In general, I haven’t followed the Rice-Tenet July 2001 meeting controversy closely enough to have much to say about it yet, but I have a strong tendency to discount anything Tenet says since he has been on such a long CYA tour ever since he left office. (As well he should, since he was very much present at the creation of the two biggest intelligence failures of recent years–9/11 and the WMD fiasco in Iraq.)
I don’t buy the charge that Bush has been deceptive on the Iraq war. Yes, he’s been optimistic–too optimistic for his own good at times–but this optimism strikes me as within the range of what a wartime leader can reasonably be expected to say as he tries to maintain the nation’s resolve. He has always talked vaguely about difficulties and lately has become more explicit, referring to “terrible” conditions in Baghdad and a “crisis” there. Woodward hangs much on one intelligence report saying that insurgents have the capabilities to “sustain and even increase [the] current level of violence through next year.” This may be true (and I’m guessing probably is), but it doesn’t mean that any document portraying it differently is necessarily dishonest.
On Kissinger, I can’t understand what the outrage is supposed to be. If this White House is supposed to be too insular (and sometimes it is), it is manifestly a good thing that it is reaching out to one of the country’s most brilliant foreign policy thinkers and most experienced practitioners. The fact is that Woodward just doesn’t like Kissinger advice on Iraq: don’t leave until you win.
On Rumsfeld, the shocking thing would be if high Bush officials hadn’t discussed removing him, given how long he has served and the controversies swirling around him.
What I find most damning in the book is that it confirms what has been pretty evident for a while: that the Bush administration is still torn over fundamental disagreements over Iraq that have made it difficult to arrive at a coherent strategy. It is well past time for Bush to seize control of his own government and make it cohere on this most important issue.
Finally, I can understand how top White House officials didn’t want to talk to Woodward for this book. He reproduces snippets of some of his interviews and they tend to be tendentious- and hostile-seeming. In one exchange, Rumsfeld (who comes across as congenitally obfuscatory) tries to explain how some statistic for insurgent attacks had apples and oranges in it, “a whole fruit bowl of different things.” Woodward writes, “I was speechless. Even with the loosest and most careless use of language and analogy, I did not understand how the secretary of defense would compare insurgent attacks to a ‘fruit bowl…’” Oh, please.