State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.
Whereas Thomas Ricks' Fiasco gives a picture of the Iraq quagmire via the failures of the military leadership and their interactions with the civilian leadership, Woodward focuses on the senior political and civilian leadership in Washington. Together these two books give insightful views on the multifaceted Iraq quagmire from different angles. In addition to Woodward's main focus on Iraq-related decision making, his book documents the more general problem of Execute Branch dysfunction. That is, neither the individuals involved (i.e., Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc.) nor the organizational structures (i.e., Departments of Defense and State, National Security Council, etc., "the interagency") of the Executive Branch are capable of managing the challenges of the Iraq undertaking. Danner's review explains this well:
Woodward tends to blame "the broken policy process" on the relative strength of personalities gathered around the cabinet table: the power and ruthlessness of Rumsfeld, the legendary "bureaucratic infighter"; the weakness of Rice, the very function and purpose of whose job, to let the President both benefit from and control the bureaucracy, was in effect eviscerated. Suskind [ The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 ] , more convincingly, argues that Bush and Cheney constructed precisely the government they wanted: centralized, highly secretive, its clean, direct lines of decision unencumbered by information or consultation. "There was never any policy process to break, by Condi or anyone else," Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, remarks to Suskind. "There was never one from the start. Bush didn't want one, for whatever reason." (Danner, NYRB.)
Some book reviews:
- Michiko Kakutani, A Portrait of the President as the Victim of His Own Certitude, The New York Times, 30 September 2006.
- Mark Danner, Iraq: The War of the Imagination, The New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 20, 21 December 2006.
- Angelo M. Codevilla, Strategically Challenged, Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2006. (The reviewer, a professor of International Relations, has some insightful comments.)
- Jonathan Karl, So This Is Journalism? Bob Woodward takes a novel approach in his new book on the Bush administration, The Wall Street Journal, 11 October 2006. (This reviewer is suprisingly idiotic.)
- David Corn, Woodward, Revised, The Nation, 23 October 2006 (web post date 09 October 2006).
Other Links:
- Bob Woodward, Wikipedia.
- Bob Woodward, his official website.
- National Security Act of 1947, Wikipedia.
This Act established the current national security bureaucracy (National Security Council, etc.) which Rumsfeld subverted. - "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead" - Unclassified Key Judgments, Iraq National Intelligence Estimate, National Intelligence Council, 02 February 2007.
- "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" - Declassified Key Judgments, National Intelligence Estimate, April 2006.
- Jonathan Chait, Rummyache; The SecDef cult; A tour through the hilarious bygone world of Rumsfeld worship, The New Republic, 23 October 2006 (web post date 17 October 2006).
- Jack Beatty, Cheney Lives!, Atlantic Unbound, The Atlantic Online, 21 February 2007.
- Peter Baker, Mission Ongoing; The Image Bush Just Can't Escape, The Washington Post, 04 May 2007. (Article refers to Woodward, State of Denial, pages 186-187.)
- For a military critique of the Bush administration I strongly recommend the comments of John Batiste interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! 25 May 2007 (MP3 file here).
A transcript of the entire interview is here. - A Timeline of the Iraq War, ThinkProgress.org.
Covers the period from 2003 through the present.