How bad is the book "Decision Points"?

[Lionel Mandrake]

Eliot Weinberger, writing for the London Review of Books, demolishes what's left of W's reputation:

Decision Points "by" George W. Bush

"Decision Points holds the same relation to George W. Bush as a line of fashion accessories or a perfume does to the movie star that bears its name; he no doubt served in some advisory capacity. The words themselves have been assembled by Chris Michel (the young speechwriter and devoted acolyte who went to Yale with Bush’s daughter Barbara); a freelance editor, Sean Desmond; the staff at Crown Publishing (who reportedly paid $7 million for the book); a team of a dozen researchers; and scores of ‘trusted friends’. ...

"This is a chronicle of the Bush Era with no colour-coded Terror Alerts; no Freedom Fries; no Halliburton; no Healthy Forests Initiative (which opened up wilderness areas to logging); no Clear Skies Act (which reduced air pollution standards); no New Freedom Initiative (which proposed testing all Americans, beginning with schoolchildren, for mental illness); no pamphlets sold by the National Parks Service explaining that the Grand Canyon was created by the Flood; no research by the National Institutes of Health on whether prayer can cure cancer (‘imperative’, because poor people have limited access to healthcare); no cover-up of the death of football star Pat Tillman by ‘friendly fire’ in Afghanistan; no ‘Total Information Awareness’ from the Information Awareness Office; no Project for the New American Century; no invented heroic rescue of Private Jessica Lynch; no Fox News; no hundreds of millions spent on ‘abstinence education’. It does not deal with the Cheney theory of the ‘unitary executive’ – essentially that neither the Congress nor the courts can tell the president what to do – or Bush’s frequent use of ‘signing statements’ to indicate that he would completely ignore a bill that the Congress had just passed.

"It is astonishing how many major players from Bush World are here Missing in Action. Entirely absent, or mentioned only in passing, are Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Yoo, Elliott Abrams, Ahmed Chalabi, Ayad Allawi, Rick Santorum, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, Richard Armitage, Katherine Harris, Ken Mehlman, Paul O’Neill, Rush Limbaugh. Barely appearing at all are John Ashcroft, Samuel Alito, Ari Fleischer, Alberto Gonzales, Denny Hastert, John Negroponte and Tom Ridge. Condi and Colin Powell are given small parts, but Rummy is largely a passing shadow. No one is allowed to steal a scene from the star.

"The enormous black hole in the book is the Grand Puppetmaster himself, Dick Cheney, the man who was prime minister to Bush’s figurehead president. In Decision Points, as in the Bush years, he is nearly always hiding in an undisclosed location. When he does show up on scattered pages, he is merely another member of the Bush team."

Read more (much more):
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n01/eliot-weinberger/damn-right-i-said

[gratuitous]

1. Oh whew! Published in London

I was afraid this might appear stateside somewhere, where it might be inadvertently noticed by someone in the popular media. Weinberger does a great job of bringing up any number of Bush administration gremlins, reminding even the shortest of attention spans in the millionaire media club of some of the assholes who had their mitts on the levers of power. But since the review was published in one o' them foreign countries, all the best people can simply ignore it.

[Lionel Mandrake]

3. Not much to worry about.

Only eggheads read book reviews, and eggheads are mostly liberals. Those who read people instead of books will never notice.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I can hardly believe that any sane person would have the

stomach to read this so-called book.

Good for the stalwart reviewer...he took one for the team so we don't have to.

Recommended.

[BlueCheese]

5. Tell me about it.

You couldn't pay me enough to read that book. Well, maybe you could, but it'd have to be a lot.

[alfredo]

4. kick it

[Swamp Rat]

6. Thoroughly nonabsorbent and therefore totally useless

[Lionel Mandrake]

7. Poor W;

he's so misunderstooled.

[Maru Kitteh]

8. Should have been called "my big boy pants"

It would still be a sad tale of self-delusion and imagined happenings. I just like my title better.

[Enthusiast]

9. Accurate review. nt

[marmar]

10. Like (alleged) author like book.

nt

[Bragi]

11. Watch for the follow-up book: "Sedition Points"

That's where all the other stuff will show up.

[lunatica]

12. Evidently it's as barren of facts as the space between Bush's ears

He's still catapultin the propaganda I see.

[Blue Owl]

13. turns out it was connect-the-dots book

n/t

[Lionel Mandrake]

14. But Weinberger connects the dots with style! ... n/t

[spin]

15. A far better book is 'Family of Secrets' by Russ Baker ...

Product Description
“Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments.”—Roger Morris, author of Richard Milhous Nixon and Partners in Power

How did the deeply flawed George W. Bush ascend to the highest office in the nation, what forces abetted his rise, and—perhaps most important—have those forces really been vanquished by Obama’s election? Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker gives us the answers in Family of Secrets, a compelling and startling new take on the Bush dynasty and the shadowy elite that has quietly steered the American republic for the past half century and more. Baker shows how this network of figures in intelligence, the military, oil, and finance enabled—and in turn benefited handsomely from—the Bushes’ perch at the highest levels of government. As Baker reveals, this deeply entrenched elite remains in power regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

Family of Secrets offers countless disclosures that challenge the conventional accounts of such central events as the JFK assassination and Watergate. It includes an inside account of George W.’s cynical religious conversion and the untold real background to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Baker’s narrative is gripping, sobering, and deeply sourced. It will change the way we understand not just the Bush years, but a half century of postwar history—and the present.
http://www.amazon.com/Family-Secrets-Americas-Invisible-Government/dp/1608190064/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294423029&sr=8-1

I'm about half through it and so far the book has lived up to the description above. I wouldn't waste my time reading anything any Bush wrote after reading this book.

[Lionel Mandrake]

16. Almost any book is better than "Decision Points".

A possible exception would be "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler.

(Unlike W, Hitler actually wrote a book).

[lumberjack_jeff]

17. Any president who hides behind the phrase "I was a dissenting voice" deserves an ass kicking. n/t