"third person passive once removed"

I recently finished reading Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack. The book's main themes will be familiar to pretty much anyone who ever entertained doubts about the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq: senior figures hell-bent on invasion, casting about for anything that might suggest Saddam Hussein could be a 9/11-like threat to the U.S., & then in early 2004 struggling to deny mounting evidence that Hussein was no such thing--or to change the subject. In this sense, Woodward's book simply provides more & different perspectives on a narrative whose outlines we've already received from the likes of Hans Blix, Joseph Wilson, Richard Clarke, & other critics.

Beyond simple corroboration, though, what's particularly interesting about Plan of Attack are the things that the author gets members of the administration to say--in many cases on the record:

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