On Bush's bandwagon

Colin Powell disagreed with Bushâ™s strategy but failed to alter his course

5 April 2012

Guidance notes for those charged with selecting future British Army officers carry this salutary warning: "The selection process should be particularly concerned to weed out the leader who shows impact and low brain.

There are few things more dangerous than the leader who is able easily to dominate others but lacks the intellect, practicality and commonsense to understand the consequence of his actions."

If Bob Woodward's lurid account of the drive to war in Iraq last year were only half true, there are a lot of dangerous people about in the corridors of Whitehall and Washington.

The book is a rollicking chronicle in a style Woodward made his own from the times of Watergate, part colour reporting, part sober analysis, part folksy and uncheckable gossip - all at a thumping rhythm, like PG Wodehouse or Damon Runyon on speed.

The style is a major problem, because of the device of the confected quotes - some simply too bad, or too good, to be true. "I'm with you," Tony Blair tells George Bush on page 178, and five pages later John Howard of Australia declares: "I'm with you."

Despite the literary crazy paving, the message is crystal clear, and it is why the book has become a political event in its own right.

The administration of George W Bush was obsessed with the desire to go to war with Iraq well before the attacks of 11 September, which became the catalyst for launching the campaign.

Neither the American nor British secret services had firm evidence-that Iraq was generating new weapons of mass destruction which would make it a greater menace to the world than it had been through most of the 1990s.

The cheerleader of the war party is Vice-President Dick Cheney, backed by the Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, supported by a surprisingly sceptical George W Bush.

Cheney believed Saddam should be annihilated because he defied America and the world, was a menace to the region, and might have the potential to supply the al Qaeda global terrorist movement with dirty nuclear, biological or chemical bombs.

Colin Powell himself does not emerge well. He tries to persuade Bush to back the UN strategy and build broad international support - and fails dismally. He is sidelined and humiliated by his arch-rivals Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Instead of standing his ground, he caves in and follows the Bush bandwagon to war. No wonder that in the light of this book the New York Times has called for him to resign.

But then no one, it seems, could stop Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the gang going to war. The intelligence on Saddam's exotic arsenal and evil actions was consistently threadbare - as even Bush himself recognises on occasion.

"It's not something Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from," he tells the CIA directors after a presentation of spy photographs and intercepts.

Two months before, CIA Director George Tenet himself was dismayed when Bush mentioned British Intelligence suggestions that Saddam could launch a biological or chemical attack in 45 minutes.

"Tenet and the CIA had warned the British not to make the allegation which was based on a questionable source ... Tenet referred privately to this as the "they-can-attack-in-45-minutes shit".

The plan of attack itself devised by Donald Rumsfeld and his field commander, Tommy R Franks, is depicted as something of a revolution in military affairs with its daring lightning thrusts and multiple lines of operations.

It was nothing of the sort, the kind of plan studied and frequently rubbished by brigadiers and colonels on the British Army's higher command staff course, it was high-risk, exposing supply lines and flanks to counterattack.

Preparation for securing peace and rebuilding Iraq in the aftermath of the conflict was scanty to the point of negligence. Least of all did Franks or Rumsfeld prepare for the elaborate guerrilla insurgency now under way - evidently well planned by former members of Saddam's army and security forces.

Strangest of all the main players in Woodward's largely Washington-based drama, is our own Tony Blair. Faithful to Bush to the end, he has the last words of the narrative. "I kind of think that that the decisions taken in the next few weeks will determine the rest of the world for years to come,"

Blair said (within hours of the war beginning on 20 March last year). "As primary players, we have a chance to shape the issues that are discussed. Both of us will have enormous capital and a lot of people will be with us."

Sadly this book is an irony-free zone, with neither sight nor sound of Sassoon's immortal "The General".

"He's a cheery old card, said Harry to Jack,
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack."

The Bush-Blair plan of attack may have done for both their nations' ability to project conventional military power across the world. As the Pentagon strategy wonks might say - a culmination point in history.

On Bush's bandwagon

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