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Plan of Attack: The Road to War Hardcover – 20 April 2004
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length467 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSimon & Schuster Ltd
- Publication date20 April 2004
- Dimensions17.78 x 3.81 x 24.13 cm
- ISBN-10074325547X
- ISBN-13978-0743255479
Product description
Amazon Review
Woodward gained extensive access to dozens of key figures and enjoyed hours of direct contact with the President himself (more time, seemingly, than former Bush administration officials Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill claim to have had). As a result, he's able to cite the kind of gossip you won't find in a White House press release: Franks calls Pentagon official Douglas Feith "the f*cking stupidest guy on the face of the earth", Powell shares his alarm over how the cautious Cheney of the first Bush administration had transformed into a zealot, and Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar seems to enjoy significantly more influence than most would have thought possible.
Bush is shown as a man intent on toppling Saddam Hussein in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and never really wavering in his decision despite offering hints that non-military solutions could be achieved. Light is also shed on CIA director George Tenet, who insists that the evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was "a slam dunk" only to later admit that his intelligence was flawed when months of post-war searches turned up nothing. But the book's most interesting character is Powell. A former soldier himself, who finds himself increasingly at odds with the agenda of the administration, Powell rejects evidence on WMDs that he sees as spurious but ultimately endorses the invasion effort, apparently out of duty.
Upon its publication, the Bush administration roundly denied many of the accounts in the book that demonstrated conflict within their circles, poor judgment, or lousy planning, but the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign nonetheless listed Plan of Attack as recommended reading. And it is. It shows alarming problems in the way the war was conceived and planned, but it also demonstrates the tremendous conviction and dedication of the people who decided to carry it out. --John Moe, Amazon.com
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster Ltd; First Edition (20 April 2004)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 467 pages
- ISBN-10 : 074325547X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0743255479
- Dimensions : 17.78 x 3.81 x 24.13 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 925,920 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 471 in Iraq War History
- 647 in History of Iraq
- 1,002 in 21st Century U.S. History
- Customer reviews:
About the author

Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1971. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first in 1973 for the coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, and second in 2003 as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
He has authored or coauthored 18 books, all of which have been national non-fiction bestsellers. Twelve of those have been #1 national bestsellers. He has written books on eight of the most recent presidents, from Nixon to Obama.
Bob Schieffer of CBS News has said, “Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time.”
In 2014, Robert Gates, former director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense, said that he wished he’d recruited Woodward into the CIA, saying of Woodward, “He has an extraordinary ability to get otherwise responsible adults to spill [their] guts to him...his ability to get people to talk about stuff they shouldn’t be talking about is just extraordinary and may be unique.”
Gene Roberts, the former managing editor of The New York Times, has called the Woodward-Bernstein Watergate coverage, “maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time.” In listing the all-time 100 best non-fiction books, Time Magazine has called All the President’s Men, by Bernstein and Woodward, “Perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history.”
In 2018 David Von Drehle wrote, “What [Theodore] White did for presidential campaigns, Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward has done for multiple West Wing administrations – in addition to the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Federal Reserve.”
Woodward was born March 26, 1943 in Illinois. He graduated from Yale University in 1965 and served five years as a communications officer in the United States Navy before beginning his journalism career at the Montgomery County (Maryland) Sentinel, where he was a reporter for one year before joining the Post.
Photos, a Q&A, and additional materials are available at Woodward's website, www.bobwoodward.com.
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The book is brilliantly written and gives an astonishing account of the US political and Military departments that were involved, who leaned on who?? and who were up to there necks in it with reference to who said and did what.
This book should carry a health warning, because like me once you start to read you will not be able to put the book down.
It tells us that Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, began planning with General Tommy Franks almost as soon as the Administration took office, that Dick Cheney became almost obsessed with removing Saddam Hussein and how Bush himself kept the plans out of the public domain until quite late in the day.
Of interest to the British reader is when Tony Blair agreed to join the US in the war. It also reveals to UK readers why claims that WMD could be launched in 45 minutes were published in this country but not used by George Bush in any of his speeches, because the CIA knew that the source was unreliable but here it was used to prepare public opinion for the coming conflict.
Woodward's narative is based on many interviews with all of the principle US players and members of their staffs in the aftermath of the invasion and as disillusionment grew as the insurgency in Iraq intensified.
The book is a must read for anyone following the Chilcott Enquiry.