Woodward book reveals depth of White House deception, denial.

Bush lies about Iraq? Gee, there's a news flash. It's been apparant for years to anyone paying attention that the administration has been committed to a massive propaganda campaign to manipulate the people they supposedly represent.

But even so, it's doubtful that most people are aware that American troops are being attacked on average every 15 minutes of every day, as is revealed in Bob Woodward's new book.

The Bush White House has since the beginning run more like a marketing and advertising agency than servants of the people who elected them. They've rolled out hundreds of PR campaigns, and most have focused on convincing the public that what they see and read with their own eyes is simply not the truth, and pushing a obviously rosy scenario directly at odds with the facts which favors them politically instead.

Now Bob Woodward, who first covered himself with glory for his work with Carl Bernstein in exposing the abuse of power in the Watergate scandal, but who has of late served as a very highly paid hagiographer of the Bush administration, has apparently realized that he's on the wrong side of history and has produced a new book which more closely approaches the truth.

Apparently, the commercial trend is running anti-Bush now, as opposed to the past 10 years when for members of the press, writer, and pundit class, it paid handsomely to be anti-Clinton, anti-Democrat, and anti-liberal. There was big money in trotting out the right wing line. Expect to see the more craven members of this chatty class jumping ship and trying to cash in on the other side as the massively huge, massively funded, and until recently, massively effective right wing noise machine begins to sputter.

Even Chris Matthews has recently lied to try to reposition himself, maintaining he was against the Iraq war from the beginning. (Not. He acted like he had a man-crush on Bush, swooning over his manliness in the flightsuit and was positively gung-ho about going to war)

The enormously successful manipulation of the American people by the right, complete with their very own cable network in addition to hundreds of am radio stations, servile pundits, corporate and individually funded phoney advocacy groups, and lavishly funded think tanks and their reports and "experts" who are widely quoted and appear in the media with the corporate/right wing slant to nearly every story, was only effective as long as they had an aura of credibility with the public.

Even though the lies, distortions, and breathtaking hypocrisy of it all have been plain for years, it takes the public a while to catch up. Bush and the right have enjoyed and capitalized on the public's tendency to give their leaders the benefit of the doubt.

But the lies have been so blatant, the arrogance so supreme, and the spin so far-fetched that even the public, gullible as they are, are finally calling bullshit.

Apparently, you really can't fool all of the people all of the time. The Bushies have been amazingly successful at it for about 7 years, but of course, Rove realized that 9-11 was a gift, not to unite and rally the country to higher purpose and resolve, but a tool which they'd use to gin up fear, drive wedges and divide the country as never before, and a handy all purpose political bludgeon to both scare people into electing them and to cast opponents as being in league with terrorists.
They've used 9-11 with shameless and cynical abandon since literally hours after the buildings fell.

Woodward started the PR campaign for the book with an appearance on 60 Minutes in which he dropped a few tid-bits. Perhaps the spookiest and most alarming revelation is that Bush has been reaching back into the dust-bin of history and actually consulting Henry Kissinger, of all people, on what he should do in Iraq.

The Bush administration is concealing the level of violence against U.S. troops in Iraq and the situation there is growing worse despite White House and Pentagon claims of progress, journalist Bob Woodward said in advance of a new book.

Insurgent attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq occurred, on average, every 15 minutes, Woodward said in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview taped for broadcast on Sunday.

"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," Woodward said in excerpts of the interview released on Thursday before the release of his book on the administration, called "State of Denial."

"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,"' Woodward added.

Parts of a National Intelligence Estimate that President George W. Bush ordered released this week showed an upsurge in Islamic militancy, while a new U.N. report said the Iraq war was providing al Qaeda with a training center and fresh recruits.

A senior administration official saw little new in Woodward's charges "except that Bob believes he has a lot of making up to do since the Washington establishment criticized him for being too soft in his first two books (on the Bush administration)."
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Woodward said Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney often met with Henry Kissinger as an adviser. Kissinger was President Richard Nixon's national security adviser and then secretary of state during the Vietnam War.
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According to Woodward, Bush was absolutely certain he was on the right course on Iraq. The writer said that when Bush invited key Republicans to the White House to discuss Iraq, the president told them, 'I will not withdraw even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me,"' referring to his wife and Scottish terrier.

Woodward also reports that the president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, "Now what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'" Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."

Read a more in-depth account of the book in the NY Times here.