From Washington to war: How Bush, his generals and his speech-writers prepared to go into battle

War on terrorism: Strategy

War commanders have a maxim. If you can't secure strategic surprise, at least try and mount a tactical surprise. In that modest aim at least, George Bush and his planners have succeeded. Everyone knew that America was about to attack targets in Afghanistan, but at the moment it happened it still caught us off balance. Perhaps it was the rythyms of the working week. Wars, we assumed, did not start on Sundays – conveniently forgetting that Pearl Harbor, the attack which 60 years ago drew the US into another war, also happened on a day of rest.

In Washington, it was a beautiful autumn morning – as clear and perfect as the day a month ago when it all started. But the atmosphere was different. That early September Tuesday was a shuddering, unimaginable shock to America's political and social system. Retaliation however has been in detailed making for over a fortnight, and its precise timing, officials say, settled in the President's mind for at least a week.

The first ally to learn of the attack was Tony Blair who, from the outset, had signalled that Britain would be shoulder to shoulder with Washington in any military offensive. Last Wednesday, US officials say, the Prime Minister sent word he would commit British forces to the operation. Basically, the decision had been taken: barring any last-minute snags which emerged during the carefully interlocking trips to the region of Mr Blair and the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the attack would start virtually as soon as they returned.

"We knew it was likely Sunday," one official said, "unless Don came back and said we weren't ready." Instead, Mr Rumsfeld, having won the uneasy and unannounced acquiescence of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Oman, slotted the last piece into the puzzle by securing agreement from Uzbekistan to base 1,000 American troops, trained for mountain fighting, in that country – the first time the US has ever deployed military forces on the territory of the former Soviet Union.

The planes, the troops, the diplomacy, everything was in place. Nerves set ajangle again after the single anthrax case in Florida last week had settled, however temporarily. The Russian aircraft downed in the Black Sea, it transpired, had almost certainly been victim not of a terrorist attack but a stray Ukrainian missile during a training exercise.

Even the unprecedented spat with Israel, following Ariel Sharon's accusation that Washington was "appeasing" the Arabs, was a sideshow – and a beneficial one at that. Look, Mr Bush's officials could point out to critics clamouring for changes in US Middle East policy, if we are Israel's stooges, why is their Prime Minister talking like this?

Almost at the moment Mr Rumsfeld's jet was touching down at Andrews Air Force base outside Washington, Mr Bush used his weekly radio address to give the Taliban its last public warning. They had had their chance to comply with America's demands, he said, but now "time is running out". In private, it already had.

That Saturday morning, Mr Bush held a teleconference with his top advisers from the Presidential retreat of Camp David, at which he gave the Pentagon the green light to go when it was ready. His speechwriters began to draft the national address he would give the following day to announce the strikes. On Saturday evening, he put out the first calls to Congressional leaders telling them of his decision.

Dick Gephardt, the House Democratic leader was at Camden Yards baseball stadium in Baltimore to attend the last game played by the Orioles superstar Cal Ripken. Mr Gephardt had to go into a private room to make out the President's words amid the din. Then Mr Bush called key foreign leaders, including President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Sunday dawned bright and crisp. The President had one scheduled event, a ceremony in Maryland to honour firemen who died in the 11 September attacks. Unusually, he did not linger afterwards to chat with participants, but hurried back to the White House, 90 minutes ahead of schedule, making time to give other allied leaders a heads-up on what was about to happen. And still, no one really noticed.

At about 8.30am East Coast time (1.30pm BST), Abdullah Abdullah, the Northern Front's Foreign Minister, was on the front line in Afghanistan predicting American strikes in a few hours. But the general feeling was that a military attack would not be launched as people were coming out of church and settling down for the television pre-game football shows.

And then, at about 12.30pm, everything was transformed. Abdullah Abdullah had got it exactly right. The US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, was whisked off to a secret secure location. A Pentagon official, who was meeting with allies in the Gulf, abruptly cancelled his last stop-over and was heading back to Washington.

Then came the first grainy, greenish pictures on CNN of missiles and bombs exploding around Kabul. Next, a terse appearance by Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush's spokesman, in the White House briefing room, to announce that a "new front" in the fight against terrorism had been opened and that the President would be addressing the country in eight minutes' time.

At 12.55pm, Mr Bush did so – not from the Oval Office but from the solemn surrounds of the Treaty Room, "a place where American Presidents have worked for peace. In the face of today's new threat however," he declared, "the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it".

At football and baseball stadiums around the country, the scoreboards showed not action replays but the President of the United States announcing war. At the Georgia-Dome in Atlanta, the 46,483 crowd assembled for the Falcons-Bears football game broke into a chant of "USA! USA! USA!"

They might as well have chanted "BUSH! BUSH! BUSH!" Snap polls showed 90 to 95 per cent of Americans approved the strikes, and that a similar proportion approved his handling of his job. If the war grinds inconclusively on, if America starts to suffer serious casualties, or if the terrorists hit back with revenge attacks in the continental United States, those figures might change.

Nor will this President have forgotten the fate of his father, who enjoyed equally stratospheric ratings after the Gulf war, only to be kicked out of office barely 18 months later.

But for now, Mr Bush, his image of decisiveness and resolve burnished further by the adroit leaks of his aides, is riding as high as any commander-in-chief has ever ridden. The untested leader, until so recently mocked by friends as well as foes, had found an eloquence and touch that few suspected. With studied casualness, White House officials let it be known that Mr Bush did not watch the taped interview with his nemesis, Osama bin Laden. He was having his lunch instead.

Such normality is all-important for his countrymen, so uncharacteristically patient over this last fraught month. The message was clear. America had regrouped after the nightmare of 11 September and was fighting back. The initiative lay now not with the terrorists but with Washington. This time the element of surprise, such as it was, worked against the enemy. And this time, unlike in the numbed aftermath of 11 September, the baseball and football games went ahead.