Bush ambushed by Bob just before the November polls

It was from our envoy to Washington DC, Ambassador Willy C. Gaa that I finally got a copy yesterday of Bob Woodward’s new book, literally hot off the press, in which the man who exposed Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal (in tandem with Carl Bernstein) – and helped cause the fall of Nixon – has aimed to hit US President George W. Bush, just as he did Nixon, right between the eyes.

Woodward’s "exposé" opus – his third on Bush (after his bestsellers, Bush at War (2002) and Plan of Attack (2004) – accuses Bush literally of lying to the American people.

Let me quote Woodward’s final sentence in his concluding chapter, on page 491: "With all Bush’s upbeat talk and optimism, he had not told the American public the truth about what Iraq has become."

The book is entitled, State of Denial and produced by Bob’s usual publisher, Simon & Schuster (New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, 2006). It is soaring to the top of the bestseller lists.

What makes its timing potentially dangerous to the fortunes of the Bush Republicans is the fact that Woodward went to press just weeks before the mid-term Congressional elections next month. Unless I’m mistaken, since the elections are scheduled for the second Tuesday in November, they will be held on November 14.

The Republicans at present control both the House of Representatives and the Senate by a few seats. Could the Woodward broadside, coupled with the "scandal" of Republican Congressman Mark Foley, obviously a gay, abominably propositioning underage (male) congressional pages (i.e. cadets in training, like Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky), possibly turn America’s voters against the Republicans in the coming, crucial polls?

Who knows. However, when it comes to sexual "scandals," American voters haven’t responded with the same hypocritical "shock" as their politicians, eager to seize upon every moral issue. That the much-reelected Rep. Mark Foley, whose own political career is justifiably doomed – since what he did was disgusting and probably illegal, was a homosexual who misused his position to attempt to seduce kids probably won’t rub off on his fellow Republicans – not even on the frail proposition of guilt by association.

Voters from even religiously conservative areas in the past don’t seem to have turned against their politicians who confessed to being gay, even though they were unhappy over that revelation. The gay politicos were usually reelected – whether as mayors, governors, or congressmen.

The Republicans are, in a sense, getting a dose of their own medicine. For years they tried to chew up Democrat Bill Clinton with salacious details of his affair with Monica L., who delivered pizza to the Oval Office, and risked bird flu in the process. Clinton even got fried by being interrogated by Kenneth Starr and a grand jury on worldwide television – what a way for a superpower to embarrass its own President. (Bill clutched a can of Diet Coke all through his TV ordeal, alas, without getting a cent in thank-you for the publicity from Coca Cola in Georgia). For all the sexual brickbats hurled against him, Clinton got reelected with a thumping majority. After all, he balanced the budget – which is something very few Presidents ever do.

In the case of Bob Woodward’s attack, on the other hand, Bush’s Republicans may suffer a bit of damage. The Iraq War is becoming increasingly unpopular – when your young men and women begin coming home by the thousands in body bags and wooden coffins, not just from Iraq but Afghanistan, it becomes painful.

Iraq may not be Vietnam, but on the home front, it is beginning to have somewhat of the same effect on American families.

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In his habitual pontifical style combined with chutzpah, Bob Woodward makes his case against Bush, demonstrating by drawing on prodigious research and hundreds of interviews "how the Bush administration avoided telling the truth about Iraq to the public, to Congress, and often to themselves."

He quotes a May 2006 "secret Pentagon assessment sent to the White House" to wit: "Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year."

The forecast of a more violent Iraq, he contended, contradicted the repeated upbeat statements of President Bush, including one, two days earlier to the report, claiming that America was at a "turning point" in Iraq and that history would mark this year as the time "the forces of terror began their long retreat." In fact, Woodward insisted, only two days after receiving the grim Pentagon assessment, Mr. Bush had told Congress, in a report required by law, that the "appeal and motivation for continued violent action will begin to wane in early 2007."

The book reads, truth to tell, with the fast pace and excitement of an "insider" novel, detailing the intrigues within the White House, such as how White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card tried, with the "indirect support" of other officials, to get Donald Rumsfeld replaced – but Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney refused to junk Rumsfeld.

There are tidbits about Condi Rice, and a fascinating argument on how former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (my former Harvard Dean and professor), "haunted still by the loss in Vietnam" was the most frequent "outside visitor and Iraq adviser to President Bush." Gee, I didn’t know that!

When I last saw my old prof Dr. Kissinger at our I.P.I. Congress in Boston three and a half years ago, I had told him: "Henry, I just bought your latest book on diplomacy."

He grinned broadly and replied in his carefully-cultivated German-accented, deep, basso profundo voice: "Thanks, Max, I need the money."

