Doubts and Debate Before Victory Over Taliban

Bush Demanded Advisers Be Patient

This is the second of three days of excerpts from the book "Bush At War" by Bob Woodward, an inside account of the internal debate within the Bush administration that led to U.S. military action in Afghanistan and the decision to aggressively confront Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Simon & Schuster, (c)2002.

On the evening of Oct. 25, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice called President Bush's personal secretary, Ashley Estes, and asked whether it was all right with the president if she came and saw him for a few minutes in the White House residence. Rice, along with Vice President Cheney and a handful of senior advisers, could see Bush on the spur of the moment.

"What's up?" Bush asked when Rice joined him a few minutes later in the Treaty Room. It was the end of a normal working day for the president, about 6:30 p.m. Bush had just finished his daily physical fitness routine and was still in his exercise clothes. He was not dripping sweat but had cooled down -- perhaps the right time for such a conversation, if there ever was.

Just over two weeks after the commencement of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance -- a loose confederation of warlords who opposed the ruling Taliban militia -- was making little progress on the ground. At a National Security Council meeting two days earlier, Cheney had addressed the core issue. "Do we wait for the Northern Alliance, or do we have to go get involved ourselves, which is a wholly different proposition?" Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was secretly working on contingency plans for putting 50,000 U.S. troops on the ground -- if that was the only way to win.

Then, at a meeting of principals, they had discussed how disappointed they all were in Gen. Mohammed Fahim, the leader of the Northern Alliance, who was promising to move but failing to advance. The CIA had reported that the Taliban forces opposite Fahim's lines had increased by an astonishing 50 percent. Satellite and other intelligence only weeks ago had shown anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 Taliban fighters at the front. Now the count was 10,000 to 16,000 -- and no one seemed to know why.

Normally, Rice saw her job as twofold: first, to coordinate what Defense, State, the CIA and other departments or agencies were doing by making sure the president's orders were carried out; and second, to act as counselor -- to give her private assessment to the president, certainly when he asked, perhaps if he didn't. "She's a very thorough person," Bush said in an interview, "constantly mother-henning me."

In other words, she was the president's troubleshooter. And this was trouble.

The south of Afghanistan was dry, and the north was not moving, she told the president. "And we've bombed everything we can think of to bomb, and still nothing is happening."

Bush sat down.

"You know, Mr. President, the mood isn't very good among the principals, and people are concerned about what's going on," Rice said, referring to the principal war cabinet members. She said there was some hand-wringing.

The president jerked forward. Hand-wringing? He hated, absolutely hated, the very idea, especially in tough times. He was getting some reports from senior advisers Karen P. Hughes and Karl Rove about media stories, but not much more.

"I want to know if you're concerned about the fact that things are not moving," Rice said.