Investigative reporter-cum-whore* Bob Woodward dances with Wolfowitzes for six years and finally figures out that Bush's Iraq War is a clusterfuck.

And how does George Will respond to Woodward's new book, State of Denial? Here's a hint: it's in the book's title.

...it is largely just a glimpse of government, disheartening as that fact may be to those who regard government as a glistening scalpel for administering social transformation.

Bush stopped searching for America's #1 enemy to start a soon-spiraling war in an unrelated country, and lied about and mismanaged it at every step. Whose bad is it? Big government, of course. If only we could elect some Republicans, it'll all be better.

...almost any administration, carefully scrutinized, looks much like a teaspoon of pond water viewed under a microscope -- a teeming, disorderly maelstrom of sometimes rival life forms....

This is the story of Bush's life: creative grading on the curve, which must be a möebius strip or something, because I can't see what sort of relativism could scrape his administration from the bottom of the barrel.

"State of Denial" will take a toll on government collegiality and the candor of its deliberations. It is based on astonishing indiscretions -- current and past officials making private memos and conversations public for motives that cannot be pure.

Damn you, Clinton and your scorch-and-burn politics!

Ah, but here is the pièce-de-résistance:

The book actually includes one heartening story that should enhance Rumsfeld's reputation. On Veterans Day 2005, the president traveled to a Pennsylvania Army depot to deliver a speech announcing the new military policy for Iraq, the policy of "clear, hold and build." Woodward says Rumsfeld, having read the speech, called Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, a half-hour before Bush was to deliver it, and said, "Take that out." Card replied that the three words were the centerpiece of the speech, not to mention the war strategy. Rumsfeld replied, "Clear, we're doing. It's up to the Iraqis to hold. And the State Department's got to work with somebody on the build."

At last, a division of labor that uses the U.S. military only for properly military purposes and assigns responsibilities in a way that will force Iraq's government to grow up.

It's new Pottery Barn Rules, baby. Go in, smash the shit out of everything and demand that somebody else clean it up. Finally someone has the courage to ask the Iraqis who started this war, "What the hell were you thinking?"

As is his wont, Will concludes by throwing a bone to the reality-based crowd:

"Where's the leader?" Bush, according to Woodward, has exclaimed in dismay about the Iraqi government's dithering. "Where's George Washington? Where's Thomas Jefferson? Where's John Adams, for crying out loud?" For a president to ask that question about Iraq, that tribal stew, is enough to cause one to ask it about the United States.

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* Hey, that's Latin for "with," you pig