A new day in Washington and a new book about the Bush White House and the mess it left in Iraq, hits the bookstores this week.
But this is not just any book written by any ordinary writer; this is Bob Woodward's third book on the George W. Bush administration since the September 11, 2001 attacks on Manhattan and the Pentagon. And if the first two tomes went easy on the president and his close-knit group of neoconservative advisers, State of Denial is the mother of all books. It details the shortcomings of an incompetent administration that made a complete mess of Iraq.
In his new 576-page book Woodward seems to single out Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, criticizing him for his arrogant, bullying and petty attitude, and someone who doesn't return calls from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Rumsfeld is depicted as an intimidating figure with a war cabinet that is deeply dysfunctional. The US secretary of defense wanted a quick war to be fought with light units and (according to James Fallows' Blind into Baghdad) argued with senior military officers, line-by-line over every unit, every company, every division in efforts to whittle down the number of troops that would go into Iraq. Rumsfeld did not want to be slowed down by thinking of what would happen after the fall of Baghdad. Any officer who did not follow Rumsfeld's line of thinking was ostracized.
And Woodward, a senior Washington Post journalist who is considered to be the best investigative reporter in Washington, is not alone in his findings. Of late there have been a plethora of books touching upon the same theme: the complete bungling of the aftermath of the war in Iraq.
In its most recent issue Newsweek magazine cites "An orchestra of books has raised a cacophony of doubts about the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq."
Indeed, just five weeks shy of the November mid-term elections, books on the Bush administration's Iraqi gaffes are hitting the bookstands almost with the cadence of autumn's falling leaves; consider the following releases: Bernard Trainor and Michael Gordon's Cobra II, Tom Ricks's Fiasco, James Fallows' Blind into Baghdad, Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, Hubris by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and The Nation's David Corn. And now, Woodward's State of Denial.
Woodward, however, remains what Newsweek calls "the best excavator of inside stories in the nation's capital."
The magazine reports that "White House aides did recommend that the president and the vice president not grant Woodward interviews, but it was obvious that Woodward could, and would, get just about everyone else in positions of authority to talk." And he did, and they talked.
Some 30 years after his Watergate scoop, which forced the resignation of president Richard Nixon, there is no doubt that Woodward remains a force to be reckoned with in Washington's political circles.
The White House rejected parts of Woodward's book, calling it fiction. White House officials played down parts where the president refuses to authorize more troops for Iraq. The White House dismissed it as "old news." They denied the report that LAURA BUSH wanted Rumsfeld fired.
The White House, however, had a harder time denying reports that former chief of staff Andy Card wanted to see Rumsfeld ousted from the Pentagon.
With the mid-term elections getting closer, the White House strategy is to try and divert attention from the war in Iraq and focus it on the threat of terrorism.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Woodward's book is like "cotton candy. It kind of melts on contact."
But anyone who has ever had cotton candy melt in his hands is quick to realize the sticky, messy stain it leaves behind. Kind of like what is happening in Iraq today.
Claude Salhani is Editor of the Middle East Times. He can be contacted at Claude@metimes.com
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