After the deceptively easy victory in Afghanistan, “Bush at war” returned in the shape of the campaign against Iraq. In fact, as Bob Woodward recounts, Paul Wolfowitz had already proposed on 15 September 2001 to attack Iraq instead of Afghanistan because this seemed to him a more feasible objective. The former treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, and General Wesley Clark have confirmed that the idea of attacking Iraq was the goal of President Bush’s praetorian guard since the beginning of his tenure; Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial grip on power represented for them a permanent checkmate of the United States.
