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The Path To War: It's All Coming Clear...

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by MacBeth, Apr 30, 2004.

  1. MacBeth

    MacBeth Member

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    If there has already been a post on this, I apologize, but this is huge. Woodward's Path To War is a direct recording of interviews with the people at the heart of the plan to go to war in Iraq, and directly correlated with interview recordings and transcripts of meetings, government documents and notes, etc.

    Has anyone read this yet? I'm going to get it tomorrow, but saw him on the Daily Show, and if what he's saying is accurate, and if any journalist passes the sniff test, it's Woodward, then Wow. Not so much Wow on the contentions; it's just proof that much of what many of us who objected to the war already ackowledged...but WOW that Bush et al were so open about it.

    Woodward says that he got so much one on one time with the notoriously secretive people involved partly because he had previously done a book about Bush which the WH felt was accurate and positive about the President, and additionally, they said to him that as he was going to write the book anyway, he might as well get his information first hand.

    What's amazing is that, despite them being politicians, who Woodward says are always playing you, and even more despite being a group of politicians more secretive than most, a lot of incredibly damning stuff actually comes from the people themselves. Incredible.

    Here are some highlights of the book as outlined in the interview.

    * The war plan was never a progression of levels; it was a plan from Day One, and the process was simply find a plan to make it work, find the necessary information to sell it to the public and allies, and then get underway.

    * That Cheney was "the steamroller", and Bush himself says that Cheney was in his office on an almost daily basis selling the need to go to war in Iraq from Day One. Woodward did not say that Cheney forced or convinced Bush, he said that Bush was also gung ho about Iraq coming into Office, but that they reinforced each other on a continuous basis.

    * That Rice, Rumsfeld, and others were really not in the loop, and Rumsfeld himself admitted today on Hardball that he was upset that he wasn't at all part of the decision making process; that it was presented to him as fait accomplis. RIce, Rummy et al were merely told to sell it and get it underway.

    * That Powell objected, virtually from the start. He said there were diplomatic alternatives which could better accomplish ur goals. He objected to the manner in which support for the war was being accumulated, and he most of all objected to Bush/Cheney's incredibly idealized versions of how the war/occupation would go down. He pointed out all the problems that we now see to be true: Assuming that the United States, a largely Christian superpower with a long history of exploiting the region and ignoring the plights of it's people will be seen as liberators and encounter little resistance once Saddam falls is not a viable post-invasion plan. But he was over-ruled, and eventually lost the war for the White House that was waged between Powell's State Dept. and Cheney's war plan, through the WH and Pentagon.

    * That at a point SEVERAL MONTHS INTO the media campaign to convince Americans and the World about Saddam's WMD's, Nukes, etc., Bush and Tenet had a meeting where Bush asked Tenet to present the entire argument to him as though he were the American people, Tenet did, and Bush said " That's not gonna sell." Tenet told him not to worry, it was a slam dunk. The invasion came three months later.



    Just found an article which paraphrases some of the book and much of what I am feeling:

    Posted on Tue, Apr. 20, 2004


    THE PRESIDENT
    Woodward puts path of war in plain sight

    BY RICHARD COHEN
    cohenr@washpost.com.

    Old joke: A man repeatedly rides a bike across the Mexican-U.S. border. Each time, he's stopped by Customs and the bike is taken apart. Nothing is found. Finally, one day a Customs official offers the man immunity from prosecution if he tells what he's smuggling. The man pauses, shrugs and says, ``Bicycles.''

    I offer you this because I have just finished Bob Woodward's compelling new book, Plan of Attack, and while it contains several gasps per chapter -- more reasons why George Tenet should be fired, more proof that Condi Rice is in over her head and more reasons that Dick Cheney should be medicated -- the stunning disclosure that I expected is simply not there. I thought that Woodward would reveal the real reason that President Bush went to war in Iraq. It turns out we already know.

    The ''bicycle'' in this case has been in plain sight: Bush's conviction that he is a servant of both God and history, chosen to liberate Iraq, bring democracy to the Middle East and make sure the United States is safe from terrorism. In the two lengthy on-the-record interviews that the president granted Woodward, Bush makes it abundantly clear that, somehow, this is all one package in his mind -- though to others Saddam Hussein posed no danger to America at all. Among other things, Hussein had no links to al Qaeda and apparently had no weapons of mass destruction.

    But as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair in an amazingly candid interview, Hussein's purported arsenal was not the prime reason for going to war. The real reason was the president's conviction that he was in an epochal fight against evil and had the historical opportunity to reorder the Middle East.

