That last resort
This is all rather fascinating, but totally unsurprising.
Bush Planned for War as Diplomacy Continued
By William Hamilton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 16, 2004; 10:45 AM
Beginning in late December, 2001, President Bush met repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq even as he and administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a diplomatic solution, according to a new book on the origins of the war.
The intensive war planning throughout 2002 created its own momentum, according to "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, fueled in part by the CIA's conclusion 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.
In three and a half hours of interviews with Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, Bush defended the secret planning and said war was his "absolute last option." But "Plan of Attack" describes how the growing commitments required of the military, the CIA and U.S. allies as the planning intensified would have been difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.
Adding to the momentum, Woodward writes, was the pressure from advocates of war inside the administration led by Vice President Cheney, who Woodward describes as a "powerful, steamrolling force" who 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, according to the book. 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 20 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.
