Woodward is completely on board with the Bush agenda

[Selwynn]

- his book is being promoted on the Bush campaign site as "required reading"

- he received unprecedented support and access, given full cooperation, with 75 different officials and face time with Bush. I'm sorry people but NO ADMINISTRATION does this unless they are dealing with a shill for their interests.

- The things that we consider big deals are NOT the things the public will consider big deals. Bush is a spiritual man, that will make him shoot up 5 points, not hurt him at all. The public will hear that tenet was the one who said the evidence was a sure thing, so bush isn't to blame for that, and the rest of it is probably supported by the White House for the sole reason that it muddles the picture and comes off as an apology for Bush.

- It also leads people to think that planning for Iraq started shortly after 9/11, and we know this is a lie. Planning for Iraq had been on the agenda since day one.

Anyway, I don't lump Woodward in with O'Neil or Clarke as a man of conscience helping to expose Bush's insanity. I consider him a tool of the dark side, a wolf in sheep's clothing...

[WilliamPitt]

1. Have you read the book?

[trumad]

4. No...but that last one was a doosy...

and his umteeenth appearance on Larry King gives us a big clue of his colors...

[rainy]

8. Hi William

I love your work. Will you please write an update on the LIHOP facts.

[WoodrowFan]

2. he's always been a Republican

and in love with access to whoever is in the White House.

[ChompySnack]

3. I agree wholeheartedly

O'Neil clearly indicated that the planning for the Iraq war started in the first day of this administration.

[SpiralHawk]

5. Wait for: THE BOOMERANG EFFECT

to hit this book and Woodward.

I'd bet a doughnut on it. This book is going to backfire or boomerang big time, some how, some way. Not more than a month.

I can feel it in my bones.

Ye Boney Olde Spiral Hawk

[scarletwoman]

6. Woodward's book is a judas goat.

People are thinking that it's another "revelation book" like Price of Loyalty, and Against All Enemies. It's not, it's a piece of psyops.

Watch what happens to Tenet. Bushco would DEARLY love to boot him, and replace him with one of their own faithful retainers -- Feith, perhaps?

It has to be done "delicately" (as the Wicked Witch put it). Woodward's book is part of the plan.

sw

[Selwynn]

11. PsyOPS - that's EXACTLY what it is.... well put. :)

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

7. Makes sense. As deplorable as he was, I always thought the Bushies

brought Nixon down...look who got their taste of power following Nixon in Ford's admin...Rummy and Cheney....this would dovetail perfectly with that notion.

[American Renaissance]

9. Perception,

I took a college course of special interest groups, and prof discussed an article that was written about the influence of Christians fundies on Reagan.

The article was printed in both fundie publications and feminist publications,

the jesus freaks saw the article as proof that Reagan was influenced by Christian fundementalists.

The "womyn" saw it as proof that Reagan was influenced by Christian fundementalists.

One set of facts supports both perspectives, the facts are just seen in a differant light.

[buycitgo]

10. ready for some tin hattiness?

you've heard about Silent Coup, right? huge publicity when it came out......trashed by main media outlets, used by Liddy in suit against Dean

well the book it's based on was ignored

I read it when it came out, and it's pretty interesting

here:

http://archives.cjr.org/year/91/6/books-nixon.asp

* Richard Nixon played the role of dupe, rather than initiator. The number one villain was John Dean, Nixon's White House counsel, who was deeply involved in the Watergate office building break-in and coverup. Why did he get involved? Because the name of his girlfriend (and future wife) had turned up in a notebook linked to a prostitution ring in or near the Watergate. Dean allegedly never told Nixon about that, supposedly concocting lie after lie in a convincing manner to fool the president.

* The other leading schemer against Nixon was army general and later White House chief of staff Alexander Haig. His motivation? Concern about exposure of his role in a military network spying on Nixon and on his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.

* Haig was Deep Throat, Woodward's special source. Woodward is portrayed not as the Robert Redford movie-version hero, but as a sleazy journalist covering up his past in military intelligence, including a working relationship with Haig. Colodny and Gettlin say that interviews with Admiral Thomas Moorer (former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman), Melvin Laird (former secretary of defense), and Jerry Friedheim (former Defense Department spokesman) prove that Woodward is lying about his relationship with Haig.

