Jackson Free Press

The bombshell of the day is former Bush press secretary Scott McClelland's new book, which is very frank about Bush selling the war in Iraq with "lies." AP reports:

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, McClellan writes in the book entitled "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." The way Bush managed the Iraq issue "almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option," the book contends, according to accounts Wednesday in The New York Times and Washington Post. "In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage," McClellan writes.

The White House had no immediate comment on the book.

In a surprisingly harsh assessment from the man who was at that time the loyal public voice of the White House, McClellan called the Iraq war a "serious strategic blunder."
"The Iraq war was not necessary," he concludes.

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.

Previous Commentsshow

Bush should personally apologize to every family who lost loved ones in his personal war. Good for McClelland for trying to make his own place in history right.

DonnaLadd

May 28 2008

I'm told that McClellan also mentions one of the sobering facts about the run up to the Iraq War--the failure of the press to aggressively question the rationale for going to war there in the first place. A lot of it was due to the trust many of us put into the President after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. Afraid of being labeled unpatriotic the drive-by media really fell down on their job in questioning the push to move in on Iraq.

Jeff Lucas

May 28 2008

Absolutely. Our consciences are clear, at least. But that doesn't bring back a single soldier that this administration put in harm's way. I mean, how frickin' obvious was it to a thinking person that this war was a sham!?! Sigh.

DonnaLadd

May 28 2008

It was insane how dissent was being quelched. It was so awful that I read international papers online. Isn't it ironic how we were told that we're trying to spread freedom and democracy to Iraq, yet some here don't want dissenters to speak out?

golden eagle

May 28 2008

it is ironic. too ironic.

Izzy

May 28 2008

Well, it's always the people who dare to speak up about government corruption and stupidity who get slammed first—by the very powerful people they're taking on and their blind followers who don't want to think they're being lied to, or who haven't taken the time to be informed enough to know the difference. It always come out in the wash, though. You just need to follow Todd's mantra: Do the right thing and wait. What goes around does come around. It's just too bad that American complacency allows so much to happen that doesn't have to. There are Americans (not to mention Iraqi citizens) dead because not enough Americans wanted to face the truth that Bush was lying to us. Surely to God there are lessons to be learned here.

DonnaLadd

May 28 2008

I'm glad McClellan is "singing like a songbird," as my mom would say. I used to get irritated when I heard him speak to the press because I felt like he was just regurgitating a bunch of rehearsed lies. When he left the post, I suspected that maybe he finally woke up.

LatashaWillis

May 28 2008

I used to get irritated listening to him mainly because he was a boring spokesperson. Look, all of them (WH Press Secs.) are glorified PR agents paid to spin the administration's agenda (including lie if they can tell it with a straight face) and put the best face on a bad situation. Having a few years to think about all of the lying and covering he had to do for Bush, Cheney and Rove must made him bitter and angry. His belated conscience felt now was the time to expose the administration by revealing what most of us already knew intuitively, and get seriously paid in the process.

Jeff Lucas

May 28 2008

It has to be very hard being a spokesperson because you have to parrot everything your boss tells you to say, even if you personally think it's BS. But, of course, what McClellan has said is no surprise to me, as I've done my research on what this war was truly about a long time ago. I mean, how frickin' obvious was it to a thinking person that this war was a sham!?! Sigh. I'm afraid that it was obvious to many people during the run-up to the war. I harken back to your column from three years ago, "Fear Is A Four-Letter Word". Whenever you can play on the fears of people, you can get them to believe almost anything you say. They suddenly lose rationality and want to see more heavy-handedness passed down, regardless of the cost. The Bush administration used fear to its absolute best (or worst, depending on how you see it). They manipulated the American people's fears to create a selfish goal of their own. They relied on a soft media not questioning them and on their mouthpieces to quelch any kind of dissent that was sure to occur. Most important, they relied on the American people not doing their own research and taking what they say on face value. I used to think it then and I think it now: with the vast array of information available at the tip of our fingers, Americans are the most ignorant and uninformed people on the face of the planet. People did not research the fact that Saddam Hussein had no mass collection of WMDs; that he had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and that bin Laden wanted him dead as bad as the U.S. did; that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis (at one point, most people thought they were from Iraq). The world tried to warn us that this war was unnecessary, but our arrogance got in the way. We were so ticked at the French not supporting us that our leaders tried to get us to eat "freedom fries" and "freedom toast", despite the fact that neither product is of French nature. Heck, there was even a petition to send the Statue of Liberty back to France! Because we live in a microwave society in which we get our news through 10-second sound bites and whatever is regurgitated on talk radio, it was easy for the American people to be duped (again) by our leaders to lead us into a war that we had no business being in. If only Americans would've paid a visit to the Project For A New American Century website (or if the softball media would've made it know that such a site existed), they would've known that their leaders were trying to set the stage for American colonialism in the Middle East. Only then would they've known what their government was up and then would they've questioned if this is a worthy goal. I know I rambled quite a bit there, so carry on.

golden eagle

May 28 2008