Only a Shot in Battle for Presidency

Authored by Andrew Apostolou

Both the Bush and Kerry election campaigns have suggested that Americans read Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack. Such a dual endorsement seems odd while any endorsement from the Bush campaign at all would appear to be odder still.

After all, The New York Times headlined its review of the book A Heady Mix of Pride and Prejudice Led to War, hardly Bush campaign fodder. Indeed, U.S.critics of the war have seized on aspects of the book that portray a divided government trapped in the logic of war based on faulty doctrine and unreliable intelligence, insinuations that are not borne out by the evidence.

The real division, however, is not in the Bush administration but in Woodward's own book. There are two books inside Plan of Attack.

The first is a factual account of meetings over coffee about potential military action against Iraq, a history that abounds with details such as President Bush devouring mints, various Cabinet members' body language and occasional colorful language.

The story here is that military plans are complex, need to be kept up to date and take a long time to be refined, all of which Secretary of Defense Donald Rusted did with aplomb. This is the book that the Bush campaign wants voters to read.

The second book is an interpretation that Woodward constructs of a supposedly dangerous doctrine and suspect intelligence.

Woodward informs his readers that: “The aim of this book is to provide the first detailed behind-the-scenes account of how and why President George W.
Bush, his war council and allies decided to launch a preemptive war in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.''

The writer then expresses doubts about the quality of intelligence over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in occasional asides. Woodward ends with an epilogue focused on the alleged failure to find WMD — the book that the Kerry campaign wants people to read.

Unfortunately for Woodward, however, the Iraq war was never about preemption. No coalition country that fought in the war believed that Iraq posed an imminent threat that would have allowed a preemptive strike.

Indeed, as Tony Blair argued on March 5, 2004, had Iraq posed an imminent threat then there would have been no recourse to the United Nations.

War of enforcement

Instead, the reason for the Iraq war was the enforcement of 17 U.N. resolutions, resolutions spurned by Hussein. The Iraq war was a continuation of the U.N.-mandated 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations had explicitly linked the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire to a requirement that Iraq unconditionally accept the destruction, removal or rendering harmless, under international supervision'' of its WMD stocks and programs and to a renunciation of terrorism.

Much has been made of Woodward's description of the tense relationship between Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell. More interesting, however, is how good their advice to President Bush was.

The Woodward of fact, as opposed to the Woodward of interpretation, vindicates Cheney's skepticism about the United Nations.

During 2003 U.S. intelligence reported that chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix was ''not doing all the things that he maintained he was doing'during the weapons inspections. Similarly, Powell correctly warned Bush that to liberate Iraq would be to ''own'' Iraq and that Iraq would dominate international affairs for years to come.

So for all the public-relations hyperbole, Plan of Attack is unlikely to have much impact on an election that is six months away.

Andrew Apostolou is director of research for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.