NY Times Book Review
Three years after the American invasion of Iraq, after endless searches had found no sign of weapons of mass destruction, President Bush still believed that Saddam Hussein had had them. He expressed that conviction repeatedly to his chief of staff, Andrew Card, until Card left the White House in April 2006.
So writes Robert Draper in his unusual biography of George W. Bush. It is unusual because Draper, a national correspondent for GQ magazine, was given extraordinary access to this press-averse president and his aides, including six private meetings with Bush, surely in the belief that he would be a friendly biographer. Draper is friendly, at times admiring. But he also unhesitatingly supplies devastating evidence of the characteristics that have helped to produce the disasters of the Bush presidency.
“Dead Certain,” the title, conveys one of those characteristics. Bush knows he is right. When facts turn out to get in the way, he brushes them off. When “Mission Accomplished” turned sour in Iraq, when various supposed bench marks of success did not stop the bloodshed, the president remained utterly confident of victory. He was sure, Draper writes, that “history would acquit him.”
These are some of the words Draper uses in discussing Bush: “certitude,” “intransigence,” “his obstinate streak,” “compulsive optimism.” “I truly believe we’re in the process of shaping history for the good,” Bush told Draper early this year. “I know, I firmly believe, that decisions I have made were necessary to secure the country.”
At the time of that interview, February 2007, Republicans had lost control of both houses of Congress. “Americans had soured on the president and his war,” Draper writes. “The First Optimist had made pessimists out of them.” But the president did not change. “What had to be believed, he believed.”
The way Bush sold the country on going to war against Iraq is well traced by Draper in quotations from speeches in late 2002. Saddam “is a man who would likely team up with Al Qaeda,” Bush said on Nov. 3. Later the same day: “This is a man who has had contacts with Al Qaeda. ... He’s the kind of guy that would love nothing more than to train terrorists and provide arms to terrorists.” The next day: “Imagine a scenario where an Al Qaeda-type organization uses Iraq as an arsenal.” And repeatedly, Draper says, Bush used the line: “This is a man who told the world he wouldn’t have weapons of mass destruction, promised he wouldn’t have them. He’s got them.”
Draper says bluntly that “Bush wasn’t relying on intelligence to buttress his claims of Saddam’s dark fantasies of plotting attacks on America with Al Qaeda, or of direct contact with Al Qaeda. For no such intelligence existed.” But the scary talk worked. In time millions of Americans believed, in the teeth of reality, that there were Iraqis on the planes that struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The other half of the salesmanship for war was the contention that the Iraqi people would welcome American invaders. We are familiar with the talk that they would greet us with flowers. But Draper has a telling quotation that I had not seen before. Vice President Dick Cheney is trying to persuade Dick Armey, the Republican House majority leader, who was skeptical about a war on Iraq, in a private meeting in September 2002: “We have great information. They’re going to welcome us. It’ll be like the American Army going through the streets of Paris. They’re sitting there ready to form a new government. The people will be so happy with their freedoms that we’ll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/b...eJEBrGHaFJdjPnlX1w&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
Three years after the American invasion of Iraq, after endless searches had found no sign of weapons of mass destruction, President Bush still believed that Saddam Hussein had had them. He expressed that conviction repeatedly to his chief of staff, Andrew Card, until Card left the White House in April 2006.
So writes Robert Draper in his unusual biography of George W. Bush. It is unusual because Draper, a national correspondent for GQ magazine, was given extraordinary access to this press-averse president and his aides, including six private meetings with Bush, surely in the belief that he would be a friendly biographer. Draper is friendly, at times admiring. But he also unhesitatingly supplies devastating evidence of the characteristics that have helped to produce the disasters of the Bush presidency.
“Dead Certain,” the title, conveys one of those characteristics. Bush knows he is right. When facts turn out to get in the way, he brushes them off. When “Mission Accomplished” turned sour in Iraq, when various supposed bench marks of success did not stop the bloodshed, the president remained utterly confident of victory. He was sure, Draper writes, that “history would acquit him.”
These are some of the words Draper uses in discussing Bush: “certitude,” “intransigence,” “his obstinate streak,” “compulsive optimism.” “I truly believe we’re in the process of shaping history for the good,” Bush told Draper early this year. “I know, I firmly believe, that decisions I have made were necessary to secure the country.”
At the time of that interview, February 2007, Republicans had lost control of both houses of Congress. “Americans had soured on the president and his war,” Draper writes. “The First Optimist had made pessimists out of them.” But the president did not change. “What had to be believed, he believed.”
The way Bush sold the country on going to war against Iraq is well traced by Draper in quotations from speeches in late 2002. Saddam “is a man who would likely team up with Al Qaeda,” Bush said on Nov. 3. Later the same day: “This is a man who has had contacts with Al Qaeda. ... He’s the kind of guy that would love nothing more than to train terrorists and provide arms to terrorists.” The next day: “Imagine a scenario where an Al Qaeda-type organization uses Iraq as an arsenal.” And repeatedly, Draper says, Bush used the line: “This is a man who told the world he wouldn’t have weapons of mass destruction, promised he wouldn’t have them. He’s got them.”
Draper says bluntly that “Bush wasn’t relying on intelligence to buttress his claims of Saddam’s dark fantasies of plotting attacks on America with Al Qaeda, or of direct contact with Al Qaeda. For no such intelligence existed.” But the scary talk worked. In time millions of Americans believed, in the teeth of reality, that there were Iraqis on the planes that struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The other half of the salesmanship for war was the contention that the Iraqi people would welcome American invaders. We are familiar with the talk that they would greet us with flowers. But Draper has a telling quotation that I had not seen before. Vice President Dick Cheney is trying to persuade Dick Armey, the Republican House majority leader, who was skeptical about a war on Iraq, in a private meeting in September 2002: “We have great information. They’re going to welcome us. It’ll be like the American Army going through the streets of Paris. They’re sitting there ready to form a new government. The people will be so happy with their freedoms that we’ll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/b...eJEBrGHaFJdjPnlX1w&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
