The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008

As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In his fourth book on President George W. Bush, Bob Woodward takes readers deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial backchannels, distrust and determination within the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq. With unparalled initimacy and detail, this gripping account of a president at war describes a period of distress and uncertainty within the U.S. government from 2006 through mid-2008." Inside cover comments.
"On June 13, 2006, halfway through the sixth year of his presidency and more than three years into the Iraq War, George W. Bush stood on a veranda of the American embassy compound in Baghdad. He had flown through the night for a surprise visit to the new Iraqi prime minister. With so much at stake in Iraq, where success or failure had become the core of his legacy, Bush had been anxious to meet the man he had, in many ways, been waiting for since
the invasion. It was now evening. A hazy sunset had descended over the sweltering, violent capital. The president stepped aside for a private conversation with Army General George W. Casey Jr., the 57 year-old commander of the 150,000 U.S. forces in the country. A 5-foot-8, four-star general with wire-rim glasses, closely cropped graying hair and a soft voice, Casey had been the commander in Iraq for two years. As American military units rotated in and out, rarely serving more than a year, Casey had remained the one constant, seeing it all, trying to understandóand endóthis maddening war in this maddening land. Recently, there had been some positive news in Iraq. A week earlier, U.S. forces had killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man Osama bin Laden had declared the "Prince of al Qaeda in Iraq" and the terrorist organization's in-country operational commander. And the previous month, after three elections and months of delay, Nouri al-Maliki finally had taken office as the country's first permanent prime minister."