This made me laugh....imagine that

[pam]

LOL, gettin a conscience is better late than never I guess




MSNBC News Services
updated 1 hour, 31 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The White House blasted former press secretary Scott McClellan Wednesday, claiming that his new book about President Bush and the Iraq war shows McClellan is a "disgruntled" former employee.

"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement. "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."

In his memoir entitled "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan writes that the Bush White House made "a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed" — a time when the nation was on the brink of war.

Ex-collegues respond
Perino said Bush is aware of McClellan's claims: "The book, as reported by the press, has been described to the President. I do not expect a comment from him on it — he has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers."

The way Bush managed the Iraq issue, McClellan writes, "almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option," adding, "In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage."


The book provoked strong reactions from former staffers as well.

"For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional," Fran Townsend, former head of the White House-based counterterrorism office, told CNN.

 
Said former top aide Karl Rove, in an interview with Fox News Channel, "If he had these moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them. And frankly I don't remember him speaking up about these things. I don't remember a single word."

Richard Clarke, another former counterterrorism adviser who also came out with a book critical of administration policy, said he could understand McClellan's thinking, however. Clarke told CNN that he, too, was harshly criticized, saying that "I can show you the tire tracks."

'A grave mistake'
McClellan called the Iraq war a "serious strategic blunder," a surprisingly harsh assessment from the man who was at that time the loyal public voice of the White House who had followed Bush to Washington from Texas.

"The Iraq war was not necessary," he concludes. "Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake."

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.

"When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the president and unable to comment," he said. "But I promised reporters and the public that I would someday tell the whole story of what I knew."

'Complicit enablers'
The former press secretary — the second of four so far in Bush's presidency — explained his dramatic shift from loyal defender to fierce critic as a difficult act of personal contrition, a way, he wrote, to learn from his mistakes, be true to his Christian faith and become a better person.

"I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be," McClellan writes. He also blames the media whose questions he fielded, calling them "complicit enablers" in the White House campaign to manipulate public opinion toward the need for war.

McClellan said 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 said.

McClellan is scheduled to appear on NBC's TODAY, Thursday, for his first interview on the book.

The book is scheduled to go on sale June 1. Quotes from the book were first reported Tuesday night by the Web site Politico, which said it found McClellan's memoir on sale early at a bookstore.


McClellan draws a portrait of Bush as possessing "personal charm, wit and enormous political skill." He said Bush's record as Texas governor and "disarming personality" inspired him to follow him and that his administration early on possessed "seeds of greatness."

But, McClellan said, Bush's unwillingness to admit mistakes and belief in his own spin contributed to turning the president into "not quite the leader I once imagined him to be." He faults Bush for a "lack of inquisitiveness" and "a degree of self-deception that may be psychologically necessary to justify the tactics needed to win the political game."

Bush "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment," McClellan writes.

[Tobina+1]

I don't know anything about this situation or the book (and probably never care to), but... this statement made me laugh...

"Bush "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment," McClellan writes."

Sounds like maybe McClellan did the same thing... he supported the president and the company that paid his bills for so long... and now he needed to find another way to pay his bills, so he decided to write a book to bash them. 

[pam]

Yeah he's a schmuck but so are George Bush and Dick Cheney. Their hands ain't clean.