One Big Unhappy Family

He thought he was making fun of the book, not realizing that spun-sugar candy sells books.

"State of Denial" is about how the president and his people got us into a war without any plan to get out.

The major players are the president, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a flock of disenchanted generals and of course, the CIA, which either got its intelligence wrong or let the White House spin it to justify going into Iraq.

The star of the book is Rumsfeld. People had more to say about him than anyone, mostly unfavorable.

Think of it as though he were caught in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, adrift on a detached roof. He didn't know where he was going.

These are a few of the charges made against him:

He didn't answer Condoleezza Rice's phone calls.

He didn't listen to his generals when they asked for more troops.

He was short-tempered, brilliant, arrogant and micromanaged the war with faulty equipment.

He said, "Reports that say something hasn't happened are interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

As time went on and no plan showed up, opponents of the war started to believe we were knee-deep in another Vietnam.

Rumsfeld confirmed this when he said, "Things happen."

One of the big surprises of the book was that an important adviser turned out to be Henry Kissinger. Bush leaned on him and got advice from him.

Kissinger, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and one of the architects of our disaster in Vietnam, told the president that the defeat there was not caused by the U.S. Army but by the politicians and antiwar demonstrations back home.

I am a Woodward fan. I lunch more with him than I do Tony Snow.

The other reason I liked the book is that I love spun-sugar candy. It leaves a nice taste in my mouth.

2006Tribune Media Services