Book Says Top Aide Urged Bush to Fire Rumsfeld

But, according to Woodward, Rumsfeld made sure that his choices for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace -- were not people who would directly challenge him.

Woodward writes that just before Pace was named chairman, he was visited by an old friend, Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones, the NATO commander. Jones expressed concern that Pace would even want to be chairman. "You're going to face a debacle and be part of the debacle in Iraq," he said. U.S. prestige was at a 50- or 75-year low in the world. Jones said he was so worried about Iraq and the way Rumsfeld ran things that he wondered if he himself should not resign in protest.

And, he told his friend, according to Woodward: "You should not be the parrot on the secretary's shoulder."

Woodward writes that he called Jones at NATO headquarters in Brussels and that Jones confirmed the story.

Woodward describes Rice as frequently at odds with Rumsfeld when she served as national security adviser, and her staff as increasingly concerned about the lack of a strategy for winning the war in Iraq.

When she became secretary of state in 2005, Rice asked Philip D. Zelikow, an old friend whom she had brought on as an adviser, to travel to Iraq to assess the situation. On Feb. 10, two weeks after Rice became secretary, Zelikow presented her with a 15-page, single-spaced memo.

"At this point Iraq remains a failed state shadowed by constant violence and undergoing revolutionary political change," he wrote.

A 'Brush-Off' From Rice

"State of Denial" adds new information about Rice's role in the Bush administration's efforts to combat terrorism in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks. That subject became a source of controversy this week after former president Bill Clinton accused "President Bush's neocons" and other Republicans of ignoring Osama bin Laden until the attacks; Rice responded angrily to the charge.

Woodward writes that on July 10, 2001, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet became so concerned about the communications that intelligence agencies were receiving indicating a terrorist attack was imminent, he went to the White House with counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black -- without an appointment -- to meet with Rice, then the national security adviser. He and Black hoped the meeting would alert Rice to the urgency they felt.

But Tenet and Black felt that Rice gave them "the brush-off," according to Woodward, telling them that a plan for coherent action against bin Laden was already in the works. Woodward writes that both Tenet and Black felt that the meeting was the starkest warning the White House was given about bin Laden.

The book describes Tenet as feeling that Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the bin Laden threat but that she had not understood it in time. Black described his frustration more directly, according to Woodward: "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head."

Woodward writes that former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger has played a key role as an outside adviser to Bush on the Iraq war. Kissinger, according to Woodward, sees Iraq through the prism of his experience in the Nixon administration during the Vietnam War, and has counseled Bush to "stick it out" and not even entertain the idea of withdrawing troops.

At one point, to emphasize his position, he gave Michael Gerson, then a White House speechwriter, a copy of a memo he wrote to Nixon in September 1969. "Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded," Kissinger wrote.

Unlike Woodward's previous books, "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack," "State of Denial" does not focus on Bush. Woodward writes that Bush, who agreed to be interviewed for the first two books, declined this time.

Woodward also spends little time on Cheney, writing that since 2005 the vice president has been perceived as having no visible role in Iraq policy. He describes Cheney's associates as saying he was "lost" without his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who resigned after he was indicted for his role in the Valerie Plame leak case.

According to Woodward, Cheney relied on his wife, Lynne, and his daughter Liz for advice, and some close friends believed he "became increasingly removed from reality."