As the American economy sinks ever-deeper into the budget hole dug by the reckless pursuits of the Bush administration — caused in no small part by so-called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” this week’s news that Iraq is now poised to be sitting on a $79 billion budget surplus by year’s end is understandably raising many eyebrows. Many Americans must be hoping for an Operation American Freedom to free our own nation from the burdensome chains of this war that seems to have no end.

A startling new book released today and reviewed on Politico offers perhaps the most disturbing account yet of the gross malfeasance that a growing parade of critics and ex-insiders alike say seems to permeate the current executive branch of our government. “The Way of the World,” written by author and Pulitzer Prize-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, goes far beyond various past accounts that have claimed the White House in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom intentionally ignored any intelligence or evidence that interfered with its own predetermined war mindset. If only they had stopped there.