Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq
by Bob Woodward
View on GoodreadsBob Woodward's 2004 inside account of the 16 months between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion of Iraq — the specific NSC meetings, presidential conversations, and bureaucratic maneuvers that produced the war decision.
Core ideas
- The decision wasn't a single moment but a sequence — Bush asked Rumsfeld to update the Iraq war plan in November 2001 (weeks after 9/11), and by mid-2002 the planning was so advanced that the public diplomacy was running to catch up with operational reality.
- The Cheney-Powell axis is the book's organizing tension — Cheney as the persistent advocate, Powell as the late and reluctant convert who delivered the UN speech he later disowned, and Bush in the middle making decisions whose architecture had been built around him.
- The intelligence-failure framing is partial — Woodward's reporting shows the analytical product was more contested than the public posture suggested, but the political demand for a particular conclusion shaped which contestation got surfaced.
Published2004
Pages496
ISBN9780743255486
ReadJan 2026