Really, Henry – who gets paid by the bundle for his advice and consultation sessions – doesn’t need money, nor even recognition. He is an institution. In his old age, which means he’s older than me quite obviously, he retains both wit and the knack of answering every sharp question with a counter-question and a joke. By the time his questioner stops laughing, he will have forgotten his original question – and Dr. Henry, once called Super-Kraut (although he immigrated to Boston as a young Jewish kid), will once again have gotten away with it.

It was Henry who taught us, when we were in his Institute for International Studies, that the best way to parry barbed questions was to tell an anecdote, and infuse it with a bit of humor. His shuttle diplomacy, over the years, may have flopped now and then (with disastrous consequences, but I fondly recall Henry survived every disaster. He would have, if he ever had been faced with it, swum to safety from the sinking of the Titanic).

Indeed, Dubya Bush might dearly wish he had somebody like the unflappable Kissinger around to blame for today’s blunders – but he only has Rumsfeld, the man whom everybody loves to hate and seems to love being hated – to be his ...with apologies, attack dog and shock absorber.

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In any event, I enjoyed Woodward’s book, the portions I managed to speed-read.

His virtues as an investigative reporter are undimmed. He is, as you know, still Asst. Managing Editor of the prestigious The Washington Post (sister publication of NEWSWEEK) and has been a newspaper reporter and editor for 35 years.

However, I must express a caveat about his exposé. He reveals that in researching and reporting for a newspaper series in The Washington Post and his previous two books on Bush’s war decisions, he had interviewed the US President four times – December 2001, August 2002 and finally twice in December 2003.

"The transcripts for the combined seven and a half hours of interviews," he said, "ran hundreds of pages."

Woodward candidly discloses he was never granted an interview again. He honestly points out that his meetings with Bush were during the days when Bush was a popular President – post 9/11, "and later, during the first nine months after the Iraqi invasion. As the war dragged on, as Americans and Iraqis continued to die, and as Bush’s approval ratings dropped dramatically in 2005 and 2006, so did my chances of getting another interview with him."

Perhaps, like the late Senator Gene Magsaysay, the younger brother of Monching Magsaysay, Bush has reverted to the principle of Gene’s formula for politics: "Much talk, much mistakes, less talk, less mistakes – no talk, no mistakes." This may have been ungrammatical, but it proved successful for Genaro Magsaysay, who may have traded on his big brother’s broad-shouldered image as our most-beloved President, but didn’t try to emulate him in the macho department.

For one thing, Gene tried to please newsmen inordinately, if you ask me. When we would ask him what his opinion was on a burning issue of the day, the Senator from Zambales would beam and reply: "Write what you think should be the best opinion, and I will say I said it!"

God bless you, Gene! He went smiling to the end, never offending a soul.

In the case of Bob Woodward’s frustration with never having gotten an interview with President Dubya for the past two years, I trust this did not color his opinions and assessments. Newspapermen, particularly those who’ve attained the stature of great pundits, do not take snubs lightly. On the other hand, record bears out his reputation of being an earnest reporter – so I give him the benefit of the doubt.

Yet, the wise, cynical saying of the Spanish thinker Campoamor tugs at my consciousness: "In nuestro mundo traidor . . . he said. To translate: In this treacherous world, nothing is true or false. It all depends on the color of the crystal (glasses) through which one is looking."

The White House has strongly denied Bob’s State of Denial, particularly the claim that the Bush administration ignored information that could have prevented the attacks on September 11, 2001.

State SecretaryCondoleezzaa Rice, for one, doesn’t remember the alleged July 2001 briefing said to have been given to her by CIA Director Tenet when she was still national security adviser, about an imminent terrorist threat.

"Don’t remember," is, of course, a frequent government rejoinder – both in the USA and in the Philippines.

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AN EMBARRASSING ERRATUM . . . Oops, here I go again. In yesterday’s column, I wrote of a young Ateneo cadet who volunteered to fight in Bataan, despite the fact that he was the only son of a judge and his wife. They gave him, sadly and reluctantly, permission to go – and he came home broken in body, but not in spirit, from his ordeal in the jungles of the war-torn peninsula, the Death March and prison camp. He realized his boyhood vocation of becoming a Jesuit priest, and, indeed, was our high school adviser in elocution and religion. In my haste, I wrote down the wrong name of our hero, a Jesuit professor loved and admired by his students, who died too young – of the illness his wartime sufferings had engendered. That brave young soldier and Jesuit was Father Teddy Arvisu, S.J. Sorry about yesterday’s stupid mistake. His name came to me at midnight, after my column had already been printed.