was asked by George H.W. Bush in 2002 to write a book about the elder Bush's father. That book, which came out in 2003, was actually criticized some as being too self-serving.