[Excerpt from the new book by Greg Mitchell, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits  and the President  Failed on Iraq (Union Square Press).]

On March 6, 2003, less than two weeks before he ordered the country to war, President Bush conducted a televised press conference, stating in his intro, “We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.”

Some of the questions from the press were sharp, many others weak, but one asking about his religious strength gave him an opportunity to say, “My faith sustains me because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength. But it’s a humbling experience to think that people I will never have met have lifted me and my family up in prayer. And for that I’m grateful.”

It was the mood of the affair that was most noteworthy. Bush smiled and made his usual quips, and many of the reporters played the game and did not press him hard. This was how these press gatherings had gone throughout the run-up to war. But this meeting was heavily scripted, with Bush looking at a slip of paper and calling on reporters in a prearranged order. No one challenged him on this.

When it was over, I asked Ari Berman, then an intern with Editor & Publisher and now a talented veteran at The Nation, to come up with a few questions we wished reporters had asked that night. I added a few myself, and published them, under the heading, “Questions We Wish They’d Asked.”

Some of reporters at the press conference appeared to have some second thoughts themselves. ABC’s Terry Moran said the president was not “sufficiently challenged” and that reporters ended up “looking like zombies.”

Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times explained, “We were very deferential” because “it’s very intense, it’s frightening to stand up there on primetime live television asking the president of the United States a question when the country’s about to go to war.” She admitted that “no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.”

Here are most of the unasked questions that Berman and I put together then: