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Woodward on 60 Minutes tonight

Bob Woodward will be on 60 Minutes tonight talking about his new book. Mainstream news show. Broadcast network. Huge listener base. Lots of people who don’t normally pay attention to these kinds of details are going to get a wake up call.

"Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq. Beginning in late December 2001, Bush met repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the attack even as he and administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a diplomatic solution.

On Nov. 21, 2001, 72 days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Bush directed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to begin planning for war with Iraq. "Let's get started on this," Bush recalled saying. "And get Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to." He also asked, Could this be done on a basis that would not be terribly noticeable?

Bush received his first detailed briefing on Iraq war plans five weeks later, on Dec. 28, when Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command, visited Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Tex. Bush told reporters afterward that they had discussed Afghanistan.

The intensive war planning throughout 2002 created its own momentum, fueled in part by the CIA's conclusion that Saddam Hussein could not be removed from power except through a war and CIA Director George J. Tenet's assurance to the president that it was a "slam dunk" case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Adding to the momentum was the pressure from advocates of war inside the administration. Vice President Cheney, whom Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force" led that group and had developed what some of his colleagues felt was a "fever" about removing Hussein by force.

By early January 2003, Bush had made up his mind to take military action against Iraq. But Bush was so concerned that the government of his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, might fall because of his support for Bush that he delayed the war's start until March 19 here (March 20 in Iraq) because Blair asked him to seek a second resolution from the United Nations. Bush later gave Blair the option of withholding British troops from combat, which Blair rejected. "I said I'm with you. I mean it," Blair replied.

The book describes a relationship between Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that became so strained Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms. Cheney engaged in a bitter and eventually winning struggle over Iraq with Powell, an opponent of war who believed Cheney was obsessively trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and treated ambiguous intelligence as fact.