My feeling is still the same, however. I'm just glad SOMEONE SAID IT and the MSM is at least reporting it. If anything, maybe it will prevent the Iran attack -- although I doubt it.
The cocaine remark shows the incredible level of mental illness that this president has shown. He's a SOCIOPATH and DANGEROUS, folks!! That's why I have been hollering for impeachment for two years. The guy is dangerous!!!!
"Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled U.S. on Iraq
I point this out for two reasons.
Now that it's all over, the war started, the Americans and Iraqis dead and crippled, now the mainstream media will admit that the government lied us into the war because now it is too late to stop it, and there is a book to sell and money to be made. So now, 5 years after the fact, and more to the point, five years after the blogs blew the whistle on the lies that led to war, the MSM finally catches up to reality.
Second, I do not congratulate McClellan on his book. I will not buy it, read it, or promote it. The book is an admission that Scott McClellen KNEW HE WAS LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHEN HE STOOD AT THAT PODIUM IN THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS ROOM. The blood of our dead young men and women stains his hands and every page of that book. And having earned his keep as a paid liar for the government, now McClellan shamelessly tries to reap a few more bucks with a "how we put the screws to the country" manual.
McClellans book does not tell the American people anything that was not already being written here on the blogs five years ago. He just wants to act like he is breaking the story to make a fast buck."
He's right about the MSM and McClellan, and I won't buy his book, either.
I DID BUY and READ Ron Paul's book, though!!!
:-)
"FLASHBACK: British officers knew on eve of war that Iraq had no WMDs
The government lied us into a war of conquest.
The government lied us into a war of conquest.
The government lied us into a war of conquest.
Knowing that, and finally facing up to that, it is time to realize that nothing you have ever been taught by the state schools or the state-controlled media can be assumed to be true and factual. Everything is suspect. Who killed JFK, RFK, JFK Jr. MLK, Vince Foster, all need to be re-examined. Is what we have been taught about WW2 accurate? That needs to be re-examined. 9-11? For certain we have been lied to about that.
The Constitution does not allow the government to lie to the people. The 10th Amendment prohibits the government from assuming that right. Therefore, when the government lies to the people it acts both unconstitutionally and illegally. When the government lies to the people it breaks faith with the people who pay the taxes that power that government. When the government lies to the people it delegitimizes itself and ceases to be the lawful government of the land.
There is no greater crime by a government against its people than lying them into a war of conquest. There is no punishment too severe for a government that lies its people into a war of conquest."
Yeah, that lying about history has really shaken me and sent me for a loop.
All that time and money wasted, and for what?
Nothing. Nothing but a crock of lies!!
Alas, Bush and Scotty in better days (Bush giving him a shiv, I mean shove):
In this April 19, 2006 file photo, President Bush, right, walks with White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, right, at the White House in Washington, after McClellan announced that he is stepping down as White House press secretary. It's being reported that an upcoming book by McClellan says that President Bush relied on a propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq war in the place of honesty and candor. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)
"by Jennifer Loven, Associated Press Writer | May 29, 2008
I actually like the article, which is probably why the Globe yanked it from its web site and replaced it with (yuck) the New York Times News Service.
First the AP piece:
WASHINGTON --In a shocking turnabout, the press secretary most known for defending President Bush on Iraq, Katrina and a host of other controversial issues produced a memoir damning of his old boss on nearly every level -- from too much secrecy to a less-than-honest selling of the war to a lack of personal candor and an unwillingness to admit mistakes.
In the first major insider account of the Bush White House, one-time spokesman Scott McClellan calls the operation "insular, secretive and combative" and says it veered irretrievably off course as a result.
The White House responded angrily Wednesday to McClellan's confessional memoir, calling it self-serving sour grapes.
"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," said current White House press secretary Dana Perino, a former deputy to McClellan. "We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew."
McClellan was the White House press secretary from May 2003 to April 2006, the second of four so far in Bush's presidency.
He reveals that he was pushed to leave earlier than he had planned, and he displays some bitterness about that as well as about being sometimes kept out of the loop on key decision-making sessions.
So the farewell news conference was all propaganda and bullshit, huh?
