Woodward writes another truthful book
Rice doesn’t remember this meeting - surprise, surprise:
Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice.
According toIt also appears that Bush may have lied about the what was attacks in Iraq after receiving intel saying just the opposite.
Bush liked Woodward’s first 2 books in this series but he doesn’t like this one. Can’t have it both ways - Bush.
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| What accounts for the tsunami of publicity? Three decades after he was portrayed by Robert Redford in the movie version of the Watergate book “All the President’s Men,” Woodward has become a bankable commodity, his books virtually guaranteed to generate headlines and top bestseller lists. |
That’s what the book is REALLY about…$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Every word of it may be true but think about it a minute… dude wrote two books that critics said were not hard enough on Bush and his admin. NOW dude reverses his view, throws on the gloves and comes out swinging just before mid-term elections. Coincidence or opportunist? It’s all just a twisted, money making game… business as usual.
D
Man are you jadded?!?!
Woodward has access to sources most don’t, so he’s worth paying attention to. And like any reporter, one has to look at issues that might affect his reporting, but the claim that there was a July meeting of the sort described with Rice and she gave them the brush off is either true or false. Given that this is coming from Woodward, I would be really, really surprised if it were false. Of coruse, once it has been established as true, then the reporting ends and editorializing begins. I happen to agree with Woodward editorially on this issue.
Why didn’t you post the 60 minutes interview. Woodward has always been naive with regards to his party members. He is genuinely shocked by these revelations. Mike Wallace remember, grilled Bob mercilessly over Iran Contra and his lack of investigative reporting. I believe he is reporting facts. The lack of anyone interviewed claiming foul proves it.
KF
From Peggy Noonan (a conservative columnist) - “State of Denial” amazes me
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| … But it is a good book. It may be a great one. It is serious, densely, even exhaustively, reported, and a real contribution to history in that it gives history what it most requires, first-person testimony. (It is well documented, with copious notes.) What is most striking is that Mr. Woodward seems to try very hard to be fair, not in a phony “Armitage, however, denies it” way, but in a way that–it will seem too much to say this–reminded me of Jean Renoir: "The real #### of life is that everyone has his reasons." His Bush is not a monster but a personally disciplined, yearning, vain and intensely limited man. His advisers in all levels of the government are tugged and torn by understandable currents and display varying degrees of guile, cynicism and courage. As usual, prime sources get the best treatment–the affable Andy Card, the always well-meaning Prince Bandar. Members of the armed forces get a high-gloss spit shine. But once you decode it and put it aside–and Woodward readers always know to do that–you get real history: The almost epic bureaucratic battle of Donald Rumsfeld to re-establish civilian control of the post-Clinton Joint Chiefs of Staff; the struggle of the State Department to be heard and not just handled by the president; the search on the ground for the weapons of mass destruction; the struggles, advances and removal from Iraq of Jay Garner, sent to oversee humanitarian aid; the utter disconnect between the experience on the ground after Baghdad was taken and the attitude of the White House–“borderline giddy.” This is a primer on how the executive branch of the United States works, or rather doesn’t work, in the early years of the 21st century. … To the central thesis. Was the White House, from the beginning, in a state of denial? I doubt denial is the word. They were in a state of unknowingness. (I have come to give greater credence to the importance, in the age of terror, among our leaders, of having served in the military. For you need personal experience that you absorbed deep down in your bones, or a kind of imaginative wisdom that tells you even though you were never there what war is like, what invasion is, what building a foreign nation entails.) They were in a state of conviction: They really thought Saddam had those WMDs. (Yes, so did Bill Clinton, so did The New Yorker, so did I, and so likely did you. But Mr. Bush moved on, insisted on, intelligence that was faulty, inadequate.) They were in a state of propulsion: 9/11 had just wounded a great nation. Strong action was needed… |
OK, I’m halfway through the book now. Who else is reading/has read it? Mike? It is a “densely” reported book, and describes the internal dynamics of this dysfunctional admin better than anything I’ve read so far. Rice, Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, these people are unbelievable.
One thing I would bet on - history will not be at all kind to Bush II.
And you know what upset me the most so far? W’s father would not tell his son that going into Iraq was a screw up - even though the first Bush is, as Woodward points out, both a former president and an expert on the area and issues surrounding it. Rule: never, ever, ever elect people from the same family. I’m afraid this goes for H. Clinton, as well. Family relations distort judgment. Duh.
I haven’t started reading it - I’m still on the History of the Early Christians which is very interesting.
Check this out - Head of UK Army calls for Iraq withdrawal for Iraq withdrawal.
I believe that this is pretty much what Murtha’s been saying for quite some time.
I’m 2/3 of the way through it now. Rumsfeld is appalling.
OK, done with the book, it really is worth reading, but I bet most of the voting populace won’t even notice it. Quite a story. Rumsfeld is really, really appalling.