ABSTRACT
The 'war on terror' rapidly became the dominant motif of the President George W. Bush administration, with first the events of 9/11 and then the subsequent United States-led response directly shifting perceptions of the Bush presidency. The semi-official court reporter of the Bush years, Bob Woodward, has charted this descent from sympathy and initial success in Afghanistan to cynicism and then surge in Iraq, as part of a more substantial literature chronicling and critiquing every aspect of the 'war', building on the exhaustive official National Commission investigation, including a minute-by-minute chronology of the day itself, as well as a series of more defensive memoirs and a shower of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's so-called 'snowflake' memoranda. In addition to the way the Bush administration chose to fight the 'war on terror', there are concerns over whom it chose to focus its attention on.
