Bob Woodward’s access to the inner workings of the Bush administration has yielded another book, “The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008.”

Publisher Simon & Shuster is keeping this one under tight wraps, due for a Sept. 8 release, although embargoes are often broken to generate buzz. The co-author of “All the King’s Men” and “The Final Days,” which introduced us to the inner workings of Watergate-scandal era Nixon and figures such as Deepthroat and G. Gordon Liddy (and later revealed the long-held secret identity of Deepthroat), Woodward has been a Washington icon for more than 35 years.

This is Woodward’s fourth investigative book on the Bush administration. The first, a fairly flattering book, “Bush at War” led to the far more critical “State of Denial in 2006.” If trends continue, “The War Within” is bound to turn ugly.

Read the AP article: CLICK HERE.

Ran across an interesting column about an interesting book in my hometown newspaper today. Newspaper, you know, large sheets of flimsy paper with black ink with a few splotches of color thrown in that show up at your doorstep or roadside box. Anyway, I was reading a column by Trudy Rubin about the deteriorating conditions in Pakistan/Afghanistan’s lawless border area.

In it, she was quoting the author of a new book, Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. He should know. Also author of Taliban, Ahmed Rashid is know as “Pakistan’s Best and Bravest Reporter.” He knows the players: outgoing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the assassinated would-be returning hero Benazir Bhutto, W., the Taliban, al-Quaida and other insurgents and so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas in northern Pakistan, which really aren’t administered by anyone except the inmates in that particular asylum.

Perhaps better known (not much) by its snappy acronym, FATA, it is believed to be home to Osama bin Laden, assuming he’s still able to sit up and take nourishment.

It’s just another garden spot that W. thought he could waltz in and clean up, with the help of his good friend, “General,” as he famously named Musharraf in a TV interview (BEFORE he was elected!! People, how could you elect someone that uninformed??).

I’d like to read the book, but I’m afraid it’ll send me off on a long rant, and honestly, I don’t think that’s healthy.

For the news feed, CLICK HERE.

Dave Wilson is the Grand Pooh-Bah of Editorial Content at DelMio.com, a site developed by SunLit Communications LLC. He also is at times janitor, chauffeur, chief cook and bottle washer. Once upon a time he was a metro editor and copy editor at the Akron Beacon Journal. Send love letters and trash talk to dave.wilson@delmio.com. Or post a comment. Whatever.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, with an up-close view of the situation there, has written new book that doesn’t disguise his point of view: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin says it should be required reading for both John McCain and Barack Obama, the two major presidential candidates.
In her column, citing Rashid’s book, Rubin predicts that the next major foreign policy problem will stem from a lawless region in Pakistan known (at least by a few) as FATA: Federally Administered Tribal Areas of northern Pakistan. Calling it federally administered is a bit of an oxymoron: It’s largely a lawless expanse that is safe haven to al-Qaida, the Taliban and other undesirables (to the United States, anyway). Neither Pakistan nor the United States is effectively combating the insurgency there.
Rashid told the columnist he thinks President Bush should first stop publicly backing Pakistan’s unpopular leader, Pervez Musharraf. Both figures are widely disliked in Pakistan and parts nearby.

To learn more about the book or buy the book, CLICK HERE.

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s critical look at the Bush administration, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, isn’t so much an expose as it is his version of events that we largely already knew about.

Anyone who reads the newspapers, newsmags or watches CNN already knows somebody at the White House outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA supervisor (Libby, Rove, Cheney, probably with Bush’s at least tacit approval); that the reasons given for going to war in Iraq were dubious at best (I believe outright phony); and that the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina was a disaster that compounded the natural disaster and exposed the administration’s inability to govern.

If the hurricanes of 1989 (Hugo – I was in South Carolina at the time) and 1992 (Andrew) taught us anything, it’s that FEMA needs effective planning and execution and is no place to be stowing away inept cronies. Except the people in charge forgot that lesson. It took images of misery in New Orleans to get most of America to take notice. If the 2004 election had been held in 2005, Bush would have lost badly. Even to Kerry! Although Bush may have Myanmar to thank for setting new lows in responsiveness to disaster.

Even as bad as things have gone – a five-year-occupancy with no end in sight, inept response to disaster and a struggling economy – almost one-third of Americans apparently think Bush is a pretty good president. That’s amazing.

What sets McClellan apart is he was a Texas Bushie, one of W’s loyalists. Considered by the Washington press corps to be a rather weak spokesman, McClellan is largely viewed as a little in over his head. One pundit describes his book as Revenge of the Nerd, payback for being pushed around by the likes of Rummy and Cheney and Rove.

And the White House’s response to his book was curious. Rather than deny the essentially undeniable, they said stuff like “That’s not the Scott we knew,” and “He’s in it for the money” (who isn’t?). I imagine they’re just hoping the issue will quietly die down. Hey, it’s hurricane season. Maybe we’ll get lucky!

Scott McClellan, the once-loyal Bush believer who wrote a stinging rebuke of the Bush Administration, appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday.
McClellan said he was a bit surprised at how personal the attacks were from the White House in reacting to What Happened.
Stewart challenged McClellan’s assertion in the book that the deceptions that took place weren’t intentional.

To tune in to the interview (two-parter), CLICK HERE
And a bonus reading by the B-52s’ Fred Schneider, with a little Love Shack touch.

Things are getting even nastier in Washington these days. Now ex-Bushies are turning on the Bush administration – this time it’s former White House spokesman Scott McClellen. His coming book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, is setting off tremors in the capital.
He’s been letting some excerpts slip out since last fall, but today he uncorked some doozies.

