Can US Voters Handle The Truth???

The White House has done it again, confirming revelations in an unflattering new book in order to take the sting out before they go to press. So instead of newspaper headlines saying "New Book: Bush Planned Iraq War in Nov 2001", there are headlines saying "White House Confirms Nov 2001 Plans For Iraq." Such is the surreal world of media spin in which we live.

The new book is by Bob Woodward, a Washington Post journalist who wrote an earlier book on Bush's anti-terrorism campaign and broke the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein. The book looks set to provide a lot more uncomfortable news for the embattled White House.

What about this for a bombshell:

"... The end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ... Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."

There are also a lot of very interesting fly-on-the-wall insights. For example:

"When the CIA and its Iraqi sources reported that Saddam's sons and other family members were at a small palace, and Saddam was on his way to join them, Bush's top advisers debated whether to strike ahead of plan.

Franks was against it, saying it was unfair to move before a deadline announced to the other side, the book says. Rumsfeld and Rice favoured the early strike, and Secretary of State Colin Powell leaned that way.

But Bush did not make his decision until he had cleared everyone out of the Oval Office except the vice president.

"I think we ought to go for it," Cheney is quoted as saying. Bush did.

US forces unleashed bombs and cruise missiles, blanketing the compound but missing the palace.

Tenet called the White House before dawn to say the Iraqi leader had been killed. But his optimism was premature. Saddam was alive."

One senior Bush administrator who comes out looking not as bad as the rest of the garbage is Colin Powell, who has collaborated on other books by Woodward. Powell's spokesman would not comment on whether Powell had assisted with this one. When asked whether it was true that Powell and Dick Cheney are barely on speaking terms, the spokesman said "I don't think that's true" (diplomatic language for "it probably is true").

Is Powell ready to blow the whistle? It's widely rumoured he is not interested in another 4 years with Bush's White House. If he does get exposed as the source of many verbatim conversations in this new book, will the Karl Rove sleaze machine seek to destroy his reputation? If so, it could get very interesting indeed... I've always suspected Powell has a few big skeletons in his cupboard, otherwise he probably would have taken the opportunity to become the first black US President.