There's nothing new - so far - in the McClellan revelations. It all appeared in 2004 in George Friedman's "America's Secret War".

Nor will anything change the Washington culture. In order to govern much of the public must be deceived. Roosevelt certainly did it in the run-up to WWII and I'm sure he didn't event the technique.

Jeff Gannon crops up again on his blog:

What I hear about the book does not sound like the Scott McClellan I knew for two years. I can say without fear of contradiction, that I knew Scott better than any other White House correspondent or Washington reporter.

Just what are you implying, Jeff Gannon. How "well" did you know Scott? Any why?

Allow me to state the obvious.

We don't need Scott McClellan to weep openly about his feckless devotion to his unworthy sponsors. We don't need a 600 page mea culpa from Colin Powell decrying his naivete in choosing to trust Dick Cheney over his own common sense.

What we need are real patriots who are courageous IN REAL TIME. We need Colin Powell to stand up in the United Nations and say, "The case I've been handed for going to war in Iraq is BULLSHIT, and I'm resigning to lead the fight against it.

If one Bush insider had stood up and staged the obvious -- WHAT WE ALL KNOW, AND KNEW THEN -- maybe we could have stopped the present debacle.

Sorry, Scott. Feeling sorry about it now doesn't bring back the life of a single soldier

I see your point, and maybe you're right, in the sense that McClellan's book is another stone pried out of the chink in the house of Bush. Certainly the statements of Jessica Yellin are only coming out in reaction to McClellan's relevations, so in that sense McClellan's book is doing some good.

But I don't think McClellan is doing the administration's critics (and certainly not himself) as much good as it could have had it appeared earlier, or had it contained less "self-servitude". NPR had an interesting clip this morning of Scotty himself criticizing Richard Clarke for not speaking up when he was still national security aide. By giving Bush's dwindling number of defenders this sort of ammunition, he has certainly damaged his own reputation, and doesn't seem to realize it. And it's really really difficult to believe his story that he didn't realize at the time what was going on.

BBpdx--I was just thinking the same thing. The right wing is in quite the tizzy over this. It's funny, really. They're dusting off the "liberal media" stuff in response to a GOP press aide saying that the media was too soft during the run-up to war. I think they do it to convince themselves.

It's hard to process factual information when you're red-faced and angry. They don't want to face the truth. And so they scream.

So I have been browsing the used book store postings thinking I want to read this book, but I don't want to enrich McClellan... An odd combination of thoughts. Anyway, I think we should go more for truth and reconciliation, rather than heaping on more hellfire.

The record should be firmly established so that when the apologists write their self-justifying alternate versions of history, no one will give them any credit at all.

Also, there could be some McClellan sitting on some facts that may be worth waiting for, but if we pile on all the McClellans, we may never see what mystery person has to say.

Brad DeLong pases on the comment of Ezra Klein, who reminds us.

Richard Clarke... broke with the administration when it was powerful and popular. They smeared his name, of course, Implied that he was lying. They asked, "why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had."

Those words, of course, were Scott McClellan's.

Although its always nice to hear that someone agrees with you theres really not much in this book that we didn't already know or believe. The only really interesting thing is the details of the meetings between Karl Rove and Scooter Libby that I'm sure Patrick Fitzgerald would have preferred to hear from Scott McCellan rather than in his book.

The Public Record has great coverage of that part of the story.

http://pubrecord.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73:mcclellan-suggests-plame-cover-up&catid=1:nationworld&Itemid=8

From: Head of State

http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/05/ah-scotty.html

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Ah, Scotty...

From the Post:

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

McClellan includes the charges in a 341-page book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," that delivers a harsh look at the White House and the man he served for close to a decade. He describes Bush as demonstrating a "lack of inquisitiveness," says the White House operated in "permanent campaign" mode, and admits to having been deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.>

It would be utterly inconsistent to praise McClellan for his revelations, now that he needed to find something sensational from his anxiously subservient, painful-to-watch tenure as Press Secretary, which at best could only evoke sympathy for his agonized predicament. It might have helped in eliciting such praise if these revelations had emerge at some point between the end of his tenure and the beginnings of promotion for the book.

Ironically, in now falling to the likely demands of his current masters for something to add spice and sales power to an otherwise agonizing episode, one might posit that he is repeating the same pattern that occurred during his work in the Administration. Nevertheless, this is a man who has demonstrated beyond doubt his characteristic fear of censure. That he comes forward with these accusations, despite putative motive, is of considerable note.

The claims that McClellan makes have the benefit of being supported by numerous contemporary and highly confirming reports (Woodward, Suskind et al). Now, the fact that even McClellan, the truest of camp followers, endorses them, gives them an additional bottom line power--the fearful, sweaty, anxious party line stalwart, who was also among those closest to the action, now confirms what all but the most deluded now must know.

