The Washington Post gives the cliffnotes version of the The War Within – the fourth book by Bob Woodward, a Post associate editor, on the Bush administration at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the Post’s Steven Luxenberg, Woodward reveals that the President has set up an operation to spy on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Also, Woodward credits new covert CIA techniques to kill insurgents as the primary reason violence in Iraq has decreased this year.

The spying revelation is particularly eyebrow raising since Bush tells Woodward how strong his relationship is with Maliki. The War Within will be released Monday.

Woodward’s last book, State of Denial, gave a crisp account of how deluded Bush administration officials were about both Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction and what it would take to rebuild Iraq. The book may even have played a small role in the Democratic takeover of Congress. Now, though, neither political party is associating itself with the Bush administration’s Middle East misadventures.-MB

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