Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan Slams Bush

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan tells all in his new memoir, including that President Bush often cast the truth aside in favor of relying on an aggressive “political propaganda campaign” in order to to sell the Iraq war to the American people. McClellan writes that the president relied on “propaganda” to sell the public on the Iraq war.

It is reported that Bush’s White House consciously made a “decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed” — at the critical time when the nation was knocking on the door of war. McClellan’s book is titled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.

The manner in which Bush managed the Iraq debacle almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option. In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage.

Scott McClellan
Former White House Press Secretary

Current Bush press secretary Dana Perino issued a statement that was highly critical of their former colleague. She and other White House aides seemed stunned by the revelations in the book.

“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House,” she said. “For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad – this is not the Scott we knew.” The book provoked strong reactions from former staffers as well.

Another former counter-terrorism adviser who also came out with a book critical of administration policy, Richard Clarke, said he could understand McClellan’s thinking, however.

Iraq: A Serious Strategic Blunder

McClellan states that the Iraq war was and is a “serious strategic blunder,” and that “the Iraq war was not necessary”.

His criticisms are a quite harsh assessment from the man who was at that time the loyal public voice of the White House. McClellan admits that some of his own words from the podium in the White House briefing room turned out to be “badly misguided.” But he says he was sincere at the time. “I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be.” He calls the media “complicit enablers” in the White House campaign to manipulate public opinion toward the need for war. He harshly criticizes the press for going easy on the administration in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion.

Bush: “Lack of Inquisitiveness”

Of Bush as a boss, McClellan says he was charming and politically skilled, but unwilling to admit mistakes. He also faults Bush for a “lack of inquisitiveness.” Worse yet, Bush was susceptible to his own spin-doctoring. According to McClellan, Bush “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment.” He also accuses President Bush of not being “open and forthright” about Iraq and of taking a “permanent campaign approach” to governing.

Hurricane Katrina: A Botch Job on Bush’s Watch

The former press secretary also blasted the handling of Hurricane Katrina, saying the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial” after the 2005 disaster. “Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” McClellan wrote.

The Outing of CIA Operative Valerie Plame

The book also addresses the scandal involving the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. McClellan says Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior political adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, weren’t honest with him about their roles in the case. McClellan said he defended Libby and Rove to the press after both men assured him that they weren’t involved in the leak. But testimony from Libby’s trial showed the pair had spoken to reporters about Plame. “I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood,” McClellan wrote.

What Happened:
Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.

On Sale June 1, 2008

They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45

“What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider… the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think… for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about… and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated… by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us…

“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’… must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing… Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

“You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone… you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

“That’s the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

“You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father… could never have imagined.”

Milton Mayer
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (Phoenix Books)

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)

In his memoirs, A World Transformed, written in 1998, George Bush Sr. wrote the following to explain why he didn’t go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War.

“Trying to eliminate Saddam…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible…. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq…. There was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles.

Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish.

Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

A World Transformed, by George Bush Sr.

If only his son could read…. Or understand.

Here’s a great book that every American should read. Hell, they should make it required reading in our schools. It was written by Vincent Bugliosi, the chief prosecutor in thew Charles Manson murder trial and subsequent author of the best selling book Helter Skelter, which chronicled the proceedings of that case.

His new book is called:

The Betrayal of America:
How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President

You can buy it at half.com for very cheap right now

It is not a lengthy book, an easy read, but very informative.

What doom lies ahead when the highest court in the land can get away with High Crimes and Treason? This book is basically an indictment of the 5 extreme-right judges of the Supreme Court who, by taking the actions they did, undermined the basic tenets of the Nation. Screw ‘em, sez I. Let’s get our country back.