McClellan, like other Press Secretaries before him, could have downplayed, soft pedaled, or diffused these critiques--as they did, in their books, which also had sales imperatives. He does not. Instead, he emphasizes and confirms the critical through-line narrative--a war, driven and unvetted by a lack of necessary curiosity regarding likely effects on our nation, our citizens and the world; a sales campaign yoked to this poorly vetted effort in the most cynical ("one doesn't unveil new products in August") fashion, and, overall, a brutal narrowness of vision, combined with the excitedly combative anti-intellectualism, masked by a shallow pose of ideological self-certainty (i.e. half-blindness) that characterized this administration.

Now, we are seeing the counterattack, the essential message being that they are "puzzled" that this does not "seem to be the Scott" they knew.

Presumably, this "Et tu, Scotty?" translates as an attack on his unwillingness to continue to faithfully toe the party line, in the face of significant evidence to the contrary--to maintain the fantasied walls of the court dominion--a change to be welcomed.

His willingness to express, in print, Bush's tendency to convince himself of what he wanted to believe, and this Administration's embrace of secrecy is a genuinely noble and a brave act.

But, ah, Scotty. The wreckage.

Cite:

Head of State

http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/05/ah-scotty.html

Steve, don't get me wrong, I want McClellan to dish it *all* out now, for the historical record.

But to my way of thinking he is one example among many one could cite of the ethically impoverished ideas of public service too many who occupy high places in government hold.

He might have, oh, done some homework about Bush's character and past record before he decided to flack for him full time, 24/7, the truth be damned. Of course he could have resigned at any number of points along the way and in that way possibly have had some useful impact on events as they were unfolding at the time.

But no. Like so many others, he chose to cash in, to write the memoir whose main story line is that he was mainly a victim of wicked others. And so now he is likely to become a wealthier, maybe even a wealthy, man.

I heard John Feinstein, a very good sports reporter and author, recently discussing his new book, this one on baseball. He noted his wife's reaction to Feinstein's open yearnings, shared by so many authors of course, of winding up on the bestseller list. His wife's response was to the effects of "You'd *want* your name to be on that list of other people?"

I note Doug Feith's book is selling like gangbusters. I saw someone in the bookstore the other day hauling away four copies to the cash register. I managed to keep from physically gagging.

The scumbuckets, the aiders and abetters, cash in. So what else is new? The hope is that sooner rather than later they mutually discredit one another, their disgraceful legacy, and the movement and political party they embody.

When McClellan pledges all income from this endeavor I should be quite happy to entertain the notion we "need" men like him. More than 4000 dead Americans, score of thousands of dead Iraqis cry out from the grave for justice. McClellan was the willing mouthpiece of an administration filled with war criminals. We might spare him the gallows for his treachery, but his puppetmasters deserve no such leniency.

I think you are giving McClellan too much credit Steve. First and foremost he is trying to make a buck off of it so in that sense his motives aren't that altruistic. Second is he is just first, probably in a long line of former members of the administration, to do a "tell all" book about how the administration operated...there will be many more I am guessing. He is just trying to get a jump on everybody else, lol. The push back from friends of the administration was very predictable but also not as effective as I've seen in past efforts. On a purely "political" level I think this will play well for the D's in November...just reinforces why the R's shouldn't be running things.

It appears to me that the inside-the-beltway media considers McClellan one of the inside-the-beltway "credible" people. That, and his blast at the media themselves for letting him and the Bush White House as a whole get away with lying to them has at least gotten a reaction.

My bet is that within a week the media will be ignoring everything he has said just as they have for the last eight years. Paul O'Niell said much the same thing better about six years ago, but no one "that matters" listened then, either.

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Two Texas egos reachin' for the short hairs in a hissin' contest?

Unequal Democracy, sounds like how the rich get richer and the poor gets screwed. How about calling it the monopolized democracy? online bingo

Exactly.

In Powell's case, he headed the agency with the most competent and most consistently correct intelligence agency, and he chose instead to lick Cheney's ass. He made a career of licking ass and sweeping dirt under rugs for his benefactors, beginning with the My Lai massacre.

Though I appreciate that McClellan is a credible voice confirming the venality of the Cheney administration, he seems to be bit tardy in "discovering a higher loyalty".

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This doesn't change what has happened and that Scott McClellan was part of the Bush machine -- but the fight over this president's legacy and awareness of the crimes this administration propagated really do matter. Thanks,.........!!!!
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Obama is tentatively planning a trip to Iraq this summer to assess what's happening on the ground and politically with the Maleki govt. Independent reporting show some success but at what cost? Still the return on investment will probably be rated as 'poor' and as often reflected in the polls, was not the wisest choice to begin with.

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