Can all this be true? Hard to say. The book mixes superb and shoddy research, sound reasoning with logical inconsistencies, clear writing with incomprehensible passages. The endnotes are skimpy and usually non-specific. Silent Coup cannot be dismissed out of hand, but it cannot stand on its own.

sleazy journalist or movie hero? most people here would side with the former, I'll wager

not that I can wrap my mind around a frameup of such a nature

the real Watergate was powerful enough

but, given this current horrorshow, how does one rule out ANYthing?

Secret Agenda, the book to which I refer, has pretty much the same premise....

Hougan, Jim. Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA. New
York: Random House, 1984. 347 pages.

This first "deconstructionist" account of Watergate is the acknowledged inspiration for Colodny and Gettlin's "Silent Coup" (1991),
which finally put the Washington Post on the defensive.

"Secret Agenda" offers many firsts:

1) the first to discuss Watergate in the context of the Moorer-Radford affair
2) the first to discuss the role played by attorney-pimp Phil Bailley
3) the first to reveal that a key taken from burglar Rolando Martinez fit the desk of Spencer Oliver's secretary Maxie Wells (the only physical evidence of the burglar's actual target)
4) the first to reveal that the FBI lab concluded that the DNC was NOT bugged (McCord faked the eavesdropping to protect a more important secret)
5) the first to reveal that Woodward had secretly briefed Alexander Haig while Woodward presided over the Pentagon code room of the Chief of Naval Operations
6) the first to make public Woodward's investigation of Bernstein's sex life
7) the first to identify the mysterious John Paisley as the CIA's liaison to the plumbers.

[Minstrel Boy]

14. This is important stuff.

I haven't read Silent Coup, but Secret Agenda is an excellent book. Watergate was more than it appeared. Scratch Woodward, you find a spook.

[freetobegay]

12. Was there a big sale on tinfoil hats today or what!

:argh:

[Selwynn]

15. What exactly is tin foil hat about it, pal?

Specifics please...

[freetobegay]

17. If you have to ask...

:tinfoilhat:

[Selwynn]

22. Wow, that was a predictable response.

Woodward's book is linked to from the Bush campaign site, that's fact.

Woodward had unprecedented almost unfettered access to Bush administration to write his book.

I'm saying those things make me highly skeptical that he is acting as anything other than exactly what the administration would want. If you're refering to the psyops comment, ok that was a bit over the top, but I don't mean it is literally planned, devised and exectured psyops, I mean that I think this book is doing psychologically what the admnin wants it to do, but I could be wrong about that.... by definition of conspiracy theory, there is nothing conspiratorial about that.

But, I'm sure you'll respond with another one word post that doesn't make any sense to me...

[displacedtexan]

13. I'm reading the book right now.

On the first page, Cheney asks William Cohen (early Jan, 2001 before the inauguration)to brief the chimp... on Iraq.

[Selwynn]

16. Good - that is a relief...

[TacticalPeek]

19. There is Woodward's sub-theme: Cheney-Bush, Bad Cop-Dumb Cop.

Pork Chop Boy is being greased for the skids.

[Hamlette]

Woodward said war with Iraq had been in the planning stages for

months before 9-11. It was in his first book. O'Neill and Clarke said bush was obsessed with Iraq. To me, reading Bush at War it seemed they were obsessed with Iraq. The GOP spin will be "it was prudent to plan for such an enemy." Were they planning war against the other two axis (what is the plural of "axis"?) of evil?

[Hamlette]

18. Woodward said war with Iraq had been in the planning stages for

months before 9-11. It was in his first book. O'Neill and Clarke said bush was obsessed with Iraq. To me, reading Bush at War it seemed they were obsessed with Iraq. The GOP spin will be "it was prudent to plan for such an enemy." Were they planning war against the other two axis (what is the plural of "axis"?) of evil?

[hellbound-liberal]

20. What about Woodward being seen carrying three copies of his

book into the White House? If anybody doesn't smell the stench of Karl Rove all over this you better check again. Unfortunately, Bob woodward has many people, including some that I know completely snowed into thinking that he is still the great journalist that broke the Watergate story.

[scarletwoman]

21. He's been a spook all along.

It's too bad so many people have bought into the "maveric investigative journalist" myth about him.

During Watergate, he was working for the faction of the Oligarchy that wanted Nixon out of the way. He wasn't doing it to save us, he was doing it to help the Bush faction consolidate political power. He still is.

sw

[robbedvoter]

23. Remember the 2 French books on 911? A crazy one & a good one?

Woody's is the "no plane at pentagon" book to Clarke's "W did nothing for 911 because he was obsessed with Iraq"