Listen to President George W. Bush on any given day and you’ll probably hear that Iraq is a little messy, but nothing that a little elbow grease and Republican determination couldn’t handle. Listen to the Post’s correspondents and, well, things seem a little less rosy.

To date four of the newspaper’s writers have produced books on Iraq, none of which Bush will likely be taking down to Crawford anytime soon. Bob Woodward’s State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III paints the administration as one marching towards war much like a seven-year-old tries to pin the tail on a donkey — without a whole lot of guidance. Former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran similarly piles on the criticism, describing an American occupation force as secluded behind the security barriers of the Green Zone in Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone. Senior Pentagon correspondent Thomas E. Ricks pretty much locks himself out of the Defense Department with his scathing rebuke of the war’s planning and execution in Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, while Arabic-speaking reporter Anthony Shadid looks at the war’s many misadventures from the point of view of the Iraqi people in Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War.

Not that the Bush administration ever much liked the Post — well, except maybe when the paper editorialized in favor of the war — but these books surely won’t bode well for their subscription rates within the Pentagon and the White House. Of course, there’s always the Washington Times, right?