ORONO (AP) – Journalist Bob Woodward says President Bush feels a strong idealistic “duty” to spread democracy and to end tyranny. But the administration’s idealism and zeal have overshadowed the stark realities in Iraq, he concluded.

As a result, the Bush administration has been unwilling to change course in Iraq, Woodward said during the William S. Cohen Lecture at the University of Maine.

“The president and vice president are out there telling everybody that the war is going well time and time again,” Woodward said.

Woodward rose to fame in the early 1970s as half of the two-person reporting team at The Washington Post that uncovered the Watergate scandal. He and colleague Carl Bernstein won the Pulitzer Prize for their investigative work.

Since then, Woodward has written more than a dozen books including his latest, “State of Denial,” a stinging critique of the administration’s handling of the Iraq war.

At one point during Friday evening’s lecture, Woodward asked members of the audience to raise their hands if they have made sacrifices as a result of the Iraq war.

Only a handful in the crowd raised their hands.

“That is disturbing, and it’s not the people’s fault. It’s the leadership’s fault,” he said. “We are not a nation at war. We are a military at war. Most people are disconnected and numb.”

William Cohen, a former senator and secretary of defense during the Clinton administration, was also critical of the handling of the war in Iraq.

The Clinton administration had no plans to invade unless Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or began shooting down American warplanes, Cohen said.If there had been an invasion, Clinton would have sent more troops, he said.

“We did not think he posed an imminent threat,” Cohen said.

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-10-06-07 1002EDT

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