State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III
Bob Woodward
Simon & Schuster, 576pp, £18.99
Bob Woodward made his name as the outsider with secret sources who brought down a presidency. He is now official amanuensis to the Washington establishment. It’s no longer hard to guess his sources. When he describes a conversation between George W Bush and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, and the story is to Bandar’s credit, it’s possible to take a stab at who told him it was so.
The fascination of reading Woodward’s books is not the halting prose, one admiral is described as possessing a ‘meticulous nuclear-power-trained mind’, but the way in which he offers a chance for power players to settle scores and to try and rescue their own reputation. At my school there was a certain toilet cubicle wall where the scribblings revealed who was up, down, hot or not. Washington has Woodward instead.
This book, Woodward’s third on Bush’s presidency since 9/11, shows the king rats of Washington scrabbling to escape the capsizing White House. His first, Bush at War, was written almost as a Tom Clancy book, with Bush as action hero. The Second, Plan of Attack, showed the cracks emerging by 2004. Now the whole town is briefing against the president and the chief scapegoat, Donald Rumsfeld.
Anyone giving this the ‘Washington read’ – that is starting with the index – will find Tony Blair conspicuous by his inconspicuousness. He appears occasionally, coupled to anodyne statements. Except one intriguing comment that the British government sent ‘operatives’ to bolster Allawi’s election bid, when even the Americans knew to leave well alone.