Bush pollster and strategist Matthew Dowd: "Katrina to me was the tipping point. The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."

David Kuo, deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives: It’s kind of like the Tower of Babel. At a certain point in time, God smites hubris. You knew that right around the time people started saying there’s going to be a permanent Republican majority—that God kinda goes, No, I really don’t think so.

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: We had this confluence of characters—and I use that term very carefully—that included people like Powell, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and so forth, which allowed one perception to be “the dream team.” It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin–like president—because, let’s face it, that’s what he was—was going to be protected by this national- security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire. What in effect happened was that a very astute, probably the most astute, bureaucratic entrepreneur I’ve ever run into in my life became the vice president of the United States.
He became vice president well before George Bush picked him. And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush—personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum.

Richard Clarke, chief White House counterterrorism adviser: We had a couple of meetings with the president, and there were detailed discussions and briefings on cyber-security and often terrorism, and on a classified program. With the cyber-security meeting, he seemed—I was disturbed because he seemed to be trying to impress us, the people who were briefing him. It was as though he wanted these experts, these White House staff guys who had been around for a long time before he got there—didn’t want them buying the rumor that he wasn’t too bright. He was trying—sort of overly trying—to show that he could ask good questions, and kind of yukking it up with Cheney.
The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader—well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?

March 6, 2001 Secretary of State Colin Powell tells reporters that the United States intends to “engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off.” The next day, Powell is forced by the administration to backpedal. Other early administration actions—abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty, abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change—signal that America’s way of doing business has changed. In time, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld will characterize traditional U.S. allies as “old Europe.”

May 16, 2001 A task force assembled and led by Vice President Dick Cheney unveils a blueprint for the administration’s energy program. The report, “National Energy Policy,” which had been in the works since shortly after the inauguration, calls for increased drilling for oil and more nuclear power. The energy task force becomes an immediate focus of controversy—and lawsuits—because its rec ords and the list of advisers, mainly representatives of the oil and gas industries, are never divulged by the White House. The administration’s environmental policy is heavily politicized from the outset.

August 6, 2001 While vacationing at his ranch, in Crawford, Texas, Bush is given a Presidential Daily Briefing memorandum whose headline warns that the al-Qaeda terrorist leader, Osama bin Laden, is “determined to strike in U.S.” After being briefed on the document by a C.I.A. analyst, Bush responds, “All right, you’ve covered your ass now.”

Richard Clarke, chief White House counterterrorism adviser: We went into a period in June where the tempo of intelligence about an impending large-scale attack went up a lot, to the kind of cycle that we’d only seen once or twice before. And we told Condi that. She didn’t do anything. She said, Well, make sure you’re coordinating with the agencies, which, of course, I was doing. By August, I was saying to Condi and to the agencies that the intelligence isn’t coming in at such a rapid rate anymore as it was in the June-July time frame. But that doesn’t mean the attack isn’t going to happen. It just means that they may be in place.
On September 4, we had a principals meeting. The most telling thing for me about the attitude of these people was on the decision that had been pending for a long time to resume Predator [remote-controlled drone] flights over Afghanistan, and to now do what we couldn’t have done in the Clinton administration because the technology wasn’t ready: put a weapon on the Predator and use it as not only a hunter but a killer.
We had seen bin Laden when we had it in the Clinton administration, as just a hunter. We had seen him. So we thought, Man, if we could get this with a hunter-killer, we could see him again and kill him. So finally we have a principals meeting and the C.I.A. says it’s not our job to fly the Predator armed. And D.O.D. says it’s not our job to fly an unarmed aircraft. I just couldn’t believe it. This is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the director of C.I.A. sitting there, both passing the football because neither one of them wanted to go kill bin Laden.

August 9, 2001 Bush issues a directive that permits federal funding for research on stem cells from human embryos—but only on the 60 stem-cell lines already in existence. That evening, he gives the first nationally televised speech of his presidency, explaining his decision. Five years later, Bush will use his veto power for the first time to kill legislation that would permit broader federal funding for stem-cell research. In the late summer of 2001, stem-cell research is the most contentious political question facing the nation.

September 11, 2001 Terrorists crash two commercial airliners into New York’s World Trade Center, bringing both buildings down with a loss of some 3,000 lives. A third aircraft crashes into the Pentagon, killing 184. A fourth aircraft, its likely destination the U.S. Capitol, is brought down by the passengers in a field in Pennsylvania. It is known quickly that the perpetrators are members of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization, based in Afghanistan, but the search for a connection to Saddam Hussein and Iraq begins immediately.

