Review - Plan of Attack, by Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, 2004

-by Tyler M. Carey

They really ought to sell Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack with a nice big piece of naugahyde that you can just bite down on as you read the book. You'll be that pissed off - no matter which side of the War in Iraq fence you're sitting on. I thought I'd read the most appalling thing of my life when I got up to the necrophiliac scene in Last Exit to Brooklyn, but…wow… The thing that really pisses me off is that no matter how angry I was after reading the book, it's actually a fairly well done book. My anger has to do with the subject matter, not its delivery. This book should become required reading for every Anti-Everything brat in college, so that they actually have some sturdy arguments to make (y'know, instead of the "you couldn't even run a baseball team; don't run my country" crap).

Woodward is now the foremost historian-journalist of his generation. The sad thing is that after jumpstarting his career with a little book called All the President's Men (y'know, the one that unveiled Watergate), most of his work since has been extremely forgettable. He's documented everything that's happened since (from the death of John Belushi, to the CIA's operations in the 80s, to Desert Storm), but the fact of the matter is that there really weren't all that many big watershed moments in DC politics between Watergate and Iraq. Sure, there was Iran-Contra. Sure President Clinton got his Willy Wanked. Sure, some bonehead who ran a failed oil company was delegated the President of the United States. But, Woodward has treated these subjects as anecdotal bits in the ongoing history of the Presidency. He truly is Gore Vidal's rightful heir. At any rate, after years of moderate success, Woodward ended up back on the national radar with his bestseller Bush at War - his examination of September 11th, the war in Afghanistan, and the politicking in Washington that followed both. The thing that most struck me when I read that book was the cabinet meeting held shortly after the 9/11 attacks, when Bush asked what the extent of Iraq's involvement was in the enactment of the attacks. Sure, the thought that Iraq could have been party to it crossed many people's minds that morning. I remember one of the early reports on 1010 WINS radio actually had an onlooker claim that one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center was a fighter jet with an Iraqi flag painted on the side - as if the typical New Yorker knew what the Iraqi flag looked like from 2,000 feet away. Woodward didn't gloss over this cabinet meeting comment - he was direct about Bush's interest at avenging his father's folly and near assassination. That book was released two years ago, though. The American public didn't seem to notice. When Woodward revealed the same fact in this new book of his, Plan of Attack, the media went nuts. "Holy shit! The president premeditated an attack on Iraq a whole fucking year before it happened! NO FUCKING WAY!!! I thought he was trying for diplomacy!"

For those of you who actually get around to reading this, you'll be relieved that the nature of Woodward's revelations goes far deeper than stating the obvious. However, you'll be traumatized by what you do read. The amount of material in here that is borderline impeachable - borderline, I say - is substantial. The number of just meaningless bizarre anecdotes, though, is even more tremendous. Okay, I'll give you my favorites: 1) The first attacks in the war on Iraq weren't launched by U.S. or Iraqi soldiers, but by a group of Kurds who didn't get the memo that the war was supposed to start after the last 'attempt at diplomacy'. 2) The top Kurdish and Iraqi spies working for the CIA were codenamed, 'The ROCKSTARS'. 3) Presidential strategist Karl Rove warned President Bush not to trust UN weapons inspector Hans Blix. When pressed by the President why he should be leery of Blix, Rove explained that as a Norwegian-American he had a deep-seated hatred for the Swedes. National policy was determined by this Praire Home Companion bullshit. 4) Seemingly all of the CIA/military 'intelligence' contradicted itself about the weapons of mass destruction, resulting in many a discussion where poor Colin Powell ended up sounding like Lou Costello asking who was on Third Base. 5) The national terror alert levels seemed to largely fluctuate on nonexistent data. At one point, the levels were raised dramatically, seemingly overnight, with warnings to law enforcement officials to be on the look out for terrorists with biological weapons on U.S. soil. It ends up that the reason that security was heightened was because during a cabinet meeting, somebody said something to the effect of, "Gee, I bet terrorists would love to get their hands on some biological weapons." I for one, after reading this book, will never take the security levels at all seriously ever again. And lastly, 6) President Bush constantly uses foreign colloquialisms when with foreign leaders (often of a different extraction than the particular colloquialisms) in an attempt to be chummy and continental, but instead almost always leading to embarrassing results. For instance, he used the word toro to describe Ariel Sharon to a group of foreign leaders. The translator explained to President Bush that one should be careful of using the word toro, as it can be taken not to mean, "He's tough and strong like a bull," but, "He's a steaming pile of bull shit." [Transliterations Mine]

The epilogue of the book is nearly fifty pages, but it is really the only portion of the book that actually addresses the aftermath of all this macho bellicose bullshit. Sure, the intent of the book was to trace the path to war, not the war itself, and certainly the complete fallout is still yet to be seen, but I would have appreciated more of an acknowledgement of how much of a clusterfuck the whole war has been. Plan of Attack is much less sycophantic than Bush at War, but I still am left with the feeling that Woodward avoided burning certain bridges because he hopes to get a third book out of the Bush presidency. Let's just hope that Kerry, Nader, or Santa Claus wins the election in November, and prevents the completion of this dismaying trilogy.