State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (Bush at War Part 3) [Paperback]

The third Bob Woodward Bush book is highly readable. This is in no small part thanks to an extensive use of dialogue, but also because of its very topicality. It is rare to get an insight into meetings and conversations at the highest echelons that only took place a few months ago and whose consequences are directly affecting what is beamed to us on our television screens every day.

The book is essentially a Washington soap opera with a sweeping cast of characters; so many indeed that a who's who at the end would have been very useful. Even reading the book over a few short days, it is easy to lose track of some of the less famous figures that appear. The action is centred on the Pentagon and the White House, but Rumsfeld clearly emerges as the central personage - the starring role. The machinations and convoluted workings of the Pentagon are well described and the impression is given of an oil tanker with a broken rudder which no one can fully control but which ploughs on regardless. This is paralleled by security services in the same state. The CIA, FBI, NSA, Pentagon security service and others are a law unto themselves, unaccountable and uncoordinated. The lack of governance is everywhere with warring Administration departments and an inner cabinet of principals who loathe each other. It makes for good dramatic tension but an ill-advised and ineffective foreign policy and ultimately even as I write this, unnecessary suffering and deaths in Iraq.

Perhaps the chief merit of the book is to show that whether or not America had a moral case for invading Iraq - and Woodward never comes out strongly on either side - it failed to comprehend what would occur after the initial military victory and is incapable of achieving the peace. This is a result of a lack of interest at the highest level with no one wishing to hold the baby, and a complete lack of integrated planning. No department feels that it is their responsibility.

Bush appears, contrary to his public image but conforming to many a nagging doubt, as a weak leader with no vision other than a hopelessly optimistic can-do attitude rooted in unreality. He fails to coordinate his cabinet, has selected a dysfunctional team incapable of working together, and comes over as an inept manager. The fact that his closest aides are all considerably more intelligent than he appears to be doesn't help. Rumsfeld among the senior staff clearly gave the most help with the book, but is very unlikely to help out on any subsequent ones, such is the drubbing that he gets from Woodward. Rice seems to have helped less, Powell is almost absent and Bush would not collaborate as he did in the last book, Plan of Attack. But the overwhelming mystery remains Cheney. In the light (or rather darkness) of Cheney's refusal to accord any interviews, Woodward makes no attempt to explain what he does, where he fits into the big picture. Not responsible for any department, present at all meetings with Bush but never offering an opinion or contributing, he remains a disquieting figure who may or may not be the power behind the throne.

For a British readership, the book is a frightening one, confirming many people's worst fears of an administration, and even a country, steeped in the industrial-military complex, where decisions are made over dinner in response to lobbying and the geopolitical ambitions of undemocratic think tanks, by a cabal of dangerous, ambitious, unscrupulous power-hungry men. The "world's greatest democracy" is revealed as strangely impotent, weighed down by a faceless bureaucracy that is a law unto itself, and a government that trapped in a miasma of spin, making Westminster look almost translucent. It is an important book to read but luckily an entertaining one. In an age where news is delivered constantly with little attempt to see how the daily snippets fit into the bigger picture, this is a work that adds perspective to what is turning into a 21st Century Vietnam. The writing is now on the wall for Bush. The situation in Iraq is unwinnable and the troops will soon be home leaving Iraq in the civil war that so many people predicted. State of Denial is not and does not seek to be the definitive book on Iraq, but it is a peep under the burqa of Bush's government and thus a valuable contribution to the debate that is defining the decade.

At a time when bloggers and ideological talk show hosts are replacing "old fashioned" hard news and investigative reporting, I sometimes wonders how I can keep informed. Like lots of other people these days, I have a shorter attention span than I once had. I approached "State of Denial" with a sense of obligation, the feeling that I *should* read it, and the belief that I would slog my though it dutifully and then be very glad when I turned the last page. How wrong I was! This is not just a good book, it's a very fine book, and an entertaining book. I was actually sorry to see it end.

It's pretty trite to call a book a "page turner", and maybe that's not actually a compliment. "State of Denial" is compelling enough reading to bring to mind that term "page turner" in the most complimentary sense.

Woodward had his usual exhaustive access to both people and paper as he did research for "State of Denial". The book is written as if one were presentat times, overhearing little vignettes of conversation between the principal planners of our strategy for the Iraq war and its aftermath. At other times, one gets little glimpses into the thought processes of these principal people. The result is an entertaining, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and sometimes mind-boggling peek at the planning (and the non-planning) and implementation of our current immersion in Middle Eastern politics.

I try to keep myself very well informed about current events, so I knew a portion of the book's factual content. Still, there was much I didn't know, and more that I hadn't synthesized in my mind until I read the book.

It's true that the review of this book by the Wall Street Journal, which is, to put it mildly, a dedicatedly "conservative" newspaper, was lukewarm at best. But none other than Peggy Noonan, former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, wrote that it is "perhaps...a great book".

Anyone with an interest in our current political and international situation will be well rewarded by picking up "State of Denial". I'll bet once you do pick it up, you can't put it down.

STATE OF DENIAL is a comprehensive review of the steps that led to the invasion of Iraq and the present state of crisis in that unfortunate country.

Through the use of dogged research and numerous interviews, Woodward is able to give the reader a detailed account of most of the key roles played in this developing tragedy by such people as George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, General Myers, Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz, General Pace, Steve Herbits, Admiral Vernon Clark, Jay Garner, Saudi Arabia Ambassador Prince Bandar, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, Frank Miller, General Marks, David Kay, General Abizar, John Negroponte, Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Bob Blackwill, Andy Card and Henry Kissinger.

There is enough blame to go around to satisfy the most ardent critics of the Iraq War and Woodward goes about the task of spreading it with a vengeance. In fact, STATE OF DENIAL represents a radical departure from Woodward's two previous books on the Bush Presidency in which he is much less critical of Bush and the administration. I recommend STATE OF DENIAL to anyone interested in the prosecution of the real war on terror as well as the future of the Middle East, the United States, England and their many valuable allies.