BUSH AT WAR by BOB WOODWARD

Bob Woodward come to prominence during the Watergate period as a champion journalist in the famous dictum of Amira Hass of " identifying and challenging the centres of power".
Rather sadly this Book tracks the demise of the Woodward of the 70s to the modern style dupe of the "embedded journalist" syndrome that has made them ciphers to the narrative of power conditioning public opinion to the agenda of the power blocks in the decision process of superpower interests.

In this Book we have the selling of journalists demanding accountability for the price of "inside" access , a transaction that only benefits the power-interests and not the side of checks and balance of accountability to the informed electorate.

A chilling example of this turnaround of the transaction of the Woodward challenging Nixon Administration to being an embedded cipher for the Bush Administration is when he asks Rumsfeld if he should rewind the tape recorder to erase a comment that may be deemed inappropriate.

What we get is an interesting "live" dialogue of court interests and intrigues which registers high in dramatic interests and entertainment but little in  impartial judgement and challenge of decision making circumventing public checks and balances which is fundamental to the American system of government decision-making.We are rewarded by a Fly-On-The -Wall Documentary story without the "Wall" itself being the main centre of the inner essence of the story.

The video below has a long interview with Woodward about the Bush process of decision making.


An interesting factor is the exposure of the "Pentagon" wing with the Office of the Vice-President which become an inner sanctum that made and ran policy that should , if everything is running properly , be run by the State Department and the President.In this respect it is highly revealing how little informed and briefed Colin Powell is , sometimes much less than Woodward himself , in matters when his input as Secretary Of State and onetime top Soldier of the US would have been vital as well as constitutional in getting the balance of a military and civilian approach to the challenge of 9/11.

This video below gives an example of just how much from the heady heights of Watergate his journalistic standards have been warped , in which he fails to detect any "lie" despite admitting to being 15 months in the company of the Bush and the drive to War on Iraq.