When excerpts of State of Denial were released last week by television's CBS News, the White House dismissed the book as 'cotton candy' that 'melts on contact,' then launched a serious campaign to debunk it.
Mindful of looming congressional elections on November 7, the White House over the weekend released a document - Five Key Myths in Bob Woodward's Book - to challenge the author, who writes of how US President George W Bush intentionally misled the American public about the war in Iraq.
The book contradicts Bush's optimism over the war through a succession of damaging intelligence reports, many of them secret, which Woodward obtained using his sources in and outside government.
In May, for example, Bush declared that 'freedom gained a firm foothold in the Middle East' through Iraq, and that 'the forces of terror began their long retreat.' Yet around the same time, the top US military leaders - the Joint Chiefs of Staff - warned the White House that 2007 would see a sustained and perhaps even increased 'level of violence through the next year,' according to Woodward's book.
The May 24 document, Woodward writes, said more than 100 people a day were being killed in attacks on civilians and on US-led and Iraqi forces.
'There was a vast difference between what the White House and Pentagon knew about the situation in Iraq and what they were saying publicly,' Woodward wrote in an excerpt published Sunday in the newspaper where he has written for more than 30 years, The Washington Post.
Woodward's book is one of a spate of critical new releases about Iraq hitting store shelves just before the November elections, when Bush's centre-right Republicans stand to lose seats and possibly control of one or both chambers of Congress amid growing disaffection with the Iraq war.
But the Woodward book carries special significance to the American public.
The Pulitzer Prize winner is an icon of American journalism who helped bring down president Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 to avoid impeachment over his coverup of the Watergate burglaries.
Woodward has continued covering Washington politics and writing books, some quite controversial. In his two previous books on the Bush White House, he gained considerable administration access and delivered analyses that were seen in some quarters as justifying some of the president's controversial decisions about terrorism and war.
But in State of Denial, Woodward delivers an extremely pessimistic outlook about Bush's gravest decision: the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In particular, Woodward raised major questions about US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's conduct of the war.
General John Abizaid, who warned in August of the threat of civil war in Iraq, is quoted by two sources whom Woodward names as saying in 2005 that Rumsfeld 'doesn't have any credibility any more' for a victory strategy in Iraq.
Both first lady Laura Bush and White House chief of staff Andrew Card tried to persuade the president to fire Rumsfeld, Woodward writes.
The White House on Saturday denied that Laura Bush had pushed for Rumsfeld to be sacked. Card has also denied leading such a campaign, saying discussions of cabinet changes took place in a 'broader context.'
Woodward attributes a sizeable role in Bush's Iraq policy to Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who still has influence at the White House and repeatedly summons the ghost of Vietnam and the US withdrawal there.
As recently as last year, Kissinger wrote that 'victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy' from Iraq. Kissinger even resurrected a memo he once wrote to Nixon warning against leaving Vietnam: 'Withdrawal of US troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more US troops come home, the more will be demanded.'
Some of Woodward's book is already known to the public - such as the Rumsfeld and Bush decision to send 150,000 troops into Iraq, against the advice of US Central Command's request for three times that many.
Early mistakes by Paul Bremer, the postwar Iraq administrator who dismissed the Iraqi army and barred tens of thousands of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party members from government jobs, also come under fire in the book.
Another vignette illustrates what Woodward says is the manipulated picture of Iraq where the facts on the ground are so unclear that even Bush's closest confidants don't know what to believe.
Then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, shortly before becoming secretary of state, sent her own person to Iraq for 'ground truth, a full detailed report from someone she trusted,' Woodward writes.
That emissary, Philip Zelikow, came back in February 2005 with a report - quoted by Woodward - that Iraq 'remains a failed state shadowed by constant violence and undergoing revolutionary political change.'
