Bush's Bin Laden Craving

As I wrote in my August 12, 2004 column, The Unnamed Enemy, Bush's refusal to publicly acknowledge bin Laden lasted for years.

In the summer of 2005, however, Bush started invoking bin Laden again, this time to support his Iraq policy. "Hear the words of Osama bin Laden," Bush said, "'This Third World War is raging' in Iraq."

And by 2006, Bush was citing bin Laden extensively -- on the stump, to bolster his political arguments. As I wrote in my September 6, 2006 column, On Quoting bin Laden, Bush started letting bin Laden share his bulliest of pulpits, giving the mass murderer precisely the attention he craves.

And in my July 25, 2007, column, I wrote how Bush -- who, according to the White House's own intelligence report, bolstered bin Laden's recruiting efforts by invading Iraq -- was now Al Qaeda's Best Publicist.

Woodward's Final Verdict

Seven Bush interviews and four Bush books later, Bob Woodward writes in The Washington Post today: "Any scorecard for the Bush presidency would focus on his performance as commander in chief: Did he set up and enforce a decision-making system worthy of the sacrifice he has asked of others, particularly the men and women of the U.S. military? Was he willing to entertain debate and consider alternative courses of action? Was he slow to act when his strategies were not working? Did he make the right changes? Did he make them in time? And was the Bush administration a place where people were held accountable? . . .

"Interviews with dozens of administration officials and military officers, . . . along with contemporaneous notes of meetings, show that President Bush often displayed impatience, bravado and unwavering personal certainty about his decisions. Perhaps most troubling to some in his administration, the result sometimes was a delayed reaction to realities and advice that ran counter to the president's gut instincts."

Here's one assessment: "David Satterfield . . . had watched the president up close for several years from his vantage point as Iraq coordinator for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Satterfield had reached some highly critical conclusions not shared by Rice: If Bush believed something was right, he believed it would succeed. Its very rightness ensured ultimate success. Democracy and freedom were right. Therefore, they would ultimately win out.

"Bush, Satterfield observed, tolerated no doubt. His words and actions constantly reminded those around him that he was in charge. He was the decider. As a result, he often made biting jokes or asides to colleagues that Satterfield found deeply wounding and cutting.

"Bush had little patience for briefings. 'Speed it up. This isn't my first rodeo,' he would often say to those making presentations. It was difficult to brief him because he would interject his own narrative, questions or off-putting jokes. Discussions rarely unfolded in a logical, comprehensive fashion."

Woodward concludes: "In one of our early interviews, President Bush said of the path he had chosen: 'I know it is hard for you to believe, but I have not doubted what we're doing. I have not doubted. . . . There is no doubt in my mind we're doing the right thing. Not one doubt.'

"It wasn't so hard to believe."

Tim Rutten writes in a Los Angeles Times book review: "Bush, in Woodward's view, is the worst kind of wartime president: controlling and disengaged, all at once. Worse, he frequently is not only detached from unpleasant or inconvenient facts but is also positively hostile to those who recite them. As Woodward reconstructs the last two years -- in a stunning series of on-the-record interviews with participants -- this willful blindness has spilled out of the White House and into the departments of Defense and State in a perfect maelstrom of dysfunction."