US:President George Bush spends much of his time in tears, often crying "on God's shoulder" as he reads reports of casualties in Iraq, according to a new book that portrays the administration as beset by internal rivalries.
Robert Draper, a national correspondent for GQ magazine, who first wrote about Mr Bush in 1998, when he was governor of Texas, received an unprecedented level of co-operation from the White House and conducted six interviews with the president for Dead Certain: the Presidency of George W Bush.
The book, published yesterday, has already provoked a sharp response from Paul Bremer, Mr Bush's former viceroy in Iraq.
Mr Bremer has contradicted the president's account of the decision to disband the Iraqi army.
Mr Bush suggested to Mr Draper that he had been surprised by the decision to abandon the original plan to keep the army together.
"The policy had been to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Mr Bush said.
When asked how he had reacted when he learned that the policy was being reversed, Mr Bush replied, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'"
Mr Bremer yesterday released an exchange of letters showing that the president knew in advance of the decision to disband the army and had praised the envoy's handling of the matter.
In the book, Mr Bush defends his decision to invade Iraq but suggests that his public optimism is designed, in part, to motivate others - the US military, the American public and Iraq's political leaders.
"I fully understand that the enemy watches me, the Iraqis are watching me, the troops watch me, and the people watch me. The other thing is that you can't fake it.
"You have to believe it. And I believe it. I believe we'll succeed," he says.
The war has taken its emotional toll on the president, however. He insists he never submits to self-pity and says Laura Bush frequently reminds him the invasion was his decision, but he admits to frequent bouts of tears.
"I've got God's shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot. I do a lot of crying in this job. I'll bet I've shed more tears than you can count, as president. I'll shed some tomorrow," he says.
Mr Bush claims to ignore opinion polls and to think strategically, telling Mr Draper that he is increasingly focused on Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"You've gotta think, think BIG. The Iranian issue . . . is the strategic threat right now facing a generation of Americans, because Iran is promoting an extreme form of religion that is competing with another extreme form of religion. Iran's a destabilising force. And instability in that part of the world has deeply adverse consequences, like energy falling in the hands of extremist people that would use it to blackmail the West.
"And to couple all of that with a nuclear weapon, then you've got a dangerous situation," he says.
For a leader who prides himself on his decisiveness and a stickler for punctuality, Mr Bush appears to run an unruly ship at the White House.
He has a somewhat eccentric management style, taking an informal poll among advisers last year about whether to fire former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Mr Draper documents the president's fanatical drive for physical fitness and the lengths to which secret service agents go to find suitable trails for his mountain-biking.
"They would descend on a town a couple of days before his arrival, focusing on secluded hotels away from downtown, properties that they could fully take over and ones with the kinds of trails the boss would find challenging."
Which "track unit" agents would be available and how to get the bike out there - here is a whole new layer of logistical complications. No one questions the importance of the biking. However, at least one of his top aides would question its primacy: "What kind of male," this adviser would wonder aloud, "obsesses over his bike-riding time, other than Lance Armstrong or a 12-year-old boy?" he writes.
Mr Bush appears unsure about how he will spend his time after he leaves the White House, talking vaguely about setting up a "freedom institute" in Texas, dividing his time between Dallas and his estate in Crawford, and making money on the lecture circuit.
"I don't know what my dad gets. But it's more than 50, 75 . . . Clinton's making a lot of money," he says.
Despite Mr Clinton's new-found wealth, Mr Bush was unimpressed when he saw his predecessor last year lingering in the corridors of the United Nations building in New York, chatting idly to foreign leaders.
"Six years from now, you're not gonna see ME hanging out in the lobby of the UN," Mr Bush says.