Five years ago, anyone who spoke in dissent of the war in Iraq was broadly painted as unpatriotic or worse, a dadgummed Liberal with a capital L. Now that 70 percent of America thinks the war was a mistake (30 percent refuse to acknowledge reality), it’s easy to disparage the Bush administration.

I take little comfort in knowing that in 2002 I said going in and toppling Saddam Hussein was a bad idea. But it was even worse than I thought. I thought they’d at least have enough sense to guard the borders!

I’m sure a lot of conservatives are disappointed, but they have to realize Bush 43 is not a true conservative. A true conservative doesn’t spend more than he earns. Cut-tax-and-spend is a recipe for disaster. The next two or three generations are going to pay for this administration’s screw-ups.

Richard Clark, another former Bush staffer who has been critical of the administration, but didn’t wait two years to pipe up, said the story sounds familiar.

“I think the difference with McClellan’s book is he’s now telling us something we all know — that the war with Iraq was a disastrous war [and] was sold with deception. It’s a little different when you say something as I did and a few other people did four or five years ago, when the war was popular and when we were unpopular for saying what we said.”

I can’t wait to see what the Bush apologists say next.

For more on the subject, CLICK HERE or HERE.

Dave Wilson is the Grand Pooh-Bah of Editorial Content at DelMio.com, a site developed by SunLit Communications LLC. He also is at times janitor, chauffeur, chief cook and bottle washer. Once upon a time he was a metro editor and copy editor at the Akron Beacon Journal. Send love letters and trash talk to dave.wilson@delmio.com. Or post a comment. Whatever.

Let the piling on begin.
The deeply unpopular Bush administration took another hit today as former White House spokesman Scott McClellan released more excerpts of his soon-to-be-published book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.
In essence, he called President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their closest advisers liars.
At the very least, Bush was ill-served by his advisers in matters from the war in Iraq; the Valerie Plame (CIA) leak case in which a working CIA operative was outed; and the botched handling of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.
The White House responded today, saying it was “puzzled” by McClellan’s scathing memoir. “This is not the Scott we knew,” said current White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. Expect more forceful responses to discredit the longtime Bush loyalist.

For more on the subject, CLICK HERE.

To order the book, CLICK HERE.

Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy by Charlie Savage has won the 2008 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. The award, given annually since 1987, rewards journalists who bring clarity and public attention to issue.

The Award includes a $15,000 cash prize.

From the New York Public Library’s press release quotes Savage:

“The Bush-Cheney administration’s systematic effort to expand presidential power — a push that originated not with 9/11 but rather with Cheney’s experiences in the Ford administration after Watergate and Vietnam — is the most successfully implemented policy of the current White House. It is also one of the least understood. I wrote this book to explain how the system of checks and balances devised by the founders is changing as ever more power is being concentrated in the hands of the president and his top advisers — be they Republicans or Democrats — and to tell the dramatic stories behind this movement,” said Savage. “My thanks to the NYPL Bernstein Award committee for helping to direct wider attention to this fundamental constitutional issue, which transcends partisan politics.”

Charlie Savage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is a Washington correspondent for the Boston Globe.

To view the press release, CLICK HERE

So, Cindy McCain, the secretive recluse wife of wood-be prez John McCain, has backed out of a deal to write her memoir (no doubt rivaling Miley Cyrus in depth of experience), probably out of concern that it would cause more damage than help. I knew a young woman whose name, swear to God, was Candy McCain. Waitress at the Bethel Road Cooker in Columbus (Ohio, which seems odd to think it necessary to include the state of a city with roughly a million people). As far as I know, no relation. To John McCain, that is. Or Cindy.

For the record, we have assigned John McCain’s book, Faith of My Fathers, as an official Exploration here at DelMio. I promise we’ll have it done before November, book fans and McCain fans. We outsmarted ourselves early in the race, thinking Rudy Giuliani would run away from the field. Jeez.

I liked McCain a lot more before he morphed into a Jerry-Fallwell’s-ring-kissing right-wing toadie after he got Bushwhacked in 2000 by dirtball politics. He once referred to Falwell, Pat Robertson and their ilk as “agents of division.” He was right then. But then he flip-flopped! He seems stunningly tone-deaf, veering off to the right just as Bush’s approval ratings swirl ever lower in the political crapper — although he did just come out vowing to fight global warming, which sent Rush Lintball into a tizzy today. I love it when he gets all apoplectic. Such great theater. Alas, so many dittoheads out there actually believe him and his half-baked half-truths, which are harder to detect than outright lies.

The conservatives don’t trust McCain because of his “maverick” reputation, and the libs can’t get past the war in Iraq. Or his health care “plan.” Or his stand on abortion. Or his justice-nomination votes. If it weren’t for Hillary and Barack still exchanging body blows in their Democratic Smackdown, I can’t imagine how McCain would be competitive with either Clinton or Obama. The press (even the left-wing drive-by MSM) loves it, because it breaks the monotony of a slow news day.

But enough of politics. Nice weather today, huh?

Dave Wilson is the Grand Pooh-Bah of Editorial Content at DelMio.com, a site developed by SunLit Communications LLC. He also is at times janitor, chauffeur, chief cook and bottle washer. Once upon a time he was a metro editor and copy editor at the Akron Beacon Journal. Send love letters and trash talk to dave.wilson@delmio.com. Or post a comment.