The book reveals that while President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney insist there is no comparison between Iraq and the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state during the Nixon administration, has become a regular adviser to the President. Mr Kissinger has argued that the Vietnam War was lost because of a lack of political will. He confirmed at the weekend that he had private meetings with Mr Bush — "just me and the President".

Some of the Administration's conservative supporters would find that revelation surprising given that they considered Mr Kissinger to have been too soft on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The 82-year-old Mr Kissinger is quoted as telling Mr Bush that the US could not afford to lose in Iraq and that "victory over the insurgency" was the only meaningful way out. The publishers of State of Denial rushed almost a million copies of the book to bookshops at the weekend, pushing the publication date forward as reports of some of its charges started to appear in newspapers and television news reports late last week.

It is believed that a team of White House officials have been combing through the book to prepare a rebuttal, which Administration officials will roll out this week, as Woodward begins appearances on talk shows and current affairs programs to promote the book. Publication could not have come at a worse time for the Administration and the Republican Party, with mid-term elections just over a month away. Party strategists are concerned that if the war is the main campaign issue, Republican control of Congress will almost certainly be lost.

The 500-page book has no smoking gun that proves, for instance, that the Administration cooked the intelligence to justify the war. But given Woodward's celebrity status — which means the book is already a bestseller — and the fact that his previous two books on the Administration were considered favourable to the White House, it will be hard for officials to suggest that he is just another liberal journalist who cannot be believed. Some books in recent months, including Fiasco, by the Washington Post's Pentagon reporter, have revealed how the Bush White House ignored advice from senior military officers and State Department officials that more troops were needed to defeat the Iraqi insurgency. Those warnings came within weeks of Mr Bush declaring victory. State of Denial confirms this and goes further, revealing how Mr Bush has never tried to question the officials who issued these warnings. Instead, he relies on advice from senior commanders who, according to Woodward, are loath to tell him the hard truths.

Mr Bush emerges as a man who not only lacks intellectual curiosity but is untroubled by self-doubt, a man who constantly tells his aides that as commander-in-chief his job is to exude confidence in his decisions. He is, according to Woodward, a man of deep faith, who prays regularly for guidance and believes his prayers are answered. There may not be a truly major revelation in the book — the fact that the then secretary of state, Colin Powell, and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could not stand each other is not new — but that Condoleezza Rice urged Mr Bush to sack Mr Rumsfeld was not known.

Woodward suggests that several Administration officials, including Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff until March this year, urged Mr Bush to sack Mr Rumsfeld, as did Laura Bush. The White House has emphatically denied this. The book reveals that Mr Bush's parents have become increasingly concerned about the war. At one stage, his mother, Barbara, spoke to a former Democratic senator David Boren who had worked closely with her husband at the CIA in the 1970s, and asked him to be candid. "Are we right to be worried about this Iraq thing?" she asked. "Yes, very worried," he said. — "Do you think it's a mistake?" — "Yes, ma'am. I think it's a huge mistake if we go in … " "Well, his father is certainly worried, and is losing sleep over it. He's up at night worried." — "Why doesn't he talk to him?" — "He doesn't think he should unless he's asked."

Woodward suggests that Mr Bush never asked his father for advice, and has not talked to him at any length about Iraq since the war started. Woodward's description of the relationship of Mr Bush with his father suggested that the President may love his father, but does not respect him much as a politician.

At one stage, according to Woodward, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain was asked whether Mr Bush had ever asked him for his views on Iraq. "No, no, he hasn't," Senator McCain said. "As a matter of fact, he's not intellectually curious. But one of the things he did say one time was, 'I don't want to be like my father. I want to be like Ronald Reagan'." There are some minor but interesting revelations. Mr Bush and his senior adviser, Karl Rove, for instance, enjoy fart jokes, which they sometimes swap in the middle of Oval Office meetings. Mr Rove, when bored, plays with a battery-powered "Redneck Horn", which can be attached to a car dashboard.

When you press a button, it rattles off such obscenities as: "What race are you in, shithead" and "Put the cell phone down, dickhead". Mr Bush, Woodward implies, found the toy amusing.