Slate's Bryan Curtis condenses the new Woodward book, identifying the best bits. If I weren't knee-deep in Nietzche, Weber and others right now, I'd have time to read the whole thing, but this will do.

Curtis ends his list of the best snippets with a potpourri of extra miscellaneous items at the end. Some are quite juicy:

Page 11: Bush as glutton: At a Pentagon briefing, staffers lay out peppermint candy for each attendee. Bush scarfs down his peppermint, and then begins to eye Bill Cohen's treat, which the former secretary gladly relinquishes. Gen. Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, "noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over."

Page 112: On a Mideast trip, Lynne Cheney lunches with an emir's wife. When do the children here in Bahrain begin school? she asks. The emir's wife reminds Cheney that she's in Qatar.

Page 184: The TelePrompTer text of Bush's climactic speech to the United Nations somehow omits his call for resolutions against the Iraqi regime. Bush remembers and ad-libs the line.

Page 186: Bush aide Nick Calio declares his intention to vitiate a congressional filibuster. Bush says, "Nicky, what the fuck are you talking about, vitiate?"

(...)

Page 244: Woodward meets Bush at a White House Christmas party in 2002. Though it's months before the prez would declare war on Iraq, Bush suggests that a sequel to Woodward's previous best seller, Bush at War, should be in the works. "Maybe it will be called More Bush at War," Bush says. Laura Bush responds, "Let's hope not."

Bush as a candy-loving, small-vocabularly warmonger? Yeah, that's about right! And *ouch* for Lynne Cheney. Good thing she didn't ask "Do you have Arabs too?"