Years as a top aide and this is the only dirt? I doubt it. I want to know what meds Laura is on to get that uniquely Stepford wife look. I want details on the Paraguay retirement ranch, how much coke Bush does or if he likes 12 year old boys. The business deals with the Saudi's and if Daddy Bush is dissappointed at his son's failures in the Illuminati plan to destroy America.

as you say, it's odd, and one is inclined to think it's sincere, because he gets /nothing/ out of it.

He'll make a little money selling the book, but apart from that, I agree. BushCo is nothing /but/ vengeance.

Glenn Greenwald
Gives a good look at McClellan, and the so called liberal press.

"There are two types of folk music:
quiet folk music and loud folk music.
I play both."

Dave Alvin

Anybody know? Other than selling the book, that is...

by Arianna Huffington

Perhaps the most damning revelation regarding Iraq is McClellan's assertion that the real reason Bush wanted to invade Iraq was the "opportunity to create a legacy of greatness" by transforming the Middle East into a land of peace and brotherhood. Over 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers sacrificed for a neo-con wet dream of democratic dominoes across the region. How chilling is that?

McClellan also tosses in a pinch of Oedipal subtext: "The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office. And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating."

was able to make the comment: "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on" similarly suggesting that WMD was not the true driving cassis belli and no eyebrows were raised by the Bush insiders that I recall.

Excellent article. McClellan tipped us off a few months ago. Now he's giving us the Full Monty. It's ugly and not suitable for family affairs but this is great stuff. I'd like him to write more. Then he could work for the ACLU.

I wrote about McClellan's book promo in Nov. 2007 here & here - Scott McClellan - Where are Headlines? I suggested that it took about a third grade education to understand what this meant:

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

It's still true. Bush told McClellan to lie. What will corporate media and Congress do with this. Absolutely nothing, just like they did nothing with the Comey revelations about the grotesque hospital visit by Card and Gnozo, just like they did nothing about all the rest.

Nevertheless, this is one more statement of truth about the most corrupt, incompetent administration in our history.

all I could think of was that maybe prayers such as Rev Wright to the Kansas House of Reps,back in early AD1996 do get answered, sometimes when we least expect them, and in ways that can be misunderstood.

It's all good!

what do you mean, no benefit? first, he gets to absolve himself in a very public way. he gets to punish the ones who ejected him from life in the public eye. he gets a book deal, well more than his 15 minutes, probably a movie deal coming down the pike.

there's plenty of benefit and that's what pisses me off. i want these treasonous bastards who didn't have the guts to stand up for the country when they should have to be unable to profit from their tell-alls once it's too late. how many now, feith? tenet? this clown? there are so many more.

we need to pass a law like the one that prevents murderers from profiting from their misdeeds. these people are criminals. that he is rewarded for his complicity in any way offends me deeply.

Washington Post, By Dan Eggen & Debbi Wilgoren, May 29

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan today strongly defended his critical new book on the Bush administration, saying he became "disillusioned" as he realized he was a pawn in a larger political game. [Press Secretaries, pawns? Say it ain't so!]

McClellan, who has been harshly condemned as a turncoat by some of his closest friends and former colleagues, said in an interview on NBC's "Today Show" that the book was intended to illustrate how a presidential candidate who vowed to change the culture of Washington failed to do so once he was elected. [Yes, Dubya tried real hard to bring morality back to the Whitehouse].

Instead, McClellan says, Bush stayed in "permanent campaign culture" and allowed [you mean "required", don't you?] his staff to use misleading and incomplete information to "sell" the Iraq war to the American people.

McClellan told "Today" he hoped his message would resonate during the current presidential campaign season, when the major candidates are again emphasizing their desire to change the way Washington operates. [You have learned well, grasshopper. Now, would you define "resonate"?]

"The White House would prefer I not speak out openly and honestly about my experiences, but I believe there is a larger purpose [yes - now the larger purpose is being served]," McClellan said in his first interview since the book's contents were reported earlier this week. "I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington and change it. [Simpleton!] Then we got to Washington, and I think we got caught up in playing the Washington game the way it is being played today."

[We played the game so viciously, so well, that it took on a life of its own. We were no longer controlling the game - it was controlling us. The entire executive branch was just a pawn, caught in the heat of the game. Yeah, that's the ticket.]