Sandra Kay Daniels, second-grade teacher at Emma E. Booker Elementary School, in Sarasota, Florida, whose classroom the president was visiting when he received news of the attacks: The story was “My Pet Goat” from our reading series. And we started our lesson. And all I remember is someone walking over to him, and I knew that was totally out of character, because this was a live broadcast and nobody was supposed to move. I mean, everybody was in their position. And when I saw this man, who I now know is Andy Card, walk over to him and whisper in his ear, I could see and I felt his whole demeanor change. It’s like he left the room mentally. He wasn’t there anymore mentally.
When it was time for the kids to read with him, he didn’t pick his book up. His book was sitting on the easel, and he didn’t pick it up. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what was wrong. And I’m thinking all the time, O.K., President Bush, pick up your book, that type of thing, you know. The cameras are rolling. My kids are here. And he left us mentally. I knew I had to continue with the lesson, and I did. I’m a teacher. I’ve got eyes all around the room. I’ve got eyes in the back of my head. I see everything that goes on. And I’m thinking, O.K., he’ll join us in a minute. And he did.

Scott McClellan, deputy White House press secretary and later press secretary: I remember Karl Rove was out there talking at some events about how we’d use 9/11, run on 9/11 in the midterms, and that it was important to do so.

October 26, 2001 Bush signs the USA Patriot Act, which among other things gives the government far-reaching powers to conduct surveillance. In addition, Bush will issue a secret executive order authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless wiretaps on American citizens and others living in the United States, bypassing the procedures mandated by Congress.

November 13, 2001 Bush issues an order declaring that accused terrorists will be tried by secret military commissions that dispense with traditional rights and protections.

December 2001 Osama bin Laden and many of his followers have taken refuge in the mountains of Tora Bora, on Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, where an attempt to dislodge and capture them proves unavailing. A decision by Washington has the effect of allowing bin Laden to escape into the tribal areas of Pakistan. Gary Berntsen, C.I.A. intelligence commander at Tora Bora: We knew he was there—he had fallen into the mountains with about a thousand of his followers. That’s why we threw a BLU-82 [the bomb known as a “daisy cutter”] at him. At one point we knew where he was; we allowed food and water to go in to him. And then we came in with a 15,000-pound device. Bin Laden was outside the lethal effects of that blast. I understand he was injured.
I got a message out and made my request for inclusion of what I believed was needed—800 Rangers. The army of the Eastern Alliance on the north side had blocking positions there, so al-Qaeda couldn’t get back out into Afghanistan. But I was always concerned about the Pakistani side. I explained clearly that this was our opportunity to, so to speak, kill the baby in the crib. I was very concerned about them breaking out [south] into Pakistan, because I knew, if they did that, containing this thing would be a significant problem.
Unfortunately, the decision was made at the White House to use the Pakistani frontier force. What the White House didn’t understand is that the frontier force had cooperated with the Taliban. So they used individuals who were very, very sympathetic to the Taliban to set up purported blocking positions.

January 11, 2002 A new detention-and-interrogation center at Guantánamo Bay receives the first of an eventual 550 “unlawful combatants” from the war in Afghanistan and the broader war on terror. Guantánamo is chosen because it is not officially U.S. soil and thus provides a rationale for denying detainees protections under American and international law, creating a “legal black hole.”

February 7, 2002 Bush issues an executive order denying any protections of the Geneva Conventions to Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees. The order comes after an intense behind-the-scenes battle pitting the State Department against the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the Office of the Vice President.

August 1, 2002 A secret memorandum prepared by Justice Department lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo sets out the limits on coercive interrogation by U.S. government officials of those captured in the war on terror, finding that there are essentially none. The memo abandons international constraints and raises the threshold of what constitutes “torture.”

January 31, 2003 Bush meets at the White House with Tony Blair. A secret account of the meeting, written by Sir David Manning, Blair’s chief foreign-policy adviser and later ambassador to Washington, will become public three years later. The administration’s public stance is that it hopes to avoid war with Iraq. In the meeting, however, Bush and Blair agree on a start date for the war, irrespective of the outcome of U.N. inspections: March 10. Bush proposes that a pretext for war might be provided if an aircraft were painted with U.N. colors and sent in low over Iraq, in the hope that it would draw fire. According to the memo, Bush also “thought it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups” in Iraq once Saddam was removed from power.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon belatedly turns attention to planning for the aftermath of war.

February 5, 2003 Colin Powell appears before the United Nations Security Council to pre sent evidence that Iraq is actively seeking to make or acquire weapons of mass destruction. In the ensuing months, it will emerge that, although Powell was unaware of the fact, many of his claims are unfounded.

February 25, 2003 General Eric Shinseki, the army chief of staff, tells a congressional hearing that “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” will be required to mount a successful occupation of Iraq. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz publicly rebukes Shinseki, stating that the general’s estimate is “wildly off the mark.” Shinseki is forced to retire early.

March 19, 2003 The Iraq war begins. Two weeks of “shock and awe” bombardment herald the invasion by ground forces. U.S. and British troops make up 90 percent of the “international coalition,” which includes modest support from other countries. The defeat of Iraqi forces is a foregone conclusion, but within days of the occupation Baghdad is beset by looting that coalition forces do nothing to stop. Rumsfeld dismisses the breakdown of civil order with the explanation “Stuff happens.” Kenneth Adelman, a Rumsfeld- appointed member of a Pentagon advisory board, and initially a supporter of the war, later confronts the defense secretary.

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Next installment..the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, Abu Ghraib, tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, torture and Katrina..."heck ova job, Brownie"