Recommended reading

One of the things that I had hoped to accomplish, and so far have managed to do, is to get more reading done. I've always been a fan of reading - I had almost all of the Hardy Boys books when I was younger - and in the last 5 years I've been reading more political and historical books.

I just finished Bob Woodward's new book called The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008 that just recently came out. Its a long book, but if history and politics is your thing, or if you're interested in the decision-making behind events here in Iraq, I highly recommend picking it up. Two things that I took away from the book that I definitely don't like is the way President Bush runs his National Security Council (NSC) and his delegation of Iraq-related decision-making to his National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley. I always thought that the NSC was a place of debate among advisors to the president, which is depicted quite well in the movie "Thirteen Days" about the Cuban missile crisis. The Secretaries of State and Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff all brought dissenting views to President Kennedy about how to handle the crisis, and the president eventually sided with his brother Bobby on the best course of action. At least he had dissenting views and opinions to choose from.

The current president has given Hadley two roles, both of which are incredibly startling to me. Firstly, to get the NSC to fall in line with the presidents view prior to attending NSC briefings so that the presidents time isnt wasted with seemingly useless arguing. Secondly, and perhaps even more shockingly, the president has delegated decision-making regarding the Iraq war to his National Security Advisor. At first I thought to myself that perhaps Mr. Woodward was painting that picture to put the president in a bad light, but there are direct quotes from the president to Mr. Woodward essentially saying "Yep. He knows what I want so I trust him to make the decisions for me." Politics and party affiliation aside, I personally hope that we never again have a president that is so narrow-minded on his views to everything that he surrounds himself with "yes men" and depends on someone not even confirmed to his position by the American people (the president appoints the National Security Advisor directly) to run the most important event of any president's term: war.