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Bob Woodward’s latest political Grand Guignol, War, will be available to the general public on October 15. In the meantime, we have reviews by select news organizations that have received advanced copies of the book full of horrific and devilish details.
According to CNN, “Woodward’s new book, which was obtained by CNN ahead of its October 15 release, gives an unvarnished, in-the-room account of key moments as Biden and his national security team navigates international crises, from the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal to confronting Putin before he invaded Ukraine to private battles with Netanyahu.
“Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand participants, War is filled with newly reported details of high-stakes showdowns. The book explores the political and personal wars that Biden has fought during his presidency, including details about his decision to step aside from the 2024 campaign and conversations about his son Hunter Biden’s legal troubles.
CNN provides several details, among them some juicy quotes. We find Biden, “That f-n Putin. Putin is evil. We are dealing with the epitome of evil”; and “Biden said he ‘should never have picked’ Attorney General Merrick Garland during a conversation over his son’s legal troubles; and “Biden criticized former President Barack Obama’s handling of Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, concluding that ‘Barack never took Putin seriously.’”
And, oh yes: “The book, War, also reveals new details about Donald Trump’s private conversations with Putin – and a secret shipment of Covid-19 testing equipment Trump sent to the Russian president for his personal use during the height of the pandemic. Trump has denied those reports.”
Sure, sure -- but denial is a staple of American politics, as Woodward, the coauthor of the book that brought down the Nixon administration, All the President's Men, well knows.
Woodward has run into some difficulties with splashy quotes in other of his books, the horses’ mouths to which the quotes are attributed having denied uttering them. And since lurid book promoting details are attributed to underground sources whose identities cannot be revealed by Woodward, veracity checks are nearly impossible. The identity of Watergate’s “Deep Throat” was self-revealed 31 years after Nixon's resignation and 11 years after the former president’s death.
The quotes in War cited in newspaper accounts, possibly provided to news desks by Woodward’s publisher, are but the horns of the devil who will make his appearance in full on October 15.
Sales, no doubt, will be brisk.
In the meantime, changes in the Middle East war theater have trampled into dust most early-war presumptions.
Presumption number one is that Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu is inspiring a “wider war,” while the gurus who surrendered Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan to the Taliban want only to usher in an era of “peace through negotiations” with Iran and its terrorist proxies: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.
Netanyahu, it turns out, wants to be able to conduct in peace his largely defensive war – by taking the offensive. He is right about Iran, the terrorists, the “wider war,” and the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris-Barack Obama opposition to the premiership of Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s so called “wider war,” even his critics must painfully admit, was “made in Iran.”
Peace negotiations produce many unsettled questions. War produces only one question – who wins? And, as this writer has said many times, the answer to the question “Who wins the war?” has invariably throughout history determined the shape and substance of the peace that follows. Some people on the right side of the political barricades regard Netanyahu as Churchillian. In any case, the Churchill of Israel is determined that Israel will shape the Middle East peace. Netanyahu has now degraded the Iran supported militant terrorists in both Gaza and Lebanon, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader in Iran, is now in hiding.
Biden and Netanyahu have not spoken to each other in seven weeks, but the ice was recently broken in a phone call between the two. The Los Angeles Times puts it this way: “Since the leaders' last call on Aug. 21, Israel has carried out a brazen sabotage and assassination campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the militant group has continued to fire missiles, rockets and drones at Israel.”
And the LA Times mentions Woodward’s upcoming book: “The Biden-Netanyahu conversation took place one day after disclosures from journalist Bob Woodward's new book, War, that Biden has privately made his frustration and distrust of the Israeli leader known. The president privately unleashed a profanity-laden tirade, calling Netanyahu a ‘son of a bitch’ and a ‘bad f— guy, according to the book. In Woodward’s accounting, Biden said he felt that Netanyahu ‘had been lying to him regularly,’ with Netanyahu ‘continuing to say he was going to kill every last member of Hamas.’ Woodward wrote, ‘Biden had told him that was impossible, threatening both privately and publicly to withhold offensive U.S. weapons shipments.’ The White House declined to comment.”
