Word: woodwards
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this because, in an interview, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recalled telling a foreign official (almost certainly Saudi Prince Bandar) about the plans in January. (It now appears that Bandar knew of the decision before Colin Powell.) But the quote from Rumsfeld’s taped, transcribed interview with Woodward, in which he described telling Bandar that he could “take that to the bank this is going to happen,” has mysteriously been deleted from the Pentagon’s version of the transcript. Also deleted by the Pentagon (but, luckily, preserved in Woodward?...
...Nice try ... I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD, and this is the best we've got?" PRESIDENT BUSH, in a meeting with CIA Director George Tenet and other intelligence officials in December 2002, before the invasion of Iraq, as quoted in Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack, which dissects the Administration's preparations...
...Bush's reaction to the CIA's prewar briefing on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction is instructive. According to Woodward, the President isn't impressed with the evidence-but this doesn't seem to cause him a moment of doubt about his mission to rid the world of Dr. Evil. No, he's concerned about the looming sales job. "Nice try," he tells John McLaughlin, the deputy CIA director. "I don't think this is quite-it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from...
...President is a compelling presence in this book, as he was in Woodward's last. He fairly leaps off the page, brisk and unflappable. It is difficult to know how accurate this portrait is, and how much of it consists of sweet nothings whispered into the author's ear by loyal retainers. I suspect the Woody Allen and Joe Public stories are true. They are moments when the curtain of platitudes is parted and the quality of Bush's sensibility is revealed. I also suspect the larger picture-the world as seen from the West Wing bunker-is distressingly accurate...
...Woodward's book will feed the endless, fruitless speculation among the President's critics about the nature of his certainty, his allergic reaction to doubt or introspection. Is it religious, Oedipal or congenital? No doubt the President gets a kick out of these sorts of mind games. He probably enjoys the secular left's discomfort with his religious references as much as he "enjoyed" going up against the stony General Assembly (and despite a few awkward moments, he probably had a ball frustrating the reporters who asked him to admit mistakes or make apologies in his recent press conference...