Excerpt from Woodward's book "Bush at War." Great read. Focuses on Powell v. Cheney/Rumsfeld over Iraq policy. Very long, so here's just the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64603-2002Nov16.html
How eerie to have such a vivid account of the inner workings of the Presidency almost as closely as I type this. We sometimes forget that we're constantly living in history... Great read. I hope the book keeps up the pace.
After rereading this article, I can not help but to think that Powell would make a great President. While Bush was slow to understand the international impact of a unilateral war against Saddam and Iraq, Powell was not. Bush appeared to be more concerned with building a consensus among his cabinet than actually taking a lead position. The article also made it very clear that Cheney and Rumsfeld were advocating a unilateral war versus threatening a war to get Saddam to behave. Unsprisingly, Cheney appears to be one of the most powerful and influential VPs. It is interesting that Cheney gave Iraq policy speeches that were not necessarily the official White House opinion. It is even more interesting that Cheney did so without feeling any repercussions from Bush. I see this as weakness in Bush in not being able to control his VP.
