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State of Denial is not a book about the Iraq war. It is a book about the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war. Woodward uses his legendary though diminished access to the presidency to paint a picture of the Whitehouse that was disorganized, divided, and ultimately dysfunctional. Rather than pursue a general thesis condemning the administration, Woodward takes a chronological narrative style focusing on characters and interactions which serves to provide an interesting angle. This focu...
Well, Woodward certainly got some of the inside skinny, but for my money, Fiasco is a much better book - better writing, clearer timeline, more complete look at all the players involved, esp. military (although I like how obsessed Woodward is with blaming everything on Rumsfeld!). This book feels like a giant apology/"don't blame me!" for Woodward's uncritical support of the administration in the run-up to the war.
I read this book remarkably quickly (for me), it really drives at a great pace, and it isn't hard to follow. You have to play close attention to the names of all the people, but enough of them have already been in the news that it isn't all that hard. It's just tough to figure out which general is which sometimes. Unbelievable, some of the sequences of events which Woodward writes about. He had exhaustive interviews with just about everyone in the Bush administration and with so many generals, a...
There's a circle of Hell reserved for the Bush administration. That is all.
Bob Woodward's rightful reputation as the chronicler of modern American history is further enhanced by this further book examining the presidency of George W Bush after the start of the Iraq invasion and carrying over his re-election to office in 2004.Readers familiar with Woodward's methods will recognise the manner in which this book unfolds.With unrivalled access to the main protagonists for both on and off the record input as well as a meticulous eye for detail and evidence gathering this is...
The final chapter in the Bush at War series for Woodward. It ends the way it began, showing how the few who were in charge had no idea what they were doing, and refusing to accept it as fact. If only egos could be tamed.
This final book of his trilogy of Bush at War details the disastrous invasion of Iraq which at time of this review, continues to drag the US in the quagmire that is nation building in Iraq. Painted a dysfunctional Bush Admin where too much politics is played within the national security apparatus and no one to push back on Rumsfeld. 2 key points in light of the Trump Admin -- the Bush II Admin had the best foreign policy and military braintrust to count on and still failed -- what chance the idi...
White House or Animal House?Written by Mandi Chestler on September 18th, 2007Book Rating: 4/5Bob Woodward's 3rd installment in the Bush at War series provides a deeply disturbing picture of George the Second's disfunctional administration. These guys should be leading toga parties, not the "free world." Woodward's somewhat gossipy look at the personalities, behaviors and decisions of the worst president and White House administration in the history of the United States is entertaining, yet distr...
In terms of the groundwork that went into this book it was excellent. Woodward did some serious research and talked to officials from every level it seems. As always he is an excellent reporter. But, he is a very poor analyst. As a reporter he has the luxury of not needing to offer an alternative. This book is filled with side critiques and digs but the combination of them is a little mystifying. For example, he spends much of the book making oblique criticisms of Bush for not being involved eno...
If true, it is a confirmation of the evilness of Rumsfeld, the criminal naivety of Bremer and the lack of leadership on Bush's part, turning Iraq into the debacle it became. Having watched it unfold while it happened, reading the gritty details is especially painful.
There were four Woodward books focusing on the Iraq War and the Bush Administration, and this is by far the best of the four. (I did read the fourth installment "The War Within" before this one, coincidentally.) The descriptions of Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, and Powell are enlightening and in many cases, disturbing. And the overall mind-set, that the Iraq War was a defensive response to 911, among the civilian AND military leaders during the first six years of the new century is revealing and alarm...
Shocking. Depressing. Illuminating.
I guess I should have given it more than two stars, because it functions well as a simple straightforward (somewhat) objective journalistic account of who said what to whom (at least that they later felt comfortable repeating to Bob Woodward) in the White House's decision to go to and continue war in Iraq. However, the bias does show through, sometimes to the right, like when he refers to the Brookings Institute as a "left-wing think tank," and then not even two pages later, refers to the RAND c...
Woodward continues his excuse-making for Bush here, portraying him as not being fully informed by his underlings. But he also shows Bush to be uninterested in information that does not support his pre-conceived notions. He shows him yet again to be a very incurious person content to be a cheerleader, doling out pablum with no real content. Rumsfeld is shown in all his glory as an evil, Machiavellian inside player, incredible in his ability to do exactly what he pleases despite the overt directiv...
Part III of Woodward's 4-part series, Bush At War. The degree to which Bush policies for post war Iraq lacked strategy is astonishing. An incredible example of how bright people, when they don't work together as a team and focus narrowly on their own preconceived notions, can create incredible chaos.
This book can be read in many ways, as a historical novel, a stylized piece on recent history (1999 - 2006) or even as a management case study. Consider the Bush cabinet, made up of hard working, brilliant men and women with stellar records, exceptional work habits who nonetheless failed miserably when put in action.An inexperienced Bush lacked the confidence to rein in the oversized personalities of Rumsfeld and Cheney, instead he seemed to trust whatever he was told. Powell turned out to be to...
Exhaustive indictment of Bush's failure in IraqThere is a sense in reading this long book that the overall import of the Bush administration's efforts in Iraq are lost in the thicket of the words, lost among the turf wars and the personality clashes, among the intense concentrations on each individual action or speech, each personnel change and the myriad events on the ground. But Woodward's title makes it clear what has happened: the Bush administration through flawed (or lack of) foresight, ig...
Woodward gets inside access but like mist of what I have read by him it reads like a book by committee or dictation since so much wirk is usually done by assistants and researchers. And also because so much of his work (including this one) is written about very current events, many still on going, there isn't a finality to the ending.But if you know that going in and keep it in mind there's usually plenty to hold your interest.
State of Denial by Bob Woodward is when the disaster that was the Iraq War becomes apparent. Bush at War was vital for understanding the initial war on terror, and Plan of Attack was like watching a slow-moving train-wreck (or maybe watching the Titanic heading out of port and into the North Atlantic). State of Denial is the payoff, and a terrible one at that. It is less instrumental than the prior two, but it remains important to possessing a view of the Iraq War that is not prone to caricature...
The final book closed the controversy on the Iraq War. Woodward stated the events of who were involved in the decision-making and advices, who had active roles, what went wrong and what happened. The surprise in the book which grasped the interest was the involvement of Henry Kissinger. It was answered in the later part of what were his insights about this war. WMD was never found but in defense, Bush said Saddam was close in creating one. Was the act justified against a tyrrant or was there an