Bob Woodward: 10 Take Aways From the Bush Years

10 Take Aways From the Bush Years

By Bob Woodward
Sunday, January 18, 2009; Page


There's actually a lot that President-elect Barack Obama can learn from the troubled presidency of George W. Bush. Over the past eight years, I have interviewed President Bush for nearly 11 hours, spent hundreds of hours with his administration's key players and reviewed thousands of pages of documents and notes. That produced four books, totaling 1,727 pages, that amount to a very long case study in presidential decision-making, and there are plenty of morals to the story. Presidents live in the unfinished business of their predecessors, and Bush casts a giant shadow on the Obama presidency: two incomplete wars and a monumental financial and economic crisis. Here are 10 lessons that Obama and his team should take away from the Bush experience.

1. Presidents set the tone. Don't be passive or tolerate virulent divisions.

In the fall of 2002, Bush personally witnessed a startling face-off between National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the White House Situation Room after Rumsfeld had briefed the National Security Council on the Iraq war plan. Rice wanted to hold onto a copy of the Pentagon briefing slides, code-named Polo Step. "You won't be needing that," Rumsfeld said, reaching across the table and snatching the Top Secret packet away from Rice -- in front of the president. "I'll let you two work it out," Bush said, then turned and walked out. Rice had to send an aide to the Pentagon to get a bootlegged copy from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bush should never have put up with Rumsfeld's power play. Instead of a team of rivals, Bush wound up with a team of back-stabbers with long-running, poisonous disagreements about foreign policy fundamentals.

2. The president must insist that everyone speak out loud in front of the others, even -- or especially -- when there are vehement disagreements.

During the same critical period, Vice President Cheney was urging Secretary of State Colin Powell to consider seriously the possibility that Iraq might be connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Powell found the case worse than ridiculous and scornfully concluded that Cheney had what Powell termed a "fever." (In private, Powell used to call the Pentagon policy shop run by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, who shared Cheney's burning interest in supposed ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, a "Gestapo office.")

Powell was right that to conclude that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden did not work together. But Cheney and Powell did not have this crucial debate in front of the president -- even though such a discussion might have undermined one key reason for war. Cheney provided private advice to the president, but he was rarely asked to argue with others and test his case. After the invasion, Cheney had a celebratory dinner with some aides and friends. "Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do," Cheney told the group as they toasted Bush and laughed at Powell. This sort of derision undermined the administration's unity of purpose -- and suggests the nasty tone that can emerge when open debate is stifled by long-running feuds and personal hostility.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/14/AR2009011402791.html?hpid=topnews

I can condense those 1727 pages down to two syllables -- STU-PID.

"...produced four books, totaling 1,727 pages, that amount to a very long case study in presidential decision-making, and there are plenty of morals to the story.

Yes, Mr. Woodward, and one of those morals would be "Go along just enough and you, too, can profit handsomely from the illegal war and criminal administration."

Well, that's what I got out of it, anyway.

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I love this line...if it doesn't just further cement the truth that this war was all a sham, few things do..."Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do,"

What the bloody fuck were you "trying to do?!" What were you "trying to do" when you were CELEBRATING the outbreak of war against a nation you KNEW to be non-hostile? And if this was based upon the invasion, how on Earth did Powell develop such long-standing "major reservations" about what was sold as a reponse to a supposed surprise event? A mondern-day Pearl Harbor, if you will.

Do those words sound familiar?

I am close to literally weeping when I see Cheney look into a fake reporter's eyes and admit to war crimes, while the leaders we elected as an outright rebuke of all things BushCo diddle themselves and take any sort of pubishment "off the table." It's makes me sick.



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are allowed to preform the autopsy?

Eight years and ten trillion dollars too late Bob. Thanks for nothing.

he really creeps me out.

It is almost easier to think about Bush.

I never had high hopes for Bush, but to think that half of the news team that brought about the fall of Nixon has become this abomination - well it is too sad for any words.

"you won't be needing that" :rofl:

Woodward should not be allowed to write himself out of this 8-year debacle

through the first term and way into the second? Did he not write supporting articles for all of the criminal acts they committed?

Or am I just confused???

:hi:

when he saw the handwriting on the wall and figured that KKKarl's dream of a thousand-year reich wasn't gonna happen. So Woody, being the pentultimate media whore that he's turned into, went all anti-bush** thinking everybody would be too damn stupid to notice.

His one brief shining moment was "All the President's Men." IMO, being played by Robert Redford in the movie went straight to his head, swelled it to its current proportions and filled him with a sense of hubris.

I think that Bernstein was the only true investigative reporter in that duo. After all, anyone with brains enough to have married Nora Ephron, even briefly, is pretty bright. Unfortunately, even that didn't keep Bernstein from having a loose zipper, although he is certainly not the only one with that problem.

Took his vial of powder to the U.N. to clinch the deal.

Why the hell does anyone give Powell a pass on this? It was his testimony that won over the doubters on the Iraq invasion.