Journalist “Bob Woodward relates in his book Plan of Attack how [Secretary of State Colin] Powell sat down with [President] Bush on the evening of August 5 [2002], first over dinner and then in the president’s office in his residence. ‘You are going to be the proud owner of twenty-five million people,’ Powell said, according to Woodward. ‘You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. …It’s going to suck the oxygen out of everything. …This will become the first term.’ ”
– Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco, Page 48