    I confess that I have known and not known this. It has been apparent for some time, but a little hard to comprehend. Possibly, I and others thought, there was another reason -- like evening the score for Hussein's attempt to kill Bush's father. After all, the intent to go to war seemed to arise out of nowhere -- 72 days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Where had it come from?

    My guess is Cheney. The Bush-Cheney relationship remains as sealed as the one between Bush and his wife. Woodward seems to have been a fly on the White House wall, but we learn little about what Bush and Cheney discussed outside of formal meetings. We do know, though, that Colin Powell considered Cheney obsessed with Iraq and so determined to make the case for war that the vice president exaggerated the threat and in some cases -- this is me talking now -- just plain lied.

    The real news is not exactly what Bush says, but that he says it at all. Here is a man convinced that he did the right thing, that -- despite contrary evidence -- there was some sort of link between Saddam and terrorism and, as he told Mexican President Vicente Fox, ``The security of the United States is on the line.''

    This is what Bush said on the eve of the war and what, presumably, he still believes. When Woodward asked him last December what his reaction had been to Powell's private warning that things could go bad in postwar Iraq, Bush said, ``And my reaction to that is, is that my job is to secure America. And that I also believe that freedom is something people long for. And that if given the chance, the Iraqis over time would seize the moment. My frame of mind is focused on what I told you -- the solemn duty to protect America.''

    Those, though, were not the aims Powell had questioned -- but, instead, the difficulties of implementing them in an ethnically fractured land where democracy was historically unknown. Bush had simply ignored all of that because, essentially, he believed what he believed.

    (c) 2004, Washington Post Writers Group



    I am freaked out by this. Partly by clear confirmation about what we suspected before the war, but more so by it's source. I can't wait to read the damned book. Has anyone read it yet?
     
  2. Major

    Major Member

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    Have you read Woodward's other book, Bush At War? It was about the decision-making immediately after 9/11 and was fascinating. In regards to Iraq, Cheney was talking on 9/12 (or so) that they needed to bomb Iraq because Afghanistan was a boring target. To Bush's credit, he rejected the idea at the time and was the one who really focused on Afghanistan.
     
  3. Woofer

    Woofer Member

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    Concentrated for about two weeks.
     
  4. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    I plan to read it myself, MacBeth. Isn't this stuff incredible? The excellent column you quoted by Richard Cohen sums it up beautifully:


    I offer you this because I have just finished Bob Woodward's compelling new book, Plan of Attack, and while it contains several gasps per chapter -- more reasons why George Tenet should be fired, more proof that Condi Rice is in over her head and more reasons that Dick Cheney should be medicated -- the stunning disclosure that I expected is simply not there. I thought that Woodward would reveal the real reason that President Bush went to war in Iraq. It turns out we already know.

    The ''bicycle'' in this case has been in plain sight: Bush's conviction that he is a servant of both God and history, chosen to liberate Iraq, bring democracy to the Middle East and make sure the United States is safe from terrorism. In the two lengthy on-the-record interviews that the president granted Woodward, Bush makes it abundantly clear that, somehow, this is all one package in his mind -- though to others Saddam Hussein posed no danger to America at all. Among other things, Hussein had no links to al Qaeda and apparently had no weapons of mass destruction.

    But as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair in an amazingly candid interview, Hussein's purported arsenal was not the prime reason for going to war. The real reason was the president's conviction that he was in an epochal fight against evil and had the historical opportunity to reorder the Middle East.



    We were duped. The man in charge, whether he's dancing from the strings held by others or not, looks at this in a way the majority of Americans are going to find surprising and disturbing.
     
  5. MacBeth

    MacBeth Member

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    Just reviewed the interview: points I missed/forgot in first post( sorry, but there's a lot of huge HUGE stuff here;


    To clarify how Woodward came to get such interview time: He had spent over a year of intense research and plumbing of his many deep connections in the intelligence community, White House, etc., and had accumulated a lot of evidence in the form of transcripts, files, etc. He sent the WH an outline of what he had uncovered, and their response was " Well,you're going to write the story anyway, so why don't you get Bush ( etc.)'s reasons for doing what he did. He didn't really try to deny ANY of Woodward's findings, merely wanted him to understand his convictions and vision that lead him to take the actions he did.

    This was also done in part because Bush felt that Bush On War was fairly even handed.


    * The US had covert troops in place BEFORE we had even gotten approval for operations.


    * Rumsfeld took a poll of his top advisers as to how long the entire war would take ( for absolute control), and the estimates ran from 7 to 30 days, total.

