I've been reading the recent Washington Post accounts of Bob Woodward's new book.
I have to say, I don't think it will be that helpful. There are the "bombshell revelations" of course, designed to draw interest in the book. These include whether Powell and Cheney are on speaking terms, and the question of when the decision to go to war was made (Jan 2003 if you believe Woodward). In a better world, of course, the money taken from Afghanistan appropriations to pay for Iraq war planning would completely sink Bush, but I've lost faith that anything will ever stick to him.
The filler between the bombshells, though, looks like it is trying to paint Bush in a sympathetic light. Cheney gets hauled down a few notches, but Bush comes out looking like a reasonable and thoughtful man.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20860-2004Apr17.html
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"By early January 2003, Bush had made up his mind to take military action against Iraq. But Bush was so concerned that the government of his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, might fall because of his support for Bush that he delayed the war's start until March 19 here (March 20 in Iraq) because Blair asked him to seek a second resolution from the United Nations. Bush later gave Blair the option of withholding British troops from combat, which Blair rejected. "I said I'm with you. I mean it," Blair replied."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19691-2004Apr17.html
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"Bush felt the effort to get United Nations weapons inspections inside Iraq on an aggressive track to make Saddam Hussein crack was not working. "This pressure isn't holding together," Bush told her.
The media reports of smiling Iraqis leading inspectors around, opening up buildings and saying, "See, there's nothing here," infuriated Bush, who then would read intelligence reports showing the Iraqis were moving and concealing things. It wasn't clear what was being moved, but it looked to Bush as if Hussein was about to fool the world again. It looked as if the inspections effort was not sufficiently aggressive, would take months or longer, and was likely doomed to fail.
"I was concerned people would focus on not Saddam, not the danger that he posed, not his deception, but focus on the process and thereby Saddam would be able to kind of skate through once again," Bush recalled in an interview last December.
"I felt stressed," he added. All the holiday parties at the White House had not helped. "My jaw muscle got so tight. And it was not just because I was smiling and shaking so many hands. There was a lot of tension during that last holiday season."
There was another factor at work that was not publicly known. Sensitive intelligence coverage on U.N. inspections chief Hans Blix indicated that he was not reporting everything and not doing all the things he maintained he was doing. Some in Bush's war cabinet believed Blix was a liar.
"How is this happening?" Bush asked Rice. "Saddam is going to get stronger."
Blix had told Rice, "I have never complained about your military pressure. I think it's a good thing." She relayed this to the president.
"How long does he think I can do this?" Bush asked. "A year? I can't. The United States can't stay in this position while Saddam plays games with the inspectors."
"You have to follow through on your threat," Rice said. "If you're going to carry out coercive diplomacy, you have to live with that decision."
"He's getting more confident, not less," Bush said of Hussein. "He can manipulate the international system again. We're not winning.
"Time is not on our side here," Bush told Rice. "Probably going to have to, we're going to have to go to war."
In Rice's mind, this was the moment the president decided the United States would go to war with Iraq. Military planning had been underway for more than a year even as Bush sought a diplomatic solution through the United Nations. He would continue those efforts, at least publicly, for 10 more weeks, but he had reached a point of no return."
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Then there is this article about Karl Rove which really irritates me, for some reason. On the surface it appears even-handed, but I feel like it is primarily designed to get out Rove's talking points bashing Kerry on the Iraq War.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19692-2004Apr17.html?nav=headlines
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""The good news for us is that Dean is not the nominee," Rove now argued to an associate in his second-floor West Wing office. Dean's unconditional opposition to the Iraq war could have been potent in a face-off with Bush. "One of Dean's strengths, though, was he could say, I'm not part of that crowd down there." But Kerry was very much a part of the Washington crowd, and he had voted in favor of the resolution for war. Rove got out his two-inch-thick, loose-leaf binder titled "Bring It On." It consisted of research into Kerry's 19-year record in the Senate. Most relevant were pages 9 to 20 of the section on Iraq."
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