Aaaaaahhh!
He excludes himself from major involvement in some of what he calls the administration's biggest blunders, for instance the decision to go to war and the initial campaign to sell that decision to the American people. But he doesn't spare himself entirely, saying, "I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be.
He includes criticism for the reporters whose questions he fielded. The news media, he says, were "complicit enablers" for focusing more on "covering the march to war instead of the necessity of war."
I'm glad SOMEONE SAID IT! It may be superficial and to late in the MSM world, but it is VALIDATION of what I've been saying on the blog for two years!!!
Of course, the MSM still are complicit enablers, and are recognized as such. Didn't always feel that way, either.
And McClellan issues this disclaimer about Bush: "I do not believe he or his White House deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people."
WRONG!!!!
But most everything else he writes comes awfully close to making just this assertion, all the more stunning coming from someone who had been one of the longest-serving of the band of loyalists to come to Washington with Bush from Texas.
This is where Rivero is RIGHT!!! WHERE YA BEEN, MSM?!?!
The heart of the book concerns Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, a determination McClellan says the president had made by early 2002 -- at least a full year before the invasion -- if not even earlier.
As we ALREADY KNEW from Paul O'Neill -- whose book I read, by the way!!!!
:-)
"He signed off on a strategy for selling the war that was less than candid and honest," McClellan writes in "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception."
The book, which had been scheduled for release on Monday, was being sold by bookstores on Wednesday after the publisher moved up its release amid intense media coverage of its contents. The book quickly vaulted to No. 1 on amazon.com's best-seller list.
McClellan says Bush's main reason for war always was "an ambitious and idealistic post-9/11 vision of transforming the Middle East through the spread of freedom."
Actually, it was more like the Clean Break/AIPAC/PNAC plan!!
But Bush and his advisers made "a marketing choice" to downplay this rationale in favor of one focused on increasingly trumped-up portrayals of the threat posed by the weapons of mass destruction.
That's your wars right there -- a "a marketing choice!"
During the "political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people," Bush and his team tried to make the "WMD threat and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appear just a little more certain, a little less questionable than they were." Something else was downplayed as well, McClellan says: any discussion of "the possible unpleasant consequences of war -- casualties, economic effects, geopolitical risks, diplomatic repercussions."
And that's why we are in the mess we are in!!
And yet this guy is careening towards even greater disaster in Iran.
IMPEACH!! NOW!!!!!!
In Bush's second term, as news from Iraq grew worse, McClellan says the president was "insulated from the reality of events on the ground and consequently began falling into the trap of believing his own spin."
Translation: BUSH is NUTS and a LIAR!!!!!!!!!
All of this was a "serious strategic blunder" that sent Bush's presidency "terribly off course."
"The Iraq war was not necessary," McClellan concludes.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton referred to the book and its author while campaigning Wednesday in Rapid City, S.D., saying, "In this book this young man essentially apologizes for having been part of misleading America for three years."
You and your husband did it for eight!!!
Reporters in Los Angeles with John McCain, the Republicans' candidate for president, asked if he believed that Bush used propaganda or deception regarding the war in Iraq. "I have no information on that fact. I am glad for one that Saddam Hussein is no longer there," McCain said. He declined to comment on other assertions in the book, saying he had not read it.
McClellan draws a portrait of Bush as possessing "personal charm, wit and enormous political skill." He says Bush's administration early on possessed "seeds of greatness."
But McClellan ticks off a long list of Bush's weaknesses: someone with a penchant for self-deception if it "suits his needs at the moment," "an instinctive leader more than an intellectual leader" who has a lack of interest in delving deeply into policy options, a man with a lack of self-confidence that makes him unable to acknowledge when he's been wrong.
HE is DANGEROUS!!!!!!!
McClellan also writes extensively about what he says is the Bush White House's excessive focus on "the permanent campaign."
"The Bush team imitated some of the worst qualities of the Clinton White House and even took them to new depths," he writes.
Why not? It is the SAME FAMILY at this point!!!!
McClellan is most scathing on the topic of the administration's embrace of secrecy.
"The Bush administration lacked real accountability in large part because Bush himself did not embrace openness or government in the sunshine," he writes.
