THE WAR WITHIN: A SECRET WHITE HOUSE HISTORY 2006-2008
BY BOB WOODWARD
Woodward: Bush Still in Denial
This time it’s Fox News that broke the embargo on the new Bob Woodward book. Their report doesn’t carry a lot of big revelations, though they note President Bush did sit with Woodward for two interviews for the new book, THE WAR WITHIN. They say Woodward is “less critical” of the president this time, though he still writes: “President Bush has rarely leveled with the public to explain what he was doing and what should be expected. He did not seek sacrifice from most of the country when he had the chance. He did not even mobilize his own party. Republicans often voiced as much suspicion and distrust as Democrats. The president was rarely the voice of realism on the Iraq war.”
Woodward calls the surge in Iraq a success but terms Bush as “the nation’s most divisive figure.” He adds: “He had not rooted out terror wherever it existed. He had not achieved world peace. He had not attained victory in his two wars.”
Fox
Folowing the Fox scoop, the Washington Post ran their own news piece on the book today. (The paper’s excerpts begin on Sunday.) Their lede is “the Bush administration has conducted an extensive spying operation on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his staff and others in the Iraqi government.” One source says, “We know everything he says.” As for the surge, the book says it “was not the primary factor behind the steep drop in violence there during the past 16 months” and credits “groundbreaking” new covert techniques instead.
Beyond that, it’s primarily a wealth of detail about the middle stages of the Iraq war. The most memorable exchange is Bush telling General David Petraeus the surge is his effort to “double down,” as Petraeus replies, “Mr. President, this is not double down. This is all in.” And Fox cites a McCain line that will get wide play: “clenching his fists in the West Wing and exclaiming to Woodward: ‘Everything is f—ing spin.’”
Bush does tell Woodward: “This war has created a lot of really harsh emotion, out of which comes a lot of harsh rhetoric. One of my failures has been to change the tone in Washington.”
Danny Boyle’s film version of Q&A - called Slumdog Millionaire - has been chosen to close the London Film Festival in October at their big gala event. It will be shown at the Toronto Film Festival this coming weekend and received glowing reviews when it was given a sneak preview at the Telluride Film Festival in America last week over the Labor Day weekend. A sensational piece appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal round-up of the Festival and you can see the whole piece (which includes a short clip of the film) at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122056563373301369.html?mod=2_1567_middlebox
Based on the novel Q & A by VIKAS SWARUP
