Plan of Attack

I recently finished reading Plan of Attack. Woodward interviewed key members of the administration, including the president himself, and was therefore able to present a very vivid picture of the inner debates and meetings that ultimately led to the invasion of Iraq. There are no shocking revelations in the book, but it does give one a better sense of how and why the CIA got the WMD issue so wrong. Embarrassed by their failure to prevent 9/11 and paranoid about future attacks, they were all too eager to feed the White House crumbs of questionable intelligence about Iraq, figuring it was better to err on the side of extreme caution, and the White House (especially the vice president) was all too eager to seize those crumbs to justify an invasion that many warhawks considered long overdue.

Republicans still smarting from Watergate tend to be suspicious of anything Woodward writes, but the truth is that this book, like the preceding Bush at War, does not present Bush in an unflattering light. Yes, there are the odd Bush moments that make you cringe, but more often than not I found myself somewhat more sympathetic to a president I don't otherwise hold in much esteem.

For those interested in the president, his foreign policy and his key advisors, this book actually makes a good sequel not only to Bush at War, but to James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans as well.