Word: woodwarding
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Actually, it is journalism in hard cover. History requires analysis, context, good writing and -- something Woodward never provides -- footnotes, sources, some kind of record that scholars and other readers can check to determine how well the author has done his job. Although The Commanders lacks all that, Woodward does provide interesting insight into how a democratic government functions in times of crisis. If there are no eye-popping disclosures, there are many new details. Among them...
...officers -- about President Bush's determination to switch from defense to offense in the gulf. Powell, in particular, is portrayed as worrying about the possibility of getting bogged down in a costly, open-ended land war, and as being "in real agony" about Bush's often inflamed rhetoric. Woodward writes that Powell, like most Democrats in Congress, for some time favored a defensive deployment in Saudi Arabia plus economic sanctions against Iraq. Once he had received his orders and had been assured of adequate forces on the ground, however, Powell appears to have saluted and done his job. Similarly, says...
...Defense Secretary Dick Cheney felt that the anti-Saddam coalition was shaky and believed that Congress was not prepared to authorize the use of force on short notice. According to Woodward, Cheney also thought the White House's handling of last year's budget negotiations with Congress was "inept" and "raised fundamental questions about whether Bush and the Cabinet knew what they were doing...
...National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft was an unrelenting hawk during the Administration policy debates. "For Scowcroft," Woodward writes, "war was an instrument of foreign policy, pure and simple...
...gulf war ended in disaster, some of the disclosures in The Commanders, especially those dealing with Powell's doubts, might have become a cause celebre. But the war was a military triumph, notwithstanding the terrible suffering of the Kurds and Shi'ites after their unsuccessful postwar uprising against Saddam. Woodward's descriptions of prewar debates and concerns thus seem to reflect no more than admirable prudence. Powell in particular emerges as just the kind of wartime general a nation wants: one who sees problems before they happen and guards against them...