Ask more questions

Time Magazine:

TIME
Do you find yourself now asking a second set of questions on the intelligence that you might not have asked before?

BUSH
Look, I asked a lot of questions before. Anytime you put a large group of people into a combat zone, you ask a lot of questions. Yes, obviously, all of us that now look at intelligence say, Let's make sure that the analyst who came up with that information has gotten additional input. We've just got to make sure that as we connect the dots, everybody's voices are heard.

Baltimore Sun:

"It's like you've got five minutes with the CEO," one adviser said. "If you don't have an answer he wants you to have, if you're not crisp in the way you're bringing something to him, not clear where you're headed, not focused on the point, I don't say he's impatient, but you can tell he's not happy."

Toward the end of 2002, with Bush weighing whether to order an invasion of Iraq, the president sought out the views of his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and his longtime Texas friend and confidante Karen Hughes. He told Woodward, though, that he did not, in the final hours, ask for counsel from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who had long urged caution on Iraq.

Washington Post:

But critics say that Iraq illustrates the risks of an approach that narrows the definition of a problem and fails to look at the ramifications of a proposed solution. Accounts of Bush's decision-making about Saddam Hussein describe repeated and detailed briefings on plans for the military assault on Iraq. But no such attention appears to have been lavished on the ethnic and religious differences within that country or on plans for pacification after the hoped-for military victory. In recent interviews, Bush has acknowledged that he misjudged the political and social climate of Iraq and therefore was unprepared for the resistance that has cost so many American lives.