I went by a bookstore today and had some coffee while skim-reading the 40-some pages devoted to the lead-up to the war. What I found most interesting was that he never actually describes articulately why he decided Iraq was on his radar.
He admits he was drawing up war plans for Iraq as early as December 2001 and having Gen. Tommy Franks draw up invasion plans. This affected the "light footprint" approach in Afghanistan that led to zero-nation building (hence our quagmire now) and not enough force in Tora Bora to capture Osama bin Laden. He states that they had to explore all potential threats and that Saddam Hussein had basically been on the US radar since the 1980s when they invaded Iran (he omits that we were helping him, then).
And that is fine, but what elevates Saddam over Iran, North Korea, Yeomen, Somolia, Lebanon, Syria and the Sudan? What made Iraq so crucial other than our history with him...under his father's legacy? He explains systematically why Saddam was an evil, evil despot-dictator. But there are dozens of them in the world. Why did we zero in on this one? Because invading a country due to a dictator who kills his own people means we should be invading about 1/5 of the world's nations.
He talks about WMD. And says the intelligence was iron clad and despite saying he didn't want to do "nasty finger pointing" at the CIA, he does blame them. What he omits is that his strongest evidence of Saddam attempting to buy yellowcake uranium from Africa had been disproven by both the CIA and MI6 by late 2002. George Tenet, who Bush places a lot of indirect blame at, told Bush to not use this in his State of the Union in 2003, as it was misleading and trumped up the case for war.
Bush used it anyway. When Ambassador Joe Wilson proved as much that year, the Vice President's staff and Karl Rove outed his CIA agent wife as punishment. None of this is acknowledged.
He is also incredibly misleading about Iraq's connections to terrorists. He mentions a anti-Israeli terrorist with connections to al-Qaeda may have been in Northern Iraq, but there was no evidence he was working with Saddam's regime. In fact, it is almost unthinkable as Saddam was a secular dictator who hated religious fanatacism, as he viewed it as a threat--like the Ayatollahs in Iran he went to war with, or the Kurds who he gassed. At the end of the chapter, Bush implies as much that Saddam may one day in the distant future have united with al-Qaeda out of convenience to work against the *****e government of Iran.
This implies he knows there is no real connection between terrorists and Iraq. Rather, the chance that they may have begun working together years in the future, even though there is no actual evidence that would ever happen and runs against Saddam's entire governance-style, was enough. And at the end he sums up his justification for war as that Saddam might have become a threat...one day. By that logic we should invade Cuba and China tomorrow. Truman should have bombed the Soviet Union and started WWIII. It rings incredibly false.
I honestly believe he had an obsession with Saddam Hussein and no matter what, he was going to invade. He speaks of how Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to begin bombing in summer 2002 and were ready for blood. Dick Cheney said to his president, "Are you going to kill this guy or not," according to the president's own memoir. This was the atmosphere he was in. He writes he approached Colin Powell for full support of war in March 2003...over a year late. What else would the Sec. of State say to a man who prefers yes, men.
What I think it boils down to was when he reviews the Gulf War, he notes that his father could have gone all the way to Baghdad (and he wanted him to), but he didn't because that is not how he framed the war for the American people. He basically said Bush'41 didn't invade Iraq, because he promised the UN and American people that it was to prevent genocide in Kuwait. He viewed it as a PR problem. In short, he viewed Saddam in need of overthrow, but deduced his father lacked the political capital to do what is necessary.
No. Bush'41, Colin Powell, and ironically Dick Cheney, decided that Iraq was a quagmire not worth the nation building sink hole it would become. Bush'43 viewed taking Saddam out as a chance to finish the job his father couldn't. That is why he was making plans for invasion two months after 9/11, instead of focusing on al-Qaeda and Afghanistan. That is why he was so willing to believe in WMD (I don't think he was intentionally lying, he convinced himself it was there no matter what hesitations the intelligence community had), because that is what he needed to finally take out the man who tried to assassinate his father.
And the 4,000 dead Americans, tens of thousands injured, 80-some thousand dead Iraqis and our exploded deficit paid the price. A price that put us in a position of weakness in regards to the genocides of Darfur and the crazed ambitions of Iran's government. And he still does not get that.
