Plan of Attack

In this summary you will learn

• Why President Bush began planning war against Saddam Hussein immediately after Sept. 11
• What strident political skirmishes took place within the Bush administration well before the first shot was fired against Iraq

getAbstract rating

Why you should read Plan of Attack

Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward continues to shine his lamp into the shadows of U.S. political life. Woodward has an uncanny ability to present a point of view without appearing biased, perhaps because he approaches truth with a complex worldview and eschews viewing individual leaders as either particularly good or evil. Although you may not want to hear what he learned, Woodward interviewed more than 75 officials directly involved in the war on terrorism, including spending three and a half hours with President Bush. He found out that Bush considered, and then planned, war in Iraq long before voters knew, and that his chief advisors debated it vigorously. Right or wrong, he seems to say, Bush’s pivotal team members - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Franks - were entirely earnest. getAbstract.com strongly recommends this book to anyone who wonders how the U.S. became the proud new owner of all of Iraq’s problems. It gives you a breathtaking behind-the-scenes understanding of the decisions, for good or ill, that led to America’s second war against Saddam.

About the Author

Bob Woodward was key in exposing electoral wrongdoing in the Nixon Administration during the Watergate scandal, as reflected in his first book, All The President’s Men, written with colleague Carl Bernstein in 1974. He has been a reporter and editor at The Washington Post for 33 years. He wrote nine No. 1 best-selling nonfiction books, including Bush at War (2002), an account of the U.S. response to the attacks on September 11, 2001.