McClellan's tell all is not warm & fuzzy

[chequita guevara]

IIRC, she had some integrity, cuz she resigned over how the Bush Administration was treating the EPA and the environment.

[rah]

Actually the funniest part of that post is

“As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided.”

yes he never knew a thing.
They were all bad but I was pure.

[DaShi]

And so the typical republican character assassination of those who point out their mistakes begins.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
IIRC, she had some integrity, cuz she resigned over how the Bush Administration was treating the EPA and the environment.

That would appear to remove her from the broad "thrall" category, dontcha think?

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DaShi
And so the typical republican character assassination of those who point out their mistakes begins.

Oh please! It's so obvious. This guy is slime. That doesn't excuse Bush & Co. at all, but this fellow is no hero. Those who refused to defend this administration - those who had the courage to resign & speak out AT THE TIME are deserving of respect. I spit on this guy.

-Arrian

[DaShi]

I don't understand the "oh please" comment.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Q Cubed

Hot Coffee gets the third degree, gets plastered all over the news;

Doesn't that just show the idiocy of raving rightwing bloggers like Michelle Malkin? OMG a commercial for iced coffee shows a woman wearing a high fashion scarf so clearly she supports terrorism!

[Dinner]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
IIRC, she had some integrity, cuz she resigned over how the Bush Administration was treating the EPA and the environment.

Oh, she bent over and took it up the rear several times before she finally got sick of the corruption and political interference. To her credit she eventually resigned rather then continue the farce though it seems a bit to little, to late just like Colin Powell.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by rah
yes he never knew a thing.
They were all bad but I was pure.

Feith has made the same ludocriss claim that "it's everyone else's fault but mine!"

[Wezil]

Rats jumping from the sinking ship. Rats none the less.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Oerdin

Feith has made the same ludocriss claim that "it's everyone else's fault but mine!"

They need to die. Either by judicial means or by an angry public stringing them up from lamp posts. Only when those in power fear the people is there any prospect of justice.

[Dinner]

Bush a deluded man, writes former aide

THE US President, George Bush, "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment" and has engaged in "self-deception" to justify his political ends, a former White House press secretary has said in a memoir about his years in the West Wing.

Scott McClellan writes that the decision to invade Iraq was a "serious strategic blunder", sold to Americans with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by Mr Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war".

"No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the [Iraq] war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact," McClellan writes in the preface. "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

And yet, in his view, it was not the biggest mistake the Bush White House made. That, he says, was "a decision to turn away from candour and honesty when those qualities were most needed".

McClellan's book, What Happened: Inside The Bush White House And Washington's Culture of Deception, to be published on Monday, is the first negative account by a member of the tight circle of Texans around Mr Bush. McClellan, 40, went to work for Mr Bush when the President was governor of Texas and he was the White House press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006.

McClellan writes that White House officials deceived him about the Administration's involvement in the leaking of the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame. He says he did not know for almost two years that his statements from the press room that Karl Rove and Lewis Libby were not involved in the leak were a lie.

"Neither, I believe, did President Bush," he writes. "He, too, had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth - including Rove, Libby and, possibly, Vice-President Cheney - allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie."

McClellan is harsh about the Administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, saying it "spent most of the first week in a state of denial". A theme in the book is that the White House suffered from a "permanent campaign" mentality, and that policy decisions were interwoven with politics.

McClellan stops short of saying Mr Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq. But in a chapter titled "Selling the War," he alleges the Administration repeatedly shaded the truth and Mr Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option".

McClellan does not exempt himself from failings -"I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be" - and calls the media "complicit enablers" in the White House's "carefully orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval" in the march to the Iraq war.

The New York Times, The Washington Post

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bush-a-deluded-man-says-former-aide/2008/05/28/1211654119163.html

I don't think anyone still actually believes Bush's claim that anyone who tells the truth about his administration is "disgruntled".

McClellan issues this disclaimer about Bush: "I do not believe he or his White House deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people."

McClellan draws a portrait of Bush as possessing "personal charm, wit and enormous political skill." He says Bush's administration early on possessed "seeds of greatness."

Something else was downplayed as well, McClellan says: any discussion of "the possible unpleasant consequences of war _ casualties, economic effects, geopolitical risks, diplomatic repercussions."

In Bush's second term, as news from Iraq grew worse, McClellan says the president was "insulated from the reality of events on the ground and consequently began falling into the trap of believing his own spin."

McClellan explains his dramatic shift from defender to critic as a difficult act of personal contrition, a way, to learn from his mistakes, be true to his Christian faith and become a better person. He says he started the book to explain his role in the CIA leak case, in which some of his own words turned out to be what he called "badly misguided," though sincere at the time

McClellan says Bush loyalists will no doubt continue to think the administration's decisions have been correct and its unpopularity undeserved. "I've become genuinely convinced otherwise," he says

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/28/white-house-responds-to-s_n_103918.html

[Berzerker]

Scottie will be on Olbermann this Thursday night (tomorrow)

[dannubis]

Originally posted by rah
yes he never knew a thing.
They were all bad but I was pure.

So... what are you saying here...

He should have remained silent because he was part of a gang of liars ?

[rah]

I'm saying that I don't believe he was ignorant of what was going on so he has to consider himself part of the problem. I always find it interesting that people like this don't speak up right away (some say out of loyalty) but as soon as it's time make money off of it, yes it was a scandal of huge proportions so buy my book and read all about it. Yes, some of the things he states have the ring of truth about them, but they would sound a lot more credible if he admitted that he knew something about what was going on at the time. If the man was that stupid that he didn't realize it, the credibility of what he says later is quite suspect.

But I haven't read everything so I'll reserve some judgement but on the surface I'm not going to lap it all up as truth from an insider.