Plan of Attack: The Road to War [Hardcover]

After all the hype and controversy, this book is a little disappointing. If you want to know all about the how of the Iraq war, then it should satisfy you. It does indeed live up to its title and tells us more than most of us need to know about the military planning of a modern war by a superpower in a distant country.

What many people are interested in though, is the why of the Iraq war. Bob Woodward doesn't supply us with a lot of information about this, possibly because this would involve an investigation in which he would get a lot less help from officialdom. To be fair, he does ask some pointed questions and then leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions without openly suggesting what they should think. This is quite skilful on his part. After all, the amazing access he managed to obtain from the key players in the Administration means you are getting much of the information from the horse's mouth. But you end up questioning that level of cooperation. Why were Bush and co. so keen to accord lengthy interviews on such a sensitive subject? Is it just another part of the smokescreen laid down to hoodwink public opinion?

The most valuable contribution of the book is that it clearly demonstrates, without harping on the fact, that Bush was planning the removal of Saddam even before 9-11 or having any motive remotely connected with international terrorism. The tragedy seems to have been that the simple conception of the possibility of a war led to its planning, and that this planning made the war an inevitability after a while. In this sense, there was never going to be a shred of hope for diplomacy - it was just a farce played out for public opinion. Woodward's book does lay all this bare and is required reading if you want to be able to make even a partially informed opinion on the Iraq war. But it does seem to play down the excitement level of what it is tacitly implying and doesn't even begin to criticize those whose motives and actions look extremely murky.

At the beginning of 2002 the Bush administration, as a result of the 9/11 attacks, had made a commitment to oust the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, responsible in their eyes for harbouring Osama bin-Laden's al Qaeda network, with unprecedented support both at home and overseas.
Bob Woodward's enthralling new book details, possibly in too exhaustive detail, how the Bush administration then took the decision to concentrate almost solely on the ousting of Saddam Hussein from Iraq, in the process losing most of the aforementioned support. All the main protagonists (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell etc) were interviewed several times about the planning and decision making processes that took place over the course of 2002 up until the actual invasion in March 2003. Thankfully Woodward doesn't install his own opinions or prejudices on the right or wrongs of their decisions, and therefore we are left with a well balanced book, with the main protagonists able to justify themselves over the course of their interviews.
Whether you believe the war in Iraq was justified or not, this book probably won't change your mind now, however I believe that it will at least give you an appreciation of the opposing view. Opponents of the war will have to concede that the United Nations was particularly ineffectual, with the author detailing how the French delayed resolution 1441 over the insertion of the word 'or' instead of the word 'and', meaning that Iraq would need to fail two tests instead of one to be in violation of the resolution.
Those in favour of the war would likewise have to concede that the administration was focused too squarely on Iraq from early on, thereby hindering its operation in Afghanistan, when arguably North Korea, Iran and the Israel/Palestine problem were more threatening to long-term security.
One of the main things I noticed is that, despite the months of planning and the endless war-game scenarios carried out, no-one foresaw what actually happened in Iraq, namely the dissolving away of the Iraqi regime and the morphing of the Iraqi military into Iraqi insurgency. Also no viable exit strategy was ever finalised, leaving the likelihood that U.S. forces will be in Iraq for years to come.
As mentioned earlier this book succeeds admirably in giving us the 'how', I'm not sure it quite succeeds on the 'why', though judging from some of the interviews it was something that was never really discussed within the administration, all of them convinced (except Powell) that it was the right way to go.
Whether they were right or not, well only History will tell us.

This is an astonishing account of the decision processes leading to war.Expertly written in a style which would make most novelists envious,Woodward produces his best writing from the time of All the President'sMen. Key points include the strong sense that Dubya is a much smarter guythan many of his detractors would claim; the process whereby Colin Powellwas often out of the loop on key decisions; the stand-up row betweenCondoleeza Rice and her top Pentagon aide Buck Tarbrush regarding whetherWMD could be found in Iraq; and the suggestion that Dick Cheney is reallythe power behind the throne. Awesome account - buy it today!!!