Soldier

from Chapter 19When Adolfo Aguilar Zinser walked into the Security Council on Wednesday morning, the first things he noticed were the video screens and computers that had been installed for Powell s multimedia presentation. It was a sure sign, Mexico s U.N. ambassador thought with some disdain, that this show wasn t for us. It was for an international audience, for the U.S. media. Outside, New York City police officers directed limousine convoys through the high iron gates and onto the circular U.N. driveway, where they deposited arriving foreign ministers and dignitaries. Television satellite trucks were lined up wheel to wheel along First Avenue, and reporters stood shivering in the icy February wind as they shouted into handheld microphones.The speech was being broadcast live around the world, but a long line of spectators, hoping to watch history being made firsthand, snaked through a white security tent. Every seat in the visitors gallery was filled when Powell entered the chamber just before 10:30 a.m., smiling and stopping to shake hands as he made his way across the floor. By the time he took his chair at the horseshoe-shaped Council table at the center of the room, with Tenet seated behind his right shoulder and Negroponte behind his left, his features were composed in a mask of gravity.With war hanging in the balance and the power and prestige of the United States on full display, it was a moment of high drama that owed as much to the player as to the play. A nationwide poll released just that morning had found that when it comes to U.S. policy toward Iraq, Americans trusted Powell more than Bush by a margin of 63 to 24 percent. His reputation as the reluctant warrior and as the administration s leading dove arguably its only one would lend incalculable credibility to the case he was about to make. I cannot tell you everything that we know, he began after a brief introduction. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have

Karen DeYoung has worked at The Washington Post since 1975. She has held a number of positions, including her current slot as associate editor. She also has served as assistant managing editor for national news, national editor, London bureau chief, foreign editor, and Latin America bureau chief. She has won a number of awards, including the 2003 Edward Weintal Award for Diplomatic Reporting, Sigma Delta Chi awards for investigative reporting and foreign reporting, and a Pulitzer Prize she shared with several Washington Post colleagues for national coverage of the war on terrorism. She lives in the D.C. area, with her husband and two children.

DeYoung s written a portrait of Powell that is as revealing as it can be and remain flattering, and as flattering as it can be and remain revealing. And she's written it very well. The New York Times

Diligent, sympathetic, but not uncritical. . . . It doesn t pull punches. The New York Review of Books

A fascinating study in bureaucratic maneuvering, groupthink and subtle self-deception. The Washington Post Book World

Judicious, thorough, unstinting . . . with its privileged glimpses into policy battles and high-level backbiting in the Bush administration, [Soldier] is sure to be one of this year s top newsmaking books. The Dallas Morning News