| WORSE THAN WATERGATE The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush John Dean New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2004 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| ISBN 0-316-00023-X | 253pp. | HC | $22.95 | |
| Page 6: | "After much purported moral anguish and agonizing, he claimed there would be 'more than sixty' cell lines available for this life-saving federally funded research." |
| I would say "potentially life-saving", since to my knowledge stem cells have yet to save anyone's life, or even suggest in clinical trials that they might. Their medical benefits remain purely theoretical. |
| Page 43: | "Had he vetted himself as he was other candidates for vice president, Cheney would likely have vetoed himself because of his medical condition, if not because of his financial and business dealings." |
| A typo, perhaps: S/B "as he has". |
| Pages 43-44: | "Under Cheney, Halliburton did business with Iraq, Iran, Libya, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Azerbaijan — to name a few of the countries that use its oil to exploit its people, countries notorious for violating human rights." |
| Error of number: S/B "that use their oil to exploit their people". |
| Page 69: | "Nixon physically controlled the White House press crops by herding them into the small press room, which they still occupy." |
| A typo for sure: S/B "the White House press corps". |
| Page 192: | "It is not that the media need to uncover the misconduct, although they often do; more often they only need to report the information developed by others, from whistle-blowers to government investigators, and go with it. And when so reporting, find it unacceptable if not reprehensible." |
| It's a nit, but I would join these two sentences: S/B "it — and when so reporting, find it unacceptable if not reprehensible." |
| Page 192: | "At present, the media are ever expanding." |
| Bravo! All too rarely is "the media" treated as a plural subject. |
| Page 196: | "The line between matters foreign and domestic has long been indistinguishable, and the exercise of presidential power has likewise conflated." |
| Grammar — "conflate" is a transitive verb; it needs an object. The phrase S/B "has likewise conflated them". (Leave aside the syntactical point that, if matters foreign and domestic are already indistinguishable, it seems impossible to further conflate them.) |
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