Inside The War Room

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But now Tenet was urging the President to make a huge leap of faith--to combat America's new enemy by waging a new kind of war. Tenet's plan: deploy CIA officers and special-ops commandos to aid Afghan opposition forces on the ground while warplanes drop bombs from the sky; collaborate with other intelligence services around the world to bust up terrorist cells with tips from the CIA's spies; and do it all without allowing a Vietnam-style gradual escalation of U.S. military involvement. This would be a war fought by others, with the U.S. role both obvious and covert, a combination of brute force, financial muscle and behind-the-scenes finesse. It would take discipline and patience, Tenet said, but it would work.

Tenet let his four operatives fill in the details. They passed around maps of Afghanistan and photographs of 15 al-Qaeda leaders. They briefed Bush and the team on the intricacies of Afghan politics and ethnic rivalries. "We knew all these guys," a senior U.S. intelligence official recalled. "We knew the tribes in the south, which ones were pro-Taliban, which ones weren't, which ones were likely to work with an opposition coalition and which ones were fickle and liable to change sides for the highest bidder." Bush was impressed. "These [CIA] guys had had a lot of experience," he later told TIME. "They are very sophisticated guys. They understand the country. They know what they're doing."

Bush is, on paper, the least experienced President to take office in a century. During the campaign and through his first eight months on the job, doubts about his abilities focused on his seeming shallowness, his lack of curiosity about the world or the specifics of policy. Comics mocked him; reporters and commentators raised questions about his hands-off management style and lax work habits. But the inside story of the President's handling of the war so far shows that what he lacks in experience, he has made up in instinct.

War has turned what many saw as Bush's liabilities--his distaste for detail, his cocky self-assurance, his sheer simplicity--into assets. Untroubled by doubt, uninterested in nuance, Bush has been relentlessly focused. He is, in a difficult time, what the nation needs in a Commander in Chief--simple in his speech, clear in his vision, confident in his ultimate success.

Like Ronald Reagan, Bush focuses on the big picture, but he holds team members accountable for their actions and constantly reminds them that he expects results. Like his father, Bush is a quick study, but he has mostly avoided his dad's mistake of wading into the operational details. Like Bill Clinton, Bush has tremendous confidence in his ability to win people over. But Bush is a less needy politician, and he hasn't been handicapped by scandal at home when he needs to act overseas.