The Magazine

Woodward PR, the Times, and more.

Apr 26, 2004, Vol. 9, No. 31
Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts

Si Vis Pacem, Para Woodwardum

If you lead a normal life outside Washington, and happened to tune into the Bush-Blair joint press conference during your lunch hour on April 16, that first question to President Bush may have seemed a bit mysterious: "Mr. President, did you ask Secretary Rumsfeld to draw up war plans against Iraq in November 2001, just as the military action was getting under way in Afghanistan? Why couldn't Iraq wait?"

The question made sense only if you knew that the promotional machinery was being wheeled into place to sell the new book by Washington Post investigative eminence Bob Woodward. And the first bit of "news" from Woodward's Plan of Attack was that planning for the Iraq war began shortly after 9/11. If this doesn't strike you as news, if you assume that it's routine due diligence by the Pentagon to plan for wars against America's enemies, then that just shows how woefully out of touch you are with the state-of-the-art anti-Bush theories that Washington is wallowing in this election year.

That same afternoon following the press conference, the Post on its website gave the first authoritative peek into the book's contents, what you might call the executive summary. Under the headline "Bush Planned for War as Diplomacy Continued," the Post's William Hamilton reported:

Beginning in late December 2001, President Bush met repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq even as he and administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a diplomatic solution, according to a new book on the origins of the war.

To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber

We're Sorry,

the rest of this article is available only to subscribers.

You have two options:

Subscribing today will provide you with immediate, complete access to the current issue, as well as to all back issues on the site. Each week you will be able to read articles from the newest issue even before print copies are mailed!

Privacy Policy