Can anyone else make sense of this? The spin on Woodward's book is getting so ridiculous I don't know what's going on. 2 CNN links:
Powell: We were instructed to talk to Woodward
Woodward, White House, Saudis: No election deal on oil
Is Woodward a team player or not? I can't tell. The spin (torque) on all this is getting incomprehensible. From what I can tell, Woodward appears to be denying the claim
made in his own book that the House of Saud was attempting to influence the American election on behalf of the House of Bush. Or something.
Powell is trying to say that he and Cheney get along just fine; Woodward says he stands by the account in his book. To my knowledge, no one's followed up on asking Franks about his reaction to being ordered to draw up Iraq plans. There's a link from Bush's campaign site to the Amazon page for Plan of Attack (why?).
Two more strange things. We get this gem from the first link (re the $700M):
While some Democrats in Congress called for a full accounting, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett disputed Woodward's contention that the money might have been illegally diverted.
"The letter of the law was followed in this case, as we have in every case spending taxpayers' dollars," he told CNN's "Inside Politics."
The letter of the law, sure. How about the spirit?
And this from the second link:
The ambassador, a longtime friend of the Bush family, was asked by King Monday if he wanted to see Bush re-elected.
"We always want any president who is in office to be re-elected, Larry, but that is the American choice. This is not our call. This is the American people's call," Bandar said.
"We always want any president who is in office to be re-elected"? Does that actually mean anything at all?
I don't really have any new insight to offer, I'm just baffled at this point.