The Washington Post's Bob Woodward specializes in reporting how the sausage gets made in the nation's capital, and as you might guess, it's not a pretty picture.

This book brings to a close his long-winded, four-volume chronicle of how, after 9/11, the Bush administration launched first the war in Afghanistan, then the war in Iraq. By 2006, as the bodies piled up in Baghdad and throughout Iraq, administration officials grudgingly and belatedly admitted the wheels had come off the wagon.

What to do about a losing war precipitated an internal fight pitting those who favored the then-policy of drawing down U.S. troop levels in order to push the Iraqis into taking more responsibility against an emerging view that favored the opposite -- more American troops.

We know who won that fight. The surge, as it came to be called (credit Charles Robb, former U.S. senator from Virginia and Iraq Study Group member with first using the phrase), sent 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq with the mission of bolstering basic security.

The book ends more or less at the present moment, with security gains indisputable but, in the words of surge proponent Gen. David Petraeus, "fragile and reversible."

Woodward's forte, as a reporter, is the interview. Most of the information in this book, he tells us, came from lengthy sit-downs with 150 people, "including the president's national security team, senior deputies and other key players responsible for the intelligence, diplomacy and military operations in the Iraq War."

He also had a lengthy on-the-record interview with President Bush (as he's done for the previous three war books).

Why do these powerful people talk to Woodward?

Because they know that his status as doyen of Washington press insiders means his account will become the first draft of history, and they want that version to be theirs. They're helped by the stenographic nature of Woodward's writing.

While he poses hard questions, his books often read as though he's simply typed up his tape-recorded interviews, with minimal effort to shape the material into an intellectually coherent, briskly moving narrative.

Yes, the book delivers lots of fly-on-the-wall information, but it moves at a glacial pace, and reading it can be a slog for all but the most ardent political junkies.

At bottom, Woodward isn't interested in passing judgment on the surge, although he clearly believes the dire situation in 2006 called for a dramatic change in direction.

Rather, he's interested in the process, in how grave decisions get made in the highest circles of government. Here he has harsh things to say about President Bush's leadership style.

"For at least seven months during 2006, President Bush had known that the existing strategy in Iraq was not working," Woodward writes. "No matter how he tried to dress it up with positive language and sugarcoat it to the American public, he was losing the war. But somehow he set no deadlines, demanded no hurry, avoided any direct confrontation with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, [Joint Chiefs chairman] General Pace, or General Casey about the need for change."

Later he disparages Bush's oft-expressed trust in his "gut" and his "instincts." "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player," Bush once told him.

"For years, time and again, President Bush has displayed impatience, bravado and unsettling personal certainty about his decisions," Woodward writes.

"The result has too often been impulsiveness and carelessness and, perhaps most troubling, a delayed reaction to realities and advice that run counter to his gut."