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<p>CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Al-Qaida's No. 2 has issued a new video tape calling on Muslims to unite in jihad, or holy war, and support the Islamist movement in Iraq, a U.S.-based intelligence monitoring group said Wednesday.</p> <p>Ayman al-Zawahri is seen in the one-hour and 35 minutes tape dressed in white and addressing topics from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian territories and Egypt, said the U.S.-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors al-Qaida messages.</p>

It is rare to have books exploring the legacy of a presidential administration still in its first term. It is rarer still to have the number of insider accounts that Americans have access to in 2004. “These books appear to be painting history before our eyes,” said Charlotte Abbott, news editor of Publishers Weekly. “No one in the industry of publishing can remember a time since Watergate when so many political books have come out and the public has been interested – and a lot of those Watergate titles came out after.” One of the reporters who first exposed Watergate,...

<p>Among the disclosures in Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," is that Secretary of State Colin Powell had reservations about going to war in Iraq.</p> <p>This comes as no great surprise, though we do wonder what President Bush thinks of a Cabinet officer who uses a book to distance himself from the boss on an issue that is central to his re-election campaign. The last ranking official who used Mr. Woodward to pad his own reputation at the expense of the President was budget director Richard Darman as George H.W. Bush was running for re-election. If Mr. Powell disagreed so passionately about Iraq, the more honorable path would have been to resign -- before the war.</p>

Bob Woodward's new book "Plan of Attack" tells the story of White House speechwriter Michael Gerson, a former reporter for U.S. News & World Report, who accompanied President Bush to West Point, where Bush announced a signal change in American foreign policy: a call for more pre-emptive actions. Afterward, Gerson told a reporter the speech would be quoted for years to come. The reporter replied, "There's no news in that speech. You don't use the word Iraq." "Gerson was stunned," Woodward wrote. That episode tells you in a nutshell how American newspapers and political pundits have fallen down on the...

A funny thing has happened to the accusation that President Bush "lied" or "misled" Americans about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," blows the charge away, not that you've read about that in many other places. Instead, we've all heard mostly about the book's report that Colin Powell wasn't keen on going to war. This we already knew. The real news is what Mr. Woodward tells us about the President's state of mind concerning Iraq's weapons when he ordered American troops into battle: His Director of Central Intelligence had assured him that the...

A funny thing has happened to the accusation that President Bush "lied" or "misled" Americans about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," blows the charge away, not that you've read about that in many other places. Instead, we've all heard mostly about the book's report that Colin Powell wasn't keen on going to war. This we already knew. The real news is what Mr. Woodward tells us about the President's state of mind concerning Iraq's weapons when he ordered American troops into battle: His Director of Central Intelligence had assured him that the...

<p>A funny thing has happened to the accusation that President Bush "lied" or "misled" Americans about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," blows the charge away, not that you've read about that in many other places.</p>

'Plan of Attack': a new front on the war over sources. Woodward talked to dozens but only three are given direct attribution By David Folkenflik Sun Staff Originally published April 25, 2004 Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, is a pretty important guy. You learn that when you read journalist Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack, an investigation of the Bush administration's extensive preparations to invade Iraq. You learn details about Card, that he worked as a lobbyist for General Motors and that his wife is a Methodist minister. You even encounter descriptions of Card's emotions and...

<p>Talk radio and cable news have eaten up hours in chewing over Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack," debating its insider look at the decision-making before the war in Iraq - who said what, and when.</p> <p>Less energy has been spent on a more basic issue: Can a book that reconstructs events without naming its sources be trusted as real history?</p>

The books come and go, but the plot is always the same--vanity, duplicity, flattery, and guile.WASHINGTON WENT THROUGH one of its Woodward spasms last week. It unwound in the usual manner. First came the faint, premonitory rumors, gaining force as the publishing date approached, about what might be in Bob Woodward's latest book; then the suggestive news reports dribbled out over the premiere weekend, until one news organization or another boldly broke the publisher's embargo, followed by stories about the story that broke the embargo. At last on Sunday there was the television kickoff on 60 Minutes, in which Woodward...

