According to Woodward's book: •
Andrew Card resigned because of concerns about how the public would perceive the administration's handling of
Iraq in the future and that he had twice tried to persuade Bush to replace Rumsfeld. • Former
US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met regularly with Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney to offer advice on the War in Iraq. Kissinger confirmed in recorded interviews with Woodward that the advice was the same as he had given in an August 12, 2005, column in the
Washington Post: "Victory over the
insurgency is the only meaningful
exit strategy." •
CIA Director
George Tenet and
J. Cofer Black met with then-National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, to warn her about an imminent
Al Qaeda attack and were disappointed Rice wasn't alarmed enough by the warning, although Rice's friend
Philip D. Zelikow (also executive director of the
9/11 Commission) also says in the book that the warning wasn't specific enough to enable the government to take a specific action to counter it (pages 49–52). •
Tony Blair repeatedly complained that the US government denied UK security services access to intelligence; although intelligence they collected was being stored on the
SIPRNet, SIPRNet's classified information was barred to all foreign nationals, such as
British and
Australian troops in Iraq. After Bush signed a directive (along with Rumsfeld and acting CIA director
John McLaughlin) ordering that "NOFORN would no longer apply to the British and Australians when they were planning for combat operations, training with the Americans or engaged in counterterrorism activities", officials within
the Pentagon instead began creating a parallel SIPRNet to which classified information would be slowly copied over after review. •
Al Gore reportedly promising the position
Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff to General
Eric Shinseki if he won the
2000 Presidential Election, causing a heavy sparked of anger among military community, especially knowing that Army has dominated most of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff position in which it was Shinseki service branch and at that time served as Army Chief of Staff. The incumbent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 2000 Presidential Election, General
Hugh Shelton is also from Army and so does his predecessor General
John Shaliskasvili and General
Colin Powell all from the Army. This was the primary reason why many from military community chose to support George W. Bush instead of Al Gore. Following assuming the Presidency, instead of Shinseki it was
Air Force General
Richard B. Myers whom Bush chosen to be the next
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. • Shinseki reportedly despised the Bush administration due to not being promoted to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as was supposedly promised to him by Al Gore. Shinseki constantly criticized the administration and opposed the administration's military policy. •
Robert D. Blackwill, the National Security Council's top official for Iraq, was deeply disturbed by what he considered the inadequate number of troops on the ground there. He told Rice and
Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, that the NSC needed to do a military review. Rice had made it clear that her authority did not extend to Rumsfeld or the military, and the matter was dropped. • When Hadley replaced Rice as National Security Advisor, he assessed the problems from the first term. He told a "colleague" on February 5, 2005, "I give us a B-minus for policy development and a D-minus for policy execution." • General
John P. Abizaid, head of US forces in Iraq, visited US Representative
John P. Murtha (D-
Penn.) in Murtha's office and held up his index finger about a quarter of an inch from his thumb, telling Murtha "We're that far apart" on Iraq policy. • "One of Kissinger's private criticisms of Bush was that he had no mechanism in place, or even an inclination, to consider the downsides of impending decisions. Alternative courses of action were rarely considered." ==Woodward's possible sources==