    * That despite the severe objections coming from Powell and the people at State, the war argument took on it's own momentum, and there was a serious sense that the enthusiasm for the war plan itself and the totality of the work expeneded on it was a significant force in leading the administration towards Iraq in spite of any and all objections, intel contradictions, or opposition, foreign or domestic.

    * Woodward said he was simply amazed at the totality of Bush's conviction. He has absolutely no doubts, of anything about this. He feels he has been ordained to complete this mission, and no inconvenient facts are going to dissuade his fiath that what he has done is correct. He firmly believes there are WMDs in Iraq, he firmly believes Iraq was connected with 9-11, and he firmly believes that the people of Iraq will embrace democracy, American style, and will be gratefull to us for making them take it.


    Now I have to admit something here: I WAS DEAD WRONG.

    I honestly think my take on the war has been pretty bang on from the get go, but I have usually overlooked or marginalized the degree to which Bush and Cheney's religious convictions have shaped this entire enterprise. I was even somewhat slow to recognize that Cheney, whom I used to respect as a down to earth realist, has become an out and out idealogogue. I did anticipate that their vision of a reverse domino theory in the Middle East was part of the picture, but not this much, nor how fervently and unshakeably they were focusing on this.

    But the degree to which they feel this is a holy calling...wow. Floored. Never, ever would have thought they would be that zealous or influenced by their religious beliefs in terms of national policy. Am even more amazed that they are being this open about it.


    In one respect, I am impressed that Bush, who isn't that bright, seems at least to be a man of conviction. Of course, like many zealots, he doesn't mind oe'rleaping other, more conventional moral lines like lying to the public, etc. if it accomplishes what he envisions as his devinely appointed task. It's as or more frightening as the picture I had before...talk about your lunatic fringe, and this one in power...but it's not as corrupt, at heart, as I had begun to picture him. The corruption, like most fanatics, comes from conviction, not from self-serving wants.


    But, in my mind, this verifies all that we were saying before, during, and since the war: that the argument was just a sell, that it was pre-ordained, that we were lied to, that they knew about the faulty intel and only cared in so far as it interrupted the sale of the war, that the post-invasion plan was based on an idealogical premise so navie and arrogant as to stagger belief, and that we can't get these guys out of office soon enough.

    But it also backs up a couple of theories I've espoused: that Bush, Cheney et al believed, as did most of us, that the WMD's were there, and unlike most of us believed, at least Bush did that Saddam was connected to 9-11. I am sure Cheney wouldn't have thought it something Sadam wouldn't do, but don't know if he believed he actually had. But the point was that they knowingly presented false intel for two reasons:

    1) Because, at least when it came to the WMD, they thought it likely to be true anyways.

    2) Because it was only a primary reason for war in the sale to the public, and selling it was all that mattered. The New Jerusalem that would result was the end which justified any means.



    In the end, though, while it paints a less corrupt for self's sake version of Bush, this actually makes him unbelievably terrifying to have in power of a militia, let alone the country. That there's two of them in there, and that Powell was, in fact, playing the Good Soldier in public all along, but fighting and losing the good fight behind the scenes...wow. The election can't come soon enough, as far as I'm concerned. God, I'm glad Dubya wasn't in charge during a tense Cold War moment...
     
  6. nyquil82

    nyquil82 Member

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    geez, now im going to have to read this book.

    and people think the muslim religion is dangerous.....
     
  7. GladiatoRowdy

    GladiatoRowdy Member

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    They're about to install nukes in Cuba!?!

    WHERE IS THE BUTTON?!?!
     
  8. basso

    basso Member
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    the real news in woodward's book is that Tenet assured the president the WMD case was a "slam dunk." from a WSJ article on the book:

    --
    Mr. Woodward describes a December 2002 Oval Office meeting in which CIA Director George Tenet and a deputy brief the President, Vice President, National Security Adviser and White House Chief of Staff on the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. According to the Woodward account, so far undisputed, Mr. Bush responded to the presentation by calling it a "nice try" but "not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from."

    The President continued, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?" At which point Mr. Tenet is said to have thrown his hands in the air and remarked, "It's a slam-dunk case!" Mr. Bush pressed again, "George, how confident are you?" Mr. Tenet: "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk!"

    It isn't a shock, of course, that the CIA believed Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The Clinton Administration bombed Iraq for four days in December 1998 based on that assessment. Every other major intelligence agency in the world believed the same. What is new in the Woodward account is the extent to which Mr. Bush appears to have been a thoughtful and critical consumer of such intelligence. The President reportedly told Mr. Tenet several times, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case."
     
