Inside The War Room

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White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had begun to swat away questions about the stall in his daily briefings, but behind closed doors, even the President's top advisers were worried. They--no one will say who exactly--started kicking around the idea of putting more troops on the ground. "People started worrying that we were on the same track the Soviets had been on," says Rumsfeld, "[and] some people in the neighboring countries were characterizing it as being bogged down." But at a meeting in late October, the President stopped the debate, aides said. "We did all agree on the plan, didn't we?" he asked the table. Everyone nodded. He turned to Franks and asked, "Tommy, is this plan working?" Franks said yes. Concluded Bush: "I've made it clear to the American people. I've got confidence in this plan. We should all have confidence in this plan. Be patient, people. It's going to work."

Days later, Mazar-i-Sharif fell, then Kabul. Within a few more days, complaints about a quagmire gave way to talk of collapse. "The Taliban fell faster than we thought," Bush told TIME, looking back a few weeks later. "But it's not over. We still need to close."

--With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, Mark Thompson, Karen Tumulty and Douglas Waller/Washington