When I first heard about Scott McClellan's charges that the Bush administration had lied and deceived Americans during the months and years leading up to the war, I burst into tears of happiness. No, nothing he wrote was new. And even if he still seems like a sleazy public relations expert in obfuscation, an insider was finally telling the truth, in one book.

My story is different from those who felt seriously constrained about raising questions about the administration's obvious lies. I worked as an editorial writer at The San Francisco Chronicle, where a liberal editorial board raised serious objections to the war. And yet, in the years following 9/11, I felt editorial restraints that never allowed us to tell the whole truth about the lies and deception that led to America's most catastrophic foreign policy disaster.

Read more »