twentyshots
28 May 2008, 06:12 AM
with no obvious axe to grind, scott mcclellen blasts the bush presidency...
ouch (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23772283-601,00.html)
ONE of George W. Bush's most loyal former aides, Scott McClellan, has launched a blistering attack on the President, saying Mr Bush relied on "propaganda" to sell the Iraq war and that the administration has "veered terribly off course".
In a new book, Mr McClellan, Mr Bush's former press spokesman and who had been by his side since his days as Texas governor, said the President was not "open and forthright on Iraq" and he had not served the US well as a wartime leader.
"I still like and admire President Bush," Mr McClellan writes in What Happened - Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, "but he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candour and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war.
"History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided - that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder.
“No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact.
"What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."
He adds Mr Bush was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those “involved directly in national security," in a swipe at first-term national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who now serves as Secretary of State and remains Mr Bush's closest confidante.
While Mr McClellan also described Mr Bush as "sincere" and "authentic", his critique has stunned administration's insiders, and likely the President himself, who instils an intense sense of loyalty in his staff.
This is the most openly critical book of the Bush years from someone who has been so close to him during the White House years.
At one point, Mr McClellan also discusses rumours of Mr Bush's possible cocaine use in his younger days _ a charge that dogged him on the campaign trail for the presidency in 1999. Despite public denials, Mr McClellan says Mr Bush told him privately he "could not remember" if he used it.
"I remember thinking to myself, how can that be?" Mr McClellan writes. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."
Mr Bush, he said, "isn't the kind of person to flat-out lie.
"So I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It's the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true," he writes.
"And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious - political convenience."
He described this "penchant for self-deception" would have devastating consequences in the US's foreign policy _ saying Mr Bush was too "stubborn to change and grow" in the White House.
When Mr McClellan resigned in April 2006 after three years as press secretary, Mr Bush noted that "one of these days, he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas, talking about the good old days".
That would appear less likely now. His book is in stark contrast to his years as a spokesman when he was admired by Mr Bush for his willingness to obfuscate from the White House podium, so much so that he was dubbed the "Unanswer Man" by The Washington Post.
But at just 40, Mr McClellan is now playing a textbook Washington game. By spilling some beans on administration as it winds down, he is looking to sell some books while also trying to distance himself from his former employer whose popularity with the American people continues to sag.
The 341-page book also offers, for example, a scathing analysis of the President's response to Hurricane Katrina which wiped out parts of New Orleans in August 2005.
He said the White House "spent most of the first week in a state of denial".
One of the worst images of the crisis for the President was a photo of Mr Bush surveying from the window of Air Force One as he flew over the city.
Mr McClellan puts the blame for that disastrous piece of political imagery squarely at the feet of Karl Rove, the former White House aide to Mr Bush who the President once dubbed the "architect" of his political success.
"One of the worst disasters in our nation's history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush's presidency,” he writes.
ouch (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23772283-601,00.html)
ONE of George W. Bush's most loyal former aides, Scott McClellan, has launched a blistering attack on the President, saying Mr Bush relied on "propaganda" to sell the Iraq war and that the administration has "veered terribly off course".
In a new book, Mr McClellan, Mr Bush's former press spokesman and who had been by his side since his days as Texas governor, said the President was not "open and forthright on Iraq" and he had not served the US well as a wartime leader.
"I still like and admire President Bush," Mr McClellan writes in What Happened - Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, "but he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candour and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war.
"History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided - that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder.
“No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact.
"What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."
He adds Mr Bush was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those “involved directly in national security," in a swipe at first-term national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who now serves as Secretary of State and remains Mr Bush's closest confidante.
While Mr McClellan also described Mr Bush as "sincere" and "authentic", his critique has stunned administration's insiders, and likely the President himself, who instils an intense sense of loyalty in his staff.
This is the most openly critical book of the Bush years from someone who has been so close to him during the White House years.
At one point, Mr McClellan also discusses rumours of Mr Bush's possible cocaine use in his younger days _ a charge that dogged him on the campaign trail for the presidency in 1999. Despite public denials, Mr McClellan says Mr Bush told him privately he "could not remember" if he used it.
"I remember thinking to myself, how can that be?" Mr McClellan writes. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."
Mr Bush, he said, "isn't the kind of person to flat-out lie.
"So I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It's the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true," he writes.
"And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious - political convenience."
He described this "penchant for self-deception" would have devastating consequences in the US's foreign policy _ saying Mr Bush was too "stubborn to change and grow" in the White House.
When Mr McClellan resigned in April 2006 after three years as press secretary, Mr Bush noted that "one of these days, he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas, talking about the good old days".
That would appear less likely now. His book is in stark contrast to his years as a spokesman when he was admired by Mr Bush for his willingness to obfuscate from the White House podium, so much so that he was dubbed the "Unanswer Man" by The Washington Post.
But at just 40, Mr McClellan is now playing a textbook Washington game. By spilling some beans on administration as it winds down, he is looking to sell some books while also trying to distance himself from his former employer whose popularity with the American people continues to sag.
The 341-page book also offers, for example, a scathing analysis of the President's response to Hurricane Katrina which wiped out parts of New Orleans in August 2005.
He said the White House "spent most of the first week in a state of denial".
One of the worst images of the crisis for the President was a photo of Mr Bush surveying from the window of Air Force One as he flew over the city.
Mr McClellan puts the blame for that disastrous piece of political imagery squarely at the feet of Karl Rove, the former White House aide to Mr Bush who the President once dubbed the "architect" of his political success.
"One of the worst disasters in our nation's history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush's presidency,” he writes.