Over the weekend, Mr. Trend at Alter Destiny found a blurb about Woodward’s book that I had actually missed (until the 60 Minutes interview, anyway). Henry Kissinger is advising Bush on Iraq. It really is like Dick Cheney only has about 10 names in his Rolodex. The only time they go outside their core team is to involve James Baker or Kissinger. I’d say they need to be introduced to more people, but it’s almost more scary when they involve somebody new. At least you know what kind of incompetence you’re getting with these old names.
And in case there was any question as to what Kissinger’s been telling Bush, C&L has video of Woodward’s 60 Minutes interview about his new book:
“Kissinger's fighting the vietnam war again, because in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will. That we didn't stick to it.”Oh, and Digby digs up another tasty blurb from the book.
Rumsfeld also infuriated another powerful woman - then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice - by not returning her phone calls. So she complained to the boss.Bush advised Rice to be "playful" with the stubborn Rumsfeld in an effort to get along. And he cajoled Rumsfeld, telling him: "I know you won't talk to Condi. But you got to talk to her."Strong, manly leadership in action. The grownups are in charge! You can trust them to keep you safe!
(Granted, I wouldn't listen to Condi either, but I'm pretty sure my reasons are different than Rummy's.)
I’m not going to laud Woodward as some bastion of integrity after his last couple of “I don’t want to say anything that would jeopardize my sweet insider access!” books. But even though he pins most of the problem on Rumsfeld and tries to almost make it seem like Bush wants to do the right thing (though, in doing so, it shows just how sad and worthless Bush really is), it’s better that Woodward is saying all this than not saying it, I guess. No word on what this will do to his insider status...though in the interview Woodward admits that Bush/Cheney wouldn’t see him for this book, so he’s apparently already on the outs...that, or as Mannion says, it’s Bush/Cheney who are on the outs.
It’s important to note that, according to the New York Times, neither Bush nor Cheney were interviewed for State of Denial, and it appears that Woodward’s sources, many of whom were most likely sources for Bush at War and Plan of Attack, didn’t feel called upon to tell any more flattering stories about Bush and Cheney.Meanwhile, Holden points out that there’s another upcoming book that should do just a wee bit of damage to Republicans and the current administration, and it just happens to be getting released less than a month from Midterms Day. Gotta like that. Republicans and Ex-Republican sympathizers are doing the work that Democrats refuse to do. But hey...at least somebody is.
In other words, while State of Denial may be a sign that Bob Woodward has at last gotten fed up and decided to go back to being the hard-hitting journalist he was when he and Carl Bernstein faced down the Nixon White House, it’s more likely a signal that there’s been a sea change in Washington.
The insiders’ insiders’ insiders who are Woodward’s sources are now willing to state, if not on record then in a forum where their identities can be guessed, that George Bush has presided over one of the greatest foreign policy screw-ups in American history.
This means that some very important people are no longer worried about what George Bush and Dick Cheney think of them.
It means that some very important people no longer think that it’s in their best interest to be on Bush and Cheney’s side.
It means that some very important people are so appalled and outraged and scared by the Bush Leaguers’ mistakes, blockheadedness, corruption, and incompetence that they can’t keep quiet about it any longer.
It means that George Bush and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have lost control of the story. They are no longer driving the narrative.
Unfortunately, they are still driving the country.
And while we’re on the subject of that war which only unpatriotic liberals “obsess” care about, now seems like a good time to bring up “hindsight bias”. You know, that thing pointed out by people who have been nothing but wrong for the last four years to make themselves feel better about those who were “wrong to be right.” You know, this thing:
One of the most systematic errors in human perception is what psychologists call hindsight bias -- the feeling, after an event happens, that we knew all along it was going to happen. Across a wide spectrum of issues, from politics to the vagaries of the stock market, experiments show that once people know something, they readily believe they knew it all along.
This is not to say that no one predicted the war in Iraq would go badly, or that the insurgency would last so long. Many did. But where people might once have called such scenarios possible, or even likely, many will now be certain that they had known for sure that this was the only possible outcome.
"Liberals' assertion that they 'knew all along' that the war in Iraq would go badly are guilty of the hindsight bias," agreed Hal Arkes, a psychologist at Ohio State University, who has studied the hindsight bias and how to overcome it.
As Echidne and Attaturk point out, bloggers have the benefit of this amazing thing called blog archives, which show that liberal bloggers as a whole were either really good guessers...or they really did “know all along.”
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