Three top Bush advisers come in for particularly harsh criticism.
McClellan calls Vice President Dick Cheney "the magic man" who "always seemed to get his way" and sometimes "simply could not contain his deep-seated certitude, even arrogance, to the detriment of the president."
Dogshit Dick?
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was national security adviser earlier in Bush's presidency, "was more interested in figuring out where the president stood and just carrying out his wishes while expending only cursory effort on helping him understand all the considerations and potential consequences" of war. Rice "was somehow able to keep her hands clean, even when the problems related to matters under her direct purview," McClellan says, but he predicts that "history will likely judge her harshly."
It already has because WE ARE HISTORY right here, readers!!!!
WE are the JUDGES!!!!
And former Bush political guru Karl Rove "always struck me as the kind of person who would be willing, in the heat of battle, to push the envelope to the limit of what is permissible ethically or legally."
No kidding?
The White House was severely damaged by blunders beyond the war, McClellan says.
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, for instance, the administration went on autopilot "rather than seizing the initiative and getting in front of what was happening on the ground."
And Bush's drive to remake the Social Security program after his 2004 re-election failed in large part because the White House focused almost exclusively on "selling our sketchily designed plan" instead of doing behind-the-scenes work with lawmakers.
McClellan explains his dramatic shift from defender to critic as a difficult act of personal contrition, a way, to learn from his mistakes, be true to his Christian faith and become a better person. He says he started the book to explain his role in the CIA leak case, in which some of his own words turned out to be what he called "badly misguided," though sincere at the time.
McClellan says 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 says.
Indeed, former Bush aides joined current White House aides in expressing disbelief and disappointment at McClellan's account.
"Not once did Scott approach me -- privately or publicly -- to discuss any misgivings he had about the war in Iraq or the manner in which the White House made the case for war," McClellan's predecessor as press secretary, Ari Fleischer, said.
Why would he? He saw what happened to O'Neill and Lindsay!!!!
Said Fran Townsend, former head of the White House-based counterterrorism office and now a CNN commentator: "This now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional."
You mean, like the daily statements from the Bush administration, Fannie?
Perino described Bush as "surprised" by the book but said the president wouldn't have anything to say about it. "He has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers," she said."
She then retreated into the White House and snorted a couple of lines...
Here's how the New York Times is covering the flap:
"White House Reacts Negatively to Ex-Aide’s Book"
The White House reacted negatively today to scathing criticisms of President Bush and members of his inner circle that appear in a new memoir written by Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary who was forced out in 2006 after three tumultuous years.
In excerpts from the book, set to be published next week, Mr. McClellan writes that President Bush “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment,” and has engaged in “self-deception” to justify his political ends.
Gee, sounds like the New York Times editorial staff!!!
He calls the decision to invade Iraq a “serious strategic blunder,” and says that the biggest mistake the Bush White House made was “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed.”
Like they ever turned toward it?
But Dana Perino, the current White House press secretary, had harsh words for Mr. McClellan, calling the situation “sad” and suggesting that he mischaracterized his years in the West Wing to sell books.
“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House,” she said. “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.”
Oh, NOW he is DISGRUNTLED, huh?
Do you have to say Sig Heil after your morning snort, Dana?
She said that President Bush was told of some of the excerpts but would not be commenting on them because “he has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers.”
Translation: He's got more things to fuck up before he leaves.
But Karl Rove, a principal target of many of Mr. McClellan’s charges and the former deputy chief of staff for President Bush, reacted immediately on Tuesday night. Speaking on Fox News, where he is now a commentator, Mr. Rove said Mr. McClellan was not even present at many of the meetings he describes and suggested that he was not writing truthfully.
“First of all, this doesn’t sound like Scott. It really doesn’t,” he said. “Not the Scott McClellan I’ve known for a long time. Second of all, it sounds like somebody else. It sounds like a left-wing blogger.
Ha-ha-ha! Thanks for making me laugh, Karl!!!
“If he had these moral qualms,” he added, “he should have spoken up about them.”
Uh-huh! And get bundled out the door in a sack like O'Neill and Lindsay, right?
Hey, maybe