414 notes to pages 277‒281
- Rose, How Wars End , 242. On the early warnings to the incoming Bush
administration of the al-Qaeda threat, see Woodward, Bush at War , 34–35. - Ricks, Fiasco , 27–28.
- Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 13; Rose, How Wars End , 257.
- Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 16; Ricks, Fiasco , 30–31; Woodward, Bush
at War , 60, 83–85. - Woodward, Bush at War , 99.
- For a full account from the administration’s perspective, see Woodward,
Bush at War. - Rose, How Wars End , 268–69.
- Rose, How Wars End , 270.
- Ricks, Fiasco , 32–33; Rose, How Wars End , 243.
- As journalist Th omas Ricks puts it, the decision to go to war with Iraq
was made “more through drift than through any one meeting.” Ricks, Fi-
asco , 58. See similarly John P. Burke, “Condoleezza Rice as NSC Advisor:
A Case Study of the Honest Broker Role,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 35
(3) (September 2005): 554–75, at 559 ; James P. Pfi ff ner, “Decision Making
in the Bush White House,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 39 (2) (June
2009): 363–84, at 375–76. - Ricks, Fiasco , 48–49; Rose, How Wars End , 243.
- Burke, “Condoleezza Rice as NSC Advisor,” 560, 563.
- Even now, after multiple books and memoirs, the post-9/11 Bush
administration fi xation on Iraq remains “a bit mysterious.” Rose, How
Wars End , 252–53. On the heightened sensitivity to any and all possi-
bilities of another terrorist attack, see Ron Suskind, Th e One Percent
Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006). - Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 72–73.
- Rose, How Wars End , 270–71. Even those within the administration
who had earlier espoused a realist perspective, such as Rice and Cheney,
adapted to the new, more permissive setting. Hess, Presidential Decisions
for War , 2nd ed., 223; Ricks, Fiasco , 47–48. - Peter W. Galbraith, Th e End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created
a War without End (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006, 2007), 83–84. - Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 64.
- James Dobbins, “Who Lost Iraq? Lessons from the Debacle,” Foreign
Aff airs 86 (5) (September–October 2007): 61–74, at 66. - Burke, “Condoleezza Rice as NSC Advisor,” 554–55, 560.
- Many have commented on Cheney’s important role and alleged he
exercised undue infl uence over the president. It seems more reasonable to
assume the vice president tended to echo and thus reinforce the presi-
dent’s own views. David Mitchell and Tansa George Massoud, “Anatomy
of Failure: Bush’s Decision-Making Process and the Iraq War,” Foreign
Policy Analysis 5 (2009): 265–86, at 274.