Read a couple interesting books this last week.

First, let me explain why I chose to read these books. A friend of mine IM’d me early last week and told me that he had a conversation with a mutual friend of ours who had told him that he was going to vote for John Kerry in the presidential election.

“Why?!” I asked.

He had a talk with his dad (a high-ranking Pentagon official), my friend said, and now he’s anti-Bush.

So I IM’d our mutual friend, politely confronted him about it, and asked him why in the hell would he do such a stupid thing.

He told me he felt the Bush administration had botched the situation in Iraq — they weren’t doing what they should to establish a peaceful country. He felt the administration had condoned terror and turned a blind eye to the Geneva Conventions.

I told him I could somewhat understand his concerns, but... Kerry?!

He said, yeah.

He asked me if I had read any of Bob Woodward’s books. I said no. He recommended them.

I made a deal with him. I told him I would read Woodward’s books if he would read Sean Hannity’s book “Deliver Us From Evil.”

“Sean’s obnoxious on the radio,” I said. “But he writes a great book.”

He agreed to read it. I reserved the two books, “Plan Of Attack” and “Bush At War” at the library. I went and picked them up on Thursday or Friday of last week.

I started “Bush At War” Friday night and finished up the epilogue Sunday morning.

What a great book! “Bush At War“ is about the war in Afghanistan, but not so much the war itself, but the players involved in the White House, Pentagon, etc.

I learned a lot about Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Tenet, etc. and in the end, I found the book to be a very flattering, complimentary report of the administration and our government.

We’ve heard so much this last year about how the U.S. intelligence agencies don’t work. The success of the first phases of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are a testament not just to the members of the intelligence community, but to the resourcefulness of the men and women working in intelligence and the military. They were able to quickly adapt to a whole new way of fighting an enemy by sharing information and working in smaller, technologically connected teams.

So, I finished “Bush At War” feeling terrific about our president. Here was a man who had lots of intense personalities around him. He didn’t let anyone push him around. He always spent the necessary time to solicit opinions on major issues. Then, he made a decision and followed up to make sure it followed through.

I finished “Plan Of Attack” tonight. This book was less complimentary of the administration, but not much. There were obviously some glaring imperfections in how intelligence was working on the build up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. There were probably some high-ranking intelligence officials (e.g. Tenet) who didn’t put enough emphasis on how credible (or not) some intelligence was.

That said, I really have to respect the way the president and the administration handled everything. Bush remained true to his belief that 9/11 changed the rules: We had to take the war to the terrorists before they brought it to us.

There will probably always be a debate about whether Saddam Hussein was involved in terror operations. There has been enough credible intelligence to show that members of al Qaeda were in Iraq and had met with Hussein or his officials. Since the beginning of the war there, we’ve seen al Qaeda member Abu Musab al-Zarqawi mentioned several times as a leader of the insurgency in Iraq. The more of them we capture, kill, or convert in Iraq, the fewer we’ll have to deal with stateside.

Plus, there’s an incredible benefit to the Iraqi people.

Today, I saw a report on television about a congressional testimony in which military officers reported a stark dichotomy between what was being reported in the news about Iraq and what they witnessed firsthand.

The one officer I saw speak said if you believed the news, 90% or more of Iraqis saw the U.S. as an occupying force and not as a liberator. His experience was just the opposite.

The news media clearly doesn’t want to report on the love shared between military troops and Iraqis. That’s just not “important.” I don’t see that as bias so much as “just the way the media is.”

Now, back to my friend who challenged me to read these books. I talked to him today. I forgot to ask him if he’d read Sean Hannity’s book, but he did say this:

A vote for Bush is certainly a vote against Kerry.