"cotton candy" my ASS!

Since when has Bob Woodward (HELLO! "DEEP THROAT"!) ever written fluff pieces? Woodward is a journalist's journalist, and we'll all be damned if the f*cking Bush administration walks away from the allegations in Woodward's new book -- try as they will...

"...but the White House responded by dismissing the book as inaccurate “cotton candy.”

Key disclosures in Bob Woodward’s new book, “State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III”

Bush
President Bush is portrayed as being stubbornly immune to warnings that things might not be going well in Iraq. According to published reports, Woodward describes Bush as “increasingly removed from reality.”

Other disclosures:

• In September 2003, Bush is reported as having ignored a warning from Robert Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, that tens of thousands more U.S. troops were needed to subdue the insurgency.
• In November 2003, Bush is quoted as having said: “I don’t want anyone in the Cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”
• Bush regularly talks with Vietnam-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The problem, Woodward said on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” is that “Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will.”

Rumsfeld
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the subject of a devastating portrayal as an arrogant and out-of-touch turf protecter. Among the disclosures:

• White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card twice tried to fire Rumsfeld, once with the help of Laura Bush, only to be forced out himself when President Bush sided with Rumsfeld.{Asked about that report Friday, White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters: “I’m not going to contradict it.”}
• A longtime Rumsfeld adviser, Steve Herbitz, wrote a memo describing his old friend as operating on the “Haldeman model, arrogant,” and as “indecisive.” “Would not accept that some people in some areas were smarter than he,” the memo said.
• Rumsfeld refuses to take any responsibility for mistakes in Iraq, telling Woodward he was “two or three steps removed.” Woodward’s reaction: “How could he not see his role and responsibility? I could think of nothing more to say.”
• Rumsfeld was so resistant to the influence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that Bush had to order him to take Rice’s telephone calls.
• Rumsfeld long ago lost the confidence of the military. The NATO commander, Marine Gen. Jim Jones, is quoted as advising Gen. Peter Pace not to accept Rumsfeld’s offer to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of Rumsfeld’s leadership style. Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. commander for the Middle East, is quoted as having said, “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore.” (Abizaid denies the anecdote.) And Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is quoted by others as calling Rumsfeld “that son of a bitch” and “that ass----.”

Cheney
Woodward depicts Vice President Dick Cheney as an octopus with tentacles in all aspects of the Iraq war but blinded by an obsession with vindicating his since-discredited insistence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

One night, the book says, Cheney called David Kay, then the chief weapons inspector in Iraq, at 3 a.m. to urge him to look in a specific location for chemical weapons.

Insurgency
Woodward reports that in May, the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared a previously undisclosed secret intelligence estimate predicting that violence would continue to increase through the end of next year. “Threats of Shia ascendancy could harden and expand Shia militant opposition and increase calls for coalition withdrawal,” it said.

Sourcing
Woodward says neither President Biush nor Vice President Dick Cheney would agree to be interviewed for “State of Denial.” He writes that his material comes from “interviews with President Bush’s national security team, their deputies, and other senior and key players in the administration responsible for the military, the diplomacy, and the intelligence on Iraq.”

By Alex Johnson/MSNBC.com and Erika Angulo/NBC News research. Sources: Washington Post; New York Times; New York Daily News; Associated Press; Reuters

Updated: 4:31 p.m. ET Sept. 29, 2006

© 2006 MSNBC.com