Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward (2004, Hardcover)

Bob Woodward had amazing access to the principals in the Bush administration's war council. His depth and breadth of information portrays how the Bush administration handling the surprise 9/11 attacks and quickly developed a strategy to strike back at Al Qaeda.

The book depicts the confusion and executive branch actions during the 9/11 attacks, how the administration was able to get their arms around what had happened to our country, and the actions the CIA and military took to strike back at Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. This book also reveals the seeds that ultimately led the Bush administration to declare war on Iraq. It's pretty clear that George Bush, and his administration, pursued a clear strategy to wage war against Saddam Hussein regardless of the facts.

Woodward doesn't reveal all the information that is revealed in his third book, "State of Denial". That's either because he wasn't aware of all the facts, or more likely, he didn't want to reveal too much negative information so he could continue to have access to the Bush administration prinicipals for his other two books.

Regardless of the omissions, this book is still a compelling treatise on how the administration handled the 9/11 crisis. As events unfold, you can see how a new administration was forced to "grow up" very quickly. Bush had been in office for less than a year when Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11. The administration was just beginning to get its bearings on how to operate in Washington when they were hit with a major crisis.

This book portrays the decisions and information that was available and how the administration was able to put together a cohesive response to a major attack against our country. Regardless of the administrations later failures, this book portrays how the Bush administration successfully rallied our allies support and executed an attack on Al Qaeda. It also introduces George Bush's interest in taking action against Saddam Hussein for the attacks.

This book is a sober assessment of the post 9/11 actions taken by the Bush administration. In general, this book provides a pretty favorable assessment of the administration.

I purchased and have read the three books written by Bob Woodward about President Bush and the war. The books are easy to read which I attribute to the novel-like way they are written. It is almost like being a fly on the wall during some of the top-secret meetings that took place. I appreciate the fact that Mister Woodward took on the project of writing these books which will keep this history alive for centuries. I decided to purchase and read these books after watching two documentaries on PBS (1. Bush's War and 2. Buying the War) which fueled my desire to know more about what really happened behind the scenes during the Bush administration leading up to the war. These books closely follow the events shown in the two documentaries and it is a sad tale of one of the darkest times in American history. This is a black eye on Uncle Sam from the viewpoint of the rest of the world. I hope we as a nation can recover from this huge blunder and once again show the world that we are a nation of loving, humble and supportive people who detest war and also the torture of prisoners who fight in them.