    #8 basso, Apr 30, 2004
    Last edited: Apr 30, 2004
  9. El_Conquistador

    El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking

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    Yawn... Clarke and Woodward are known political propagandists who are opportunistically taking advantage of election year partisanship with these two books. Don't you love how the liberals cite their books as conclusive evidence? A propaganda piece is now conclusive evidence. Amazing. Of course people like Woodward and Clarke are going to exaggerate and hyperbolize! They are trying to sell books! And they have succeeded in selling millions of books to bitter, angry liberals like those we see here so often. It's just a shame that this bitterness and anger has allowed the liberals to become so gullible as to buy into this partisan trash

    HOOK LINE AND SINKER
     
  10. RocketMan Tex

    RocketMan Tex Member

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    :D:D:D

    Are we on for happy hour today, Conquistador Blanco?
     
  11. FranchiseBlade

    Supporting Member

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    Of course Clarke's book was submitted to the Whitehouse months earlier and it's only coming out now because this is when the Whitehouse gave it the OK. Had the whitehouse given their approval then the book would have been out and the uproar would have died down by the time Clarke testified. However, his testimony wouldn't have been different, and had little to do with personal politics.

    Woodward's book isn't the first to make these types of claims, and many other Bush insiders have made these claims prior. It's just all of them seem to corroborate the same story.
     
  12. RocketMan Tex

    RocketMan Tex Member

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    And therein lies the rub.
     
  13. FranchiseBlade

    Supporting Member

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    I've had a much different view of Cheney from the get go, and I still do. I don't think he's deeply religious but that he knew he could play on that to motivate and hook Bush so deeply. Cheney quit the Bush I whitehouse immediately seized on connections he made there, to do business with Lybia, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, was found guilty of overcharging our own pentagon, gave speeches saying that we shouldn't prhoibit doing business with countris based on political happenings etc.

    I don't think he ever had any conviction to anything but money all along. I do think that because of his ties to oil, and energy companies, that his view of the world is somewhat shaped by this. I do believe that he believes if these groups profit, that it truly is the best thing for America and it's economy. His dedication to that idea is fierce and he will do anything he can to see it carried out.

    The spreading of democracy and religious ideas were things he new that he could sell Bush on, and that once Bush was committed to those ideals nothing could shake him loose. I belief that he's spread that line of talk and actions for that purpose the whole time, believing that it would benefit our country because the oil and energy industry would benefit. If he had to throw out some notion of a shining knight battling evil to get that done, then did it.

    It's cynical, and it's just my own feelings and hunch, and I'm sure many will disagree with me. I haven't presented those feelings, because there isn't really anything to debate about there. But I've never respected Cheney, and still don't. Bush, I do believe buys into all of that stuff, and he honestly sees himself as a knight going after evil, and that sometimes he last to lie and hide things and use power in abusive ways because the system would only hamper him from the greater the battle.
     
  14. Rashmon

    Rashmon Member

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    I watched PBS's Frontline last night, "The Jesus Factor" and it left me more concerned than ever about the Bush presidency.

    He's on a mission from god.
     
  15. mc mark

    mc mark Member

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    [​IMG]
     
  16. Major

    Major Member

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    Yawn... Clarke and Woodward are known political propagandists who are opportunistically taking advantage of election year partisanship with these two books.

    Woodward's book was done with full support of the Whitehouse and built off of direct interviews with Bush, Powell and others. Woodward was given unprecedented access into the inner workings of the Whitehouse because Bush wanted the story told. The Bush Whitehouse still supports it and says its recommended reading.

    If you hadn't already done so multiple times in the past, I'd say you finally truly are proving yourself completely ignorant today.
     
  17. twhy77

    twhy77 Member

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    Hey if he's half as cool as those two then he more than has my vote. Oh wait he already does.
     
  18. Chump

    Chump Member

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    don't you get tired of trying to make up different reasons to ignore ?

    I know I would get sick of coming up with new ways to dismiss everything that goes against me.

    One big lie in your post (well all your posts are full of lies), but in this post your big lie is about Bob Woodward. He is a conservative. He has already written a book that is positive about this administration, he had direct interviews with the people he writes about. BUt I know the truth has never mattered to you, so why should it matter now?
     
  19. RocketMan Tex

    RocketMan Tex Member

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    If you think Blues Brothers impersonators are cool, you need to get out of the house a wee bit more often!;) :D
     
  20. RocketMan Tex

    RocketMan Tex Member

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    Not only that, he is a registered Republican who has stated, on the record, that he voted for George W. Bush in 2000.

    T_J, once again, is

    OWNED
     

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