TWO BOOKS

ANOTHER book of second and third-hand gossip and unsourced allegation is all that was needed to push the US presidential election campaign beyond the pale of a reasonable political fight. Naturally, Kitty Kelly was on hand to provide just such a book in The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, published this week in the United States. The author of Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star and Jackie Oh! knows how to dish the dirt even if she does no first-hand research of her own; basically she rehashes stories that have already been denied or disproved or forgotten and uses phrases such as “Even as a married man, George had a whispered past...”, leaving it to the reader to guess what the whisperers said. It is highly unlikely that Kitty Kelly's book will harm George W Bush; indeed, if it has any effect, it may be to generate sympathy for him on the grounds that Ms Kelly has never been a reliable biographical witness and is not likely to have become one now.
ON the other hand, another new book, Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib should certainly cause some anxiety in Washington. Mr Hersh is one of America's most respected investigative journalists on political and security matters. In Chain of Command he uses detailed first-hand evidence to allege that, in a decision that led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally authorised a secret unit to torture suspected terrorists. He also claims that this authorisation was endorsed by President Bush; if that allegation is correct it would explain why Mr Rumsfeld remains in his job despite a widespread belief that he should have been out of it by now.