Ron Suskind on George W. Bush
If the history of the 2000s is ever truly written, it will star Ron Suskind as the finest reporter of the decade--and as the most ignored. If you read nothing but Suskind (and McClatchy) during the decade, you would have understood what was going on within two years of when it went down. Read anybody else and you would still be largely clueless today.
The politest thing I have seen anybody say about this--in confidence--is that it is "very odd" how the main newspapers have ignored Suskind's work in books and magazines for eight years. Suskind's reporting had documents and on-the-record quotes from former Bush officials.
Here's Ron Suskind in Slate taking one last look back at the incredibly bizarre presidency of George W. Bush:
Slate Magazine: in terms of the reasons for war, the decision to invade, the selling of the war... I think that despite Bob's ardent efforts, there will be many more disclosures and clarifications in the years to come. Just in my last book, The Way of the World, I came across fresh, detailed accounts of battles from January 2002, when senior officials of the Defense Department and CIA were instructed by the White House to begin a one-year, logistical planning process for the invasion. At that point, it was not a matter of if. It was, in essence, a 12-month ticking clock for the execution of an approved policy. What's more, in the spring of 2002, the White House told senior intelligence officials that WMD would be the lead justification for the invasion. The response from intelligence officials, especially those with expertise on Iraq, was that using WMDs as justification for war was a perilous gambit—advice that the White House ignored.
Mind you, this is just one example, a glimpse of the continent that remains in shadows, despite the tireless efforts of journalists with official access (like Bob) or without it (like me and many others). At day's end, many of the self-correcting features of our system of governance—congressional oversight, a strong judiciary, a robust press—failed.... It is, to my mind, an American tragedy that this administration will leave the stage with a host of basic questions left unanswered....
It's a matter of Bush exercising free will. It's his war. He's responsible. What qualities in W's architecture drove events? It was his preternatural faith in the power of confidence. He felt that believing in something with absolute certainty (even if it's willed rather than earned) is the key to victory, the spine of leadership. And once victory is won, no one will ask inconvenient questions about how it was achieved. The Bush view, then, is win first and win big—and if there's a mess, we'll clean it up later. And, someday, the winners will write history. It's the gambler's philosophy, a model that rests on pure nerve, a familiar two-step in the nation's history and culture, and one you see so often of late in public and private spheres in America...
Slate Magazine: What got us into Iraq? Why are we there? Did Bush know, or at least suspect, that there may not be WMD? Did the beast of Iraq spring, fully formed, from Bush's brain, from his Oedipal architecture? Did President Bush take this nation to war under false pretenses?.... Five-plus years into this war—a war, most certainly, of choice—the reasons we invaded Iraq remain largely shrouded in classified files, lost conversations, carefully guarded secrets....
Because Bush was not so much a victim of circumstances and birth order—or of bad advice from ambitious advisers—as he seems in W. He knew more than he's letting on. He made choices of his own free will. And in the fullness of time, he'll be held responsible for his actions, as history eventually demands of all presidents...
Slate Magazine: Bob [Woodward], clearly, has sat in what journalists generally consider "access heaven" in his unmatched colloquies with Bush. You have witnessed Bush jumping out of his chair to make a point, and many other moments from your interviews provide some signature scenes of this period. But, I wonder, Bob, if you think, looking back, that access to Bush has not been as valuable—hour for hour—as it has been with other presidents whom you've interviewed. I think it's fair to say that Bush and his team don't believe that truthful public disclosure and dialogue are among their central obligations. Other presidents have railed against the troublemakers in the press, but they felt, often reluctantly, that letting the American people know their mind—the good-enough reasons that drive action—was part of their job description. Frankly, I think the best book of your quartet is State of Denial—the one for which, I gather, you were not given access to Bush...