Keith Olbermann will interview Scott McClellan tonight.

From: McClatchy

Until now, we've resisted the temptation to post on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, which accuses the Bush White House of launching a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

Why? It's not news. At least not to some of us who've covered the story from the start.

(Click here, here and here to get just a taste of what we mean).

Second, we find it a wee bit preposterous -- and we are being diplomatic here -- that a man who slavishly - no, robotically! -- defended President Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere is trying to "set the record straight" (and sell a few books) five years and more after the invasion, with U.S. troops still bravely fighting and dying to stabilize that country.

But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business.

much more with links

George W. Bush and the Press Secretary He Deserves
May 29/08

Like a career pug who understood his limitations, Scott McClellan never bothered with showy footwork or agile rhetoric during his years in the White House briefing room.

As the press secretary to President George W. Bush, he would just stand there, implacable, waiting for the question to exhaust itself. Then, always in the same monotonous cadence, he would dispense the day's talking points, never straying, never freelancing, never really engaging on substance. Some new criticism of the war in Iraq? McClellan would dismiss it as misguided, perhaps tacitly questioning the questioner's patriotism. A reporter asking why no weapons of mass destruction had been found? McClellan would refuse to "play the blame game."

His appointment as press secretary was, clearly, a measure of Bush's contempt for the national press corps. The message was: Here is what we have to say, we aren't going to debate anything, print what you like, and don't think for a moment this relationship is an exercise in accountability.

In his new book, "What Happened", McClellan says this: "Bush regarded the press as a necessary evil or nuisance. Andy Card [the former chief of staff] once remarked that he viewed the Washington media as just another 'special interest' that the White House had to deal with, much like lobbyists or trade associations."

If the press had any useful role at all, writes McClellan, it was as intermediaries in a propaganda campaign, designed to sell the public on the Bush agenda in general and the war in particular. (It was) a meal of lies

McClellan, like Bush, is an evangelical Christian and he seems to have had an epiphany since he stepped down two years ago. In the book's opening pages, he quotes the biblical injunction that the truth shall set you free and says contrition is the path to that truth. Contritely, he is now repudiating his old masters.

The Bush White House, McClellan says, operated in "permanent campaign" mode, shading the truth, discrediting critics and manipulating public opinion. He was, he writes, fed lies and encouraged to pass them on.

Now, none of this is much of a surprise. As McClellan notes in his preface, "deception in politics is nothing new." But his explanation of why the Bush White House was so successful, for many years at least, at bullying and bamboozling the national media has an embarrassing ring of truth. "Through it all," he writes, "the media would serve as complicit enablers."

The real-life reporters he dealt with, he says, certainly didn't resemble the Bush view of them as left-wing activists "actively working to sabotage his administration and weakening its link to the citizenry." If anything, says McClellan, "the national press corps was probably too deferential (his emphasis) to the White House, particularly in regard to the decision over whether to go to war in Iraq."

In that case, he concludes, "the 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation. It if had, the country would have been better served."

Well. That is certainly unpleasant reading for any journalist with pretensions of covering events without fear or favour. No one likes to be lumped in as one of Vladimir Lenin's "useful idiots."

But McClellan is probably right about the compliance of the media — and not just the White House reporters he faced regularly.

As thinkers who study such things have long concluded, Western reporters might fancy themselves the watchdogs of the establishment, but many of them are probably better described as guard dogs, vigilantly protecting the privileges and prerogatives of power.

MORE at Canadian Broadcasting Corp

In today's Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan becomes a defender of Scott McClellan, and says he has no defenders, left or right.

I find her viewpoint, especially coming from the right, rather refreshing, whereas here on the Agonist, a knee-jerk leftist thrashing of McClellan, even still, seems de rigeur.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121209803493730619.html

articulated better what I found different about Noonan's response.

I also appreciate the need for a history written by other nations' historians. Recall Chou En-Lai response to Nixon's question of what Chou thought of the results of the US Civil War: "It's too early to tell."

The more depressing news today, though, is how much the networks covered the conservative response and tit-for-tat of McClellans' loyalty and veracity, rather than the substance of McClellan's writing. We'll have another chance to hear from McClellan on Monday on Chris Matthews show.