Bob Woodward's new book is less an expose than an inkblot test. It's remarkable how people can see the same words on the same pages - and come away with entirely different pictures. In an election year, it's to be expected that members of the opposition party would thumb eagerly through a book like "Plan of Attack," looking for stones to throw at the incumbent president. More troubling is that so many media figures also are viewing the book through a partisan prism - headlining whatever casts the president in an unfavorable light, conspicuously ignoring those chapters that challenge the...

Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack, is like a play in which the most important scenes occur offstage. In a "Note to Readers," Woodward writes: The aim of this book is to provide the first detailed, behind-the-scenes account of how and why President George W. Bush, his war council and allies decided to launch a preemptive war in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. Yet this is precisely what the book does not provide. Woodward never tells us why Bush decided to go to war. Nor does he pin down just when he made his decision. His opening anecdote—and, as...

At issue was a passage in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," an account published this week of Bush's decision making about the war, quoting Rumsfeld as telling Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, in January 2003 that he could "take that to the bank" that the invasion would happen. The comment came in a key moment in the run-up to the war, when Rumsfeld and other officials were briefing Bandar on a military plan to attack and invade Iraq, and pointing to a top-secret map that showed how the war plan would unfold. The book reports that the...

<p>WASHINGTON — Bob Woodward (search) has been all over the news since he released his book this week on the run-up to the Iraq war, but so far everyone involved in the story says Woodward's flair for drama may have gotten in the way of the facts.</p>

"My buddy" John Kerry, Bob Woodward political cartoon.  Apr. 21, 2004... Woodward’s new book "Plan of Attack"  is gathering steam on the question he raised that Saudi Arabia would lower gas prices close to the election to help Bush win. Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry tried to capitalize on the allegation, calling it "disgusting if true." Jay Leno, on the Tonight Show, asked the question of how Kerry thought he would get elected President advocating for high gas prices. The Saudis have released an announcement that they are not manipulating the market to affect the elections outcome. The White...

<p>April 21, 2004 -- ON Monday's "Nightline," ABC's Terry Moran related how the White House likes Bob Woodward's new book, since "It portrays a president who's deeply engaged, who is challenging his subordinates, who is very concerned about Iraqi civilians and most importantly politically for the administration, a president who did not distort the pre-war intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, but who was given this intelligence from the CIA."</p>

Bob Woodward is back with yet another book, "Plan of Attack." That title made me first think the work was a manual on unseating George W. Bush. Discussing his book on CBS's "60 Minutes," Mr. Woodward said, in essence, that Dick Cheney ran the Iraq war and talked President Bush into it, though President Bush was never crazy about it; the CIA botched everything again; the one man in the administration we can trust, Colin Powell, was kept out of the loop; God talks to President Bush and President Bush listens; and President Bush is an idiot who disdains the...

<p>April 21, 2004 -- BOB Woodward has misled the nation! In the run-up to the publication of his new book, "Plan of Attack," he sexed up his own intelligence findings! Quick, convene a panel at the Columbia Journalism School!</p> <p>How did Woodward deceive the audience of "60 Minutes" and the entire press corps? He made people believe "Plan of Attack" rivaled Richard Clarke's bestseller in Bush-bashing - by pulling out a few isolated sentences from the book's endless 465 pages to make it appear as though "Plan" were a startling indictment of the war in Iraq.</p>

<p>This week, Sen. John Kerry accused the administration of playing global politics with gas prices. Under scrutiny, that scandalous charge raises more questions about Mr. Kerry than President Bush.</p> <p>The source of the allegations was Bob Woodward's recently published book, "Plan of Attack." Mr. Woodward wrote that the Saudis planed "to fine-tune oil prices to prime the economy in 2004." Mr. Kerry seized upon the text to accuse Mr. Bush of making a "secret deal" with the Saudis to reduce oil prices in time for the election.</p>

<p>Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, responding to a new book about the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq, said yesterday he was closely involved with planning for the attack and had been as "committed as anyone else" to toppling the government of Saddam Hussein.</p>