State of Denial is Woodward’s third book on President Bush’s refusal to reveal the truth about the Iraq War. The President believed that "...a higher authority was looking after him and guiding him" in his decision to go to war, while some of his administrative officials still claim that "...we had not started the Iraq War."
Colin Powell, Bush’s first secretary of state, had second thoughts about the war because of the complexity of governing Iraq afterwards. Powell also knew that the President, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice had no real background in wars. He was even sure "...they’ve never been in a bar fight."
Bob Woodward had many interviews with Don Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, though he rarely learned anything new about our current defense policy. But it was obvious that Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice did not get along. Rumsfeld hated to have information from Iraq go to someone else in the administration before it came to him.
Rumsfeld also lacked interest in a daily body count of the American soldiers killed in Iraq. The President, however, thought them important and often asked questions like "They killed three of ours. How many did we kill of them?" It was as though Bush’s "Plan for Victory" depended on which country lost the least soldiers. A friend once told Powell that what the President says in effect is "...we’ve got to press on in honor of the memory of those who have fallen. Another way to say that is we’ve got to have more men fall to honor the memories of those who have already fallen."
After Saddam Hussein lost power, many Iraqis lived "without water or sewage hook-ups but would have satellite dishes on their roof." Also nearly 80 percent of the Iraq people voted in the January 2005 election, in spite of daily insurgency attacks or American troops breaking down people’s doors without translators who spoke Arabic. Woodward quoted one man in a Rumsfeld briefing as saying, "Iraq for the first three years suffered the equivalent of a 9/11 attack each week." A former Iraq military officer protesting the American occupation once predicted that "All of us will become suicide bombers."
Republican Senator Hagel once said in regards to the Iraq War, "The White House is completely disconnected from reality." And this is the basic theme of Woodward’s State of Denial.
The President is aware that many people think the United States is "creating more problems than we’re solving." But he favors the idea that since diplomacy might show weakness, victory at any price in his "preventive war" is essential.State of Denial was published in 2006.