Trumping Woodward

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 29, 2006 12:48 PM

Well, supersleuth Bob Woodward has himself been scooped.

Poised to unveil the contents of his new book on Sunday with a triple rollout--"60 Minutes" interview and excerpts in The Washington Post and Newsweek--Woodward woke up this morning to see the highlights splattered on the front page of the New York Times.

Is it weird for the Times to vacuum up the news from the latest blockbuster written by the assistant managing editor for its chief competitor? Sure. Is there anything untoward about it? Not at all. The Post has done the same thing to other publications and authors.

And how did the Times's Julie Bosman score the super-secret book, "State of Denial"? This is fiendishly clever: She bought one at retail price. (Reporter David Sanger doesn't say where or how.)

So here is the Times's take on Woodward's take on the war in Iraq:

"The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.

"The warning is described in 'State of Denial,' scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush's top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.

"As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: 'I don't want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don't think we are there yet.'

"Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq -- a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon -- and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that 'Rumsfeld doesn't have any credibility anymore' to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq."

And here's a juicy tidbit: Bush and Cheney would not be interviewed.

"60 Minutes" also provides some tantalizing hints in a news release:

"According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. 'It's getting to the point now where there are eight, 900 attacks a week. That's more than a hundred a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces,' says Woodward.

"The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. 'The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better,' ' he tells Wallace. 'Now there's public, and then there's private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know,' says Woodward."

Could the book put to rest the argument by some critics that Woodward has become too cozy with those in power? Does he feel some obligation to scrutinize the administration more skeptically after having expressed regret for not more aggressively challenging the official line on Saddam's WMDs?

I wouldn't be surprised if both sides find ammunition in the book. Woodward's 2004 best-seller, "Plan of Attack," provided plenty of fodder for John Kerry's campaign with its details of how Bush was pushing ahead with Iraq war planning while claiming to be committed to U.N. diplomacy, and suggestions of a secret deal with Saudi Arabia. And yet the president's team liked the book so much that the Bush campaign recommended "Plan of Attack" on its Web site.

Red alert: Did the president just significantly escalate his rhetoric against the other side? Are the polling numbers that bad?

"President Bush, delivering a lengthy defense of the wars in Iraq and on terrorism, angrily accused Democratic leaders today of misrepresenting a recently declassified intelligence report, saying they favored policies that would increase the nation's vulnerability to terrorist attacks," reports the Los Angeles Times .

"'The party of FDR, the party of Harry Truman, has become the party of cut-and-run,' he said, in a speech that repeatedly brought an audience of several thousand to its feet. "The president singled out statements that aides later said were made by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, a senior Democrat and expert on intelligence matters."

This is not exactly a new playbook.

Bush gets his way on the Hill:

"The Senate yesterday passed a sweeping measure authorizing military tribunals for some suspected terrorists and permitting aggressive interrogations of top terror suspects, handing President Bush a major victory five weeks before crucial congressional elections," says the Boston Globe .

If you don't like the war in Iraq, you will likely be angry about the figures in this AP account by Barry Schweid. And even if you support the war, the numbers are sobering:

"About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, and slightly more than that want their government to ask U.S. troops to leave within a year, a poll finds.

"The Iraqis also have negative views of Osama bin Laden, according to the early September poll of 1,150.

"The poll, done for University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, found:

"--Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in

"--Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents.

"--About 61 percent approved of the attacks -- up from 47 percent in January. A solid majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs approved of the attacks, according to the poll. The increase came mostly among Shiite Iraqis . . .

"The State Department, meanwhile, has conducted its own poll, something it does periodically, spokesman Sean McCormack said."

Ah ! This is undoubtedly more favorable, right?

"The State Department poll found two-thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, according to The Washington Post."

Oh.

Look what's back: a story the White House would very much like to go away, at least until after Nov. 7:

"A bipartisan Congressional report documents hundreds of contacts between White House officials and the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partners, including at least 10 direct contacts between Mr. Abramoff and Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist," says the New York Times .

"The House Government Reform Committee report, based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed from Mr. Abramoff's lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Mr. Abramoff's lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Mr. Rove's office.

"The lobbyists spent almost $25,000 in meals and drinks for the White House officials and provided them with tickets to numerous sporting events and concerts, according to the report, scheduled for release Friday."

What? It wasn't that long ago that Bush was saying, Jack Who?

Slate Editor Jake Weisberg faults both parties for shying away from an honest debate:

"The biggest problem our country faces is the war we are losing in Iraq. The most shocking aspect of the national election we are holding in six weeks is that candidates aren't discussing what to do about it.

"The reasons for ignoring the elephant in the room are apparent. Republicans in tight races can't easily disown Bush's policies, but they may be able to change the subject. Focusing on what to do now highlights the catastrophe the president has created and his lack of any plausible strategy for fixing it. Republican politicians would rather frame the campaign around local issues or the larger question of security, under which Bush and the national party are trying to subsume Iraq.

"Democratic candidates avoid talking about the future in Iraq based on a different calculation. For them, Bush's past deceptions and mistakes are winning issues. But they share a problem with Republicans, which is that they don't have a clue what to do next, either. Some bandy about the term 'redeployment,' the favored euphemism for withdrawal. But for Democrats, any explicit talk about a pullout raises the old specter that they are defeatists, weaklings, and generally squishy on terrorism . . .

"The situation is hopeless. The best that our leading foreign-policy minds have been able to come up with is a grim choice among forms of failure and defeat. In a country of optimists, no politician wants to deliver that message."

Arianna Huffington is also dissatisfied with both sides:

"Washington, DC has turned into the fear capital of America.

"It's an all-out Fear Face-Off, pitting the GOP's fear of reality against the Democrats' fear of perception, with control of Congress riding on the outcome.

"After years of using voter fear as their favorite campaign weapon, Republicans are suddenly the ones running scared -- terrified that the reality contained within the new National Intelligence Estimate will confirm the undeniable: that the war in Iraq has fueled terrorism and made us all less safe.

"And that President Bush has been intentionally misleading us with his insistence that Iraq is the centerpiece of the battle against terrorism, and his assurance that 'America is winning the war on terror.'"

Kos also betrays a certain impatience with his own side:

"Stop whining . . . And keep working to build a Democratic Party with backbone. The guys currently in DC don't have it? Yeah, we know that. That's why we're supporting a new breed of Democrat that isn't afraid of Rove's shadow. That will fight when the DC Dems would rather cower in fear.

"We have a problem. Obviously. Democrats would rather talk about how they need to be strong, than actually be strong. They would rather talk about 'moral standing,' than actually, you know, stand for what's right. I know that. You know that. I suspect that even Democrats in DC know that. It's just that they're paralyzed by fear.

"That's why we need to work for fearless Dems who won't let themselves be held hostage to fear. And remember, this is a long-term process. Just like conservatives didn't quit politics when Nixon was killing them with new government programs like the EPA or OSHA, we can't take our ball home every time we lose on an important issue."

The 9/11 blame game continues, and as we see from Betsy's Page , now the Other Clinton is drawing flak:

"Hillary had to go and open her mouth the other day to attack the Bush administration and defend her husband's record on terrorism. This is what she said:

" I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team .

"First of all, to come out and say pretty clearly that if her husband had been president, the terrorists might not have succeeded on 9/11 strikes me as crass, vicious, and just plain nasty. Of all the Democrats, she should know the dangers of saying such things. And the contrast with President Bush refusing to respond to questions about what she and her husband were saying about this demonstrated much more class [on Bush's part]. And, of course, there is [Bush's] father who did not come out publicly and criticize President Clinton throughout Clinton's presidency unlike the way that Presidents Carter and Clinton have been quite open in their criticism of the present President . . .

"If the Democrats are going to start up with this nonsense attacking Bush for not having doing as much as Clinton had done, they have opened the door for reexamining the Clinton record and that is not a debate that makes the Clintons look good."

Scott Johnson has a long Power Line post about why he thinks Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato was being disingenous when he personally vouched for allegations that George Allen once frequently used the N-word, when it turns out that Sabato (who went to the University of Virginia at the same time as the senator) was relying on others and had no first-hand knowledge.

Is George Allen, after macaca and the Jewish revelation, washed up as a presidential contender? Fred Barnes , writing in the Wall Street Journal, says no:

"Many conservatives are souring on Virginia's junior senator as a presidential candidate. Still: Should Mr. Allen overcome the media onslaught, effectively counter Mr. Webb's call for a withdrawal from Iraq, finish the campaign without breaking ranks with President Bush, and win a slugfest by a modest margin, he may emerge as a tough-minded survivor. The press won't like him any better, but he might earn the respect of Republican voters around the country. Candidates have been 'misunderestimated' before, and stranger things have happened in politics."

Who was the Other Woman? Meaning, who did the Republican candidate for New York attorney general fear her husband was messing around with when she talked to Bernie Kerik about wiretapping him? The New York Post is on the case:

"Jeanine Pirro confided to friends that she feared her scandal-plagued husband was having an affair with his lawyer's wife, Lisa Santangelo - a stunning brunette 20 years her junior, sources said yesterday."

Was it true? "Lisa's husband insisted yesterday the rumors were unfounded."

Did you follow the media orgy over whether Terrell Owens of the Dallas Cowboys did or didn't try to kill himself? (A police report says yes; he says no, blaming a brief hospitalization on an allergic reaction to painkillers. Here (via Romenesko) are the views of two sportswriters. First, Jay Hart :

"Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, the same one that's given us Scott Peterson, JonBenet Ramsey and Natalee Holloway, we now have T.O. -- the suicide attempt that wasn't. But what do we in the media care, now that we've swept the hours of speculation under the rug, wiped our hands clean and can start fresh again? Actually, we won't do that. Why would we, now that we have a juicy little story about a story that never happened?

"As hard as you might find this to believe, we -- and by we, I mean the media -- hold the rest of the world to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. It's easy to do when there's no accountability. We can judge whom we want, for what we want, without ever looking in the mirror. And if we're wrong, well, it's OK, because we were just trying to report something we thought was for the common good, which trumps all . . .

"Over the last several years, T.O. has brought a lot of attention on himself, but not this time. Here's a situation that he didn't create, that he didn't force, that he didn't want any part of."

And in the opposite corner, Gregg Doyel :

"Blame the media for the latest Terrell Owens fiasco?

"You must be joking.

"And by you, I don't mean just you, the reader. I mean you, the media. Because there are enemies among us, enemies in major markets like Philadelphia and Miami who this morning are saying that somehow, the biggest loser in this entire Terrell Owens suicide story is the media.

"In one way we did lose. The story changed on us -- allegedly -- as Wednesday morning became Wednesday afternoon. When the facts change, the ignorant out there point at the media and call us incompetent. Kind of like when the facts about weapons of mass destruction changed and John Kerry stopped supporting the war, he was ignorantly called a flip-flopper. (I told you the media is liberal.)

"But in the Miami Herald the headline says, 'We are to blame for overreacting.'

"Huh?

"Terrell Owens, a Hall of Fame talent at receiver, is hospitalized overnight for a possible suicide attempt, and the media is to blame for the coverage that comes next? Terrell Owens, one of the most fascinatingly repulsive characters in sports, is said to have had pills pried from his mouth, and the media gets ripped for climbing down this story's throat?

"You must be joking."

Sadly, the breathless coverage was no joke.