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Oh Snap! McClellan TUBs Bush & Co.

Puppycow

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Puppycow
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Politico has an exclusive preview of Scott McClellan's new book, in which McClellan TUBs (throws under bus) his former employer. I guess this is the literal definition of a sell-out, because this doesn't really put McClellan himself in a very good light, but does put a lot of money in his pocket. It seems to amount to an admission that the administration's harshest critics were spot-on in their criticisms. The information itself is not so new, but the source being Bush's former official mouthpiece is what makes it more eyebrow-raising.

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
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From what I've seen, he seems to deflect blame from the President and place it on the staff (Rove, Chaney, etc.). Even when he says Bush didn't know something, it was because staffers hid it from him or mislead him about it.
 
It would have been really awesome if he, while still the press secretary, at a press conference, said, "oh screw it, I'm going to tell the truth" and then proceeded to say what he's said in the book.
 
jimtron said:
It would have been really awesome if he, while still the press secretary, at a press conference, said, "oh screw it, I'm going to tell the truth" and then proceeded to say what he's said in the book.
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Yeah, but that wouldn't have made him any money.
 
I really can't knock the "rats" for fleeing the "burning ship", except that they were, and still are hypocrites that are just exercising their constitutional right to cover their butts.

It's the piles of money they'll get for the books, speaking engagements, and media punditry that follows that really irks me.

Charlie (they were only "following orders") Monoxide
 
McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.
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Er...Did we really need a new book to tell us this? It's not like they were subtle about it or anything.
 
Well well well. Good ole Simple Scottie finally underscores what so many of us had been bellowing, starting with the early days of the "president" SlobberSlurryStupidFace administration.

Including the enabling of a war fever, a war fervor, by the "American press". I'm thinking now of the smug, smiling turdball Rupert Murdoch (owner of myspace, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, NY Post, London Times, etc.) being so secure in his power and arrogance, that he admitted to shaping Fox News to enable the Iraq War. And why? Because Rupie wanted to, that's why. The monsters are inside the perimeter.

Expect many more books like Simple Scottie's to appear. And anyone who thought that the Bushboy Administration would be handled more kindly by "them history books" has quite another think coming. Ain't gonna happen.
 
ConspiRaider said:
Well well well. Good ole Simple Scottie finally underscores what so many of us had been bellowing, starting with the early days of the "president" SlobberSlurryStupidFace administration.

Including the enabling of a war fever, a war fervor, by the "American press". I'm thinking now of the smug, smiling turdball Rupert Murdoch (owner of myspace, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, NY Post, London Times, etc.) being so secure in his power and arrogance, that he admitted to shaping Fox News to enable the Iraq War. And why? Because Rupie wanted to, that's why. The monsters are inside the perimeter.

Expect many more books like Simple Scottie's to appear. And anyone who thought that the Bushboy Administration would be handled more kindly by "them history books" has quite another think coming. Ain't gonna happen.
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Why is American press in quotes? Scottie's castigation of the media as complicit in Bush 43's Iraq War plans did not isolate FOX News as you are irresistibly compelled to do.

In fact, the Irish side of MSNBC's bug wits duo Matthews and Olbermann, was placing the blame on MSNBC's own David Gregory as well as the New York Times.
 
Don't forget the template - snitches are only bad when their first name is Linda, last name Tripp.

Just because money is the prime motivation for publishing this story, doesn't mean there isn't some truth to it. Good luck separating fact from fiction though. It might be a sincere interpretation of events as experienced by McClellan, but that's doesn't indicate accuracy, it's just one persons perspective but interesting nonetheless.

The book certainly feeds into the Rove & Cheney are co-Darth Vader jive. The book will sell well to the MoveOn shower.
 
All these books are sort of answering the question what kind of people are better to hire? - loyal servants who follow your lead, or independently thinking people with quality of character.
 
Cicero said:
Why is American press in quotes? Scottie's castigation of the media as complicit in Bush 43's Iraq War plans did not isolate FOX News as you are irresistibly compelled to do.
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Are you kidding? Are you actually suggesting that there really is an "American press" in the journalistic sense? What? Where have you been? When giant corporations take over the media, there is no longer a press. There is simply corporate public relations announcements, masquerading as "news". What the hell are Microsoft, General Electric, Disney and Viacom doing in the "news" business? They know what, exactly, about journalistic integrity?
 
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Now the recriminations and return fire from Bushland. :popcorn1

Oh, and this is what McClellan said about Richard Clarke in 2004 when McClellan was press secretary and Clark came out with a book critical of Bush:

"Why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?" McClellan said. "This is 1 1/2 years after he left the administration. . . . He is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book, and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book."
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What's interesting to me is that the primary allegations made by McClelland are precisely those made by Seymour Hersh in his 2004 book, Chain Of Command.

Also echoed by all the other Neocon and administration types who have written tell-all books over the last few years... Most of them saying what amounts to "It wasn't MY fault".
 
Kopji said:
All these books are sort of answering the question what kind of people are better to hire? - loyal servants who follow your lead, or independently thinking people with quality of character.
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McClellan is 0 for 2.
 
ConspiRaider said:
Are you kidding? Are you actually suggesting that there really is an "American press" in the journalistic sense? What? Where have you been? When giant corporations take over the media, there is no longer a press. There is simply corporate public relations announcements, masquerading as "news". What the hell are Microsoft, General Electric, Disney and Viacom doing in the "news" business? They know what, exactly, about journalistic integrity?
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Ever since the New York Times has had Pinch Sulzberger at the helm the Grey Lady has become famous for "all the news that's fibbed to print." It seems Sulzberger knows as much about journalistic integrity as your corporations.

Not to mention the BBC manages to be a beacon of liberal bias without corporate influences or a grandiloquent publisher.
 
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kallsop said:
Just because money is the prime motivation for publishing this story....
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This is one of those tired arguments that needs to be retired by all sides. Every author, be it someone writing a 20 volume history of the Sassanid Empire or making a "Humor in uniform" submission to Readers Digest hopes to get paid for their effort, but their prime motivation for writing is they hope to produce something others want to read and find entertaining or informative.
 
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