From a Palm Beach Post editorial, 4/22/04:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/thursday/opinion_04689eb196bd201e0045.html
Bush planned in secret, yet he still failed to plan
As Wednesday's bombings offered one more discouraging example of the
Bush administration's failure in Iraq, it also is discouraging to know
that the White House had a bigger head start on the war than the
public ever knew.
Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack, makes clear that President
Bush's team had decided on war more than a year before the invasion.
Even as the administration claimed that war was a last option, Mr.
Bush had made it the only option.
In November 2001, Mr. Woodward writes, the president told Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to "get on" an invasion plan and "keep it
secret."
The White House was so committed that the administration took $700
million that Congress had approved for anti-terrorism work in
Afghanistan and spent it on planning to invade Iraq.
That switch is as illegal as Iran-Contra, not that the Republican-led
Congress will care.
Yet even with all that time, Mr. Bush did not develop a workable
postwar plan.
If this is how CEO-style White House management works, the nation
needs less of it.
It seems clear that the president never held a meeting to hear all
opinions on how to deal with Iraq; when President Kennedy held such a
meeting in 1962, it helped to avoid nuclear war with the Soviet Union
over missiles in Cuba.
Having insisted on fighting the wrong war, Mr. Bush then listened only
to his small circle of like-minded advisers to plan for what would
follow.
As a result, every assumption about the postwar -- these days, the
term hardly qualifies -- has been wrong.
Plan of Attack corroborates former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's
and ex-counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's charges that Mr. Bush
made Iraq more of a priority than Al-Qaeda.
It reveals how little Mr. Bush regards the opinion of Secretary of
State Colin Powell; the Saudi Arabian ambassador saw the plan before
Mr. Powell did.
And the report of a Saudi promise to lower gas prices just before the
election is one more sign of favored treatment for the nation that
bred most of the 9/11 hijackers.
Finally, there is Mr. Bush's comment that while he was "surely not
going to justify war based upon God... in my case, I pray that I be as
good a messenger of his will as possible. And then, of course, I pray
for forgiveness."
Since Al-Qaeda claims to be doing God's will in killing civilians, it
will not comfort moderate Muslims to hear that the United States wants
to liberate the world in the name of the Lord.
Nor is it in Mr. Bush's job description.
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But the big question is, would you trust this guy with the lives of
your loved ones? Think about it. Carefully!
Harry
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