Reply #16: Sorry, I'm not falling over in ecstasy over this guy. Just because this

[calimary]

particular book starts to tell some truths about bush does NOT in ANY way redeem Bob Woodward in my eyes. He still had his presidential kneepads glued on for the first two books, and just because this one's a little different doesn't earn him a "get out of jail free" card from me.

I read the lead-in article in "Newsweek" - the first "Newsweek" I've purchased in a long time - and wasn't impressed. He's quoted as saying when you go back and plow the same field again, you find new things. Bullshit. That stuff was ALL THERE back then. He was being a fawning stenographer, because he DID know which way the wind was blowing, and he wanted to be invited into the "in crowd." He describes staff meetings with bush, in the new book, as taking on an aura of a "royal court" where everybody presents his lordship with lots of happy talk and upbeat assessments, and said majesty can leave the room in a great mood and slap people on the back and talk about taking aim on Iran next and joke with the back-slappee that they'd rather hold out for Cuba because of the rum and the cigars and because the women are prettier. Har-de-har-har. Lots of fun, frat-boy, locker-room towel-snapping crap. And Woodward wanted to play, because that was the way to the inside, to get in with the "in crowd" (or the PERCEIVED "in crowd"), so he was MORE than willing to suspend his objectivity and play along.

But he wants us to believe that he only found out about this overwhelming, overriding arrogance, this treating bush meetings as though they were "royal courts," this duplicity, this across-the-board deceit, only just LATELY? What, he just rolled off the turnip truck or something? This wasn't self-evident APLENTY when he was there for interviews the previous two rounds? That he couldn't possibly have gotten at least some of this earlier, played devil's advocate, asked some tough questions, gotten a glimpse?

It's true - WE who wanted to look deeper than the carefully-spun party line DID know the truth. We who weren't paid princely sums for publishing advances on books chronicling the goings-on in the highest-level inner circles DID know the truth. Because we read and read and read. And researched and researched and researched. And took OUR intel from other sources than the carefully-spun one-sided party line. We knew. Why the fuck didn't he? Because he was only going for a limited view. If he even entertained the idea that what they were up to wasn't on the up-n-up, did he even think to pursue it? No. Because he didn't want to get the kind of obscenity-laced phone calls and hang-ups from cheney that he got for this book. Because he wanted them to like him and let him in. So when he noted that meetings with bush took on an air of a "royal court," HE was part of enabling that. HE was responsible for playing along, playing into it, and feeding the myth.

He's got a LONG way to go to redeem himself from all those earlier sins. And I'm no grieving Gold Star Mother. I'd doubt there'd be ANY way for any of these coddling courtiers to redeem themselves if their enabling of this war and all its carnage and death and destruction had cost the life of someone I loved. All that wreckage and bloodshed is on Woodward's hands, too. Just as it is on the hands of EVERYBODY who made excuses for this regime and its war, or was in position to stop it or slow it down and failed to do so.

With apologies to "Blazing Saddles," Mongo NOT impressed.