By Brigitte L. Nacos
Today, the New York Times in a front page article and CBS
News in a preview of an interview on Sunday’s “60 Minutes” scooped the
Washington Post with a story on the forthcoming book by the assistant managing
editor of the Post. Howard Kurtz at the Post who was left to use the Times and
CBS News as sources in his Media Notes column, wrote, “Well, supersleuth Bob
Woodward has himself been scooped. Poised to unveil the contents of his new book on Sunday with a triple
rollout--"60 Minutes" interview and excerpts in The Washington Post
and Newsweek--Woodward woke up this morning to see the highlights splattered on
the front page of the New York Times.” But being a good company man and
colleague, Kurtz concluded, “Is there anything untoward about it? Not at all.
The Post has done the same thing to other publications and authors.” If I were
the media critic of the Post, I would have taken the “supersleuth” to task. And
if I were the editor of that newspaper, I would not tolerate an assistant
managing editor being scooped on his own work.By mid-morning, the Post had an article to its web site that focused on former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card urging President Bush to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
But what about the new book (“State of Denial”) that was the # 2 seller on Amazon.com this morning before it was available? Woodward, one-time half of the fabulous Watergate investigative duo (“All the President’s Men”) and more recently inside scribe of the Bush administration (“Bush at War” and “Plan of Attack) has turned his back on his confidants in the White House, in departments and agencies. Whether this is a case of jumping a sinking ship, a media celebrity sensing that his sympathetic insider accounts have run their course—or both, the forthcoming volume has, according to the New York Times, a very different story line than Woodward’s previous books. It depicts “an administration that seemed to have only a foggy notion that early military success in Iraq had given way to resentment of the occupiers."
There is little new about the revelations that the President and his top aides refuse to accept the reality on the ground in Iraq and its consequences. It is more surprising that Woodward has turned from an admirer into a harsh administration critic who told Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” according to CBS News:
the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. "It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That's more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces," says Woodward.
I found the revelation of Henry Kissinger’s important role as President
Bush’s and Vice-President Cheney’s advisor on Iraq most interesting. CBS
News revealed that in the “60 Minutes” interview
Woodward also reports that the president and vice president
often meet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretary of
state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, "Now what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he
declared very simply, “Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'"
Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam
War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."
As David Sanger writes in the Times, the book describes disagreements between CIA Director George Tenet and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and “that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet believed that Mr. Rumsfeld was impeding the effort to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.Mr. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that the National Security Agency has been intercepting, wondering whether they might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda.”
That is some ammunition for Bill Clinton and others who have finaly started to point to the
do-nothing counterterrorism stance of the Bush administration in the pre-9/11
months. For more on what then National Security Advisor Rice learned early on about the Al Qaeda threat, read a revealing post by Larry C. Johnson on his blog No Quarter
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