On Dubya, Don And Condylitis

Paul Danahar November 13, 2006 00:00 IST On Dubya, Don And Condylitis -0001-11-30T00:00:00+05:53

"Rumsfeld is a dick." The verdict of a senior army intelligence officer given the task of finding Saddam Hussein’s elusive weapons of mass destruction as the US army invaded Iraq in 2003. It doesn’t really matter whether you think it’s true or not, or whether it’s fair to the US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. What makes Bob Woodward’s State of Denial such an enjoyable read is this kind of unvarnished view from the inside, during America’s most traumatic period in 30 years.

It’s worth pointing out that Woodward has taken a fair amount of flak over the years for his reporting on the inner workings of Washington; but no one’s ever accused him of being a good writer. His prose clunks over these pages with all the elegance of a pair of hobnail boots. However, it’s not the style but the substance that makes his books bestsellers. He is a master of pulp non-fiction. This volume is subtitled ‘Bush at War, Part III’ but you don’t need to have read the first two to make sense of this one. Parts I and II dealt with the process of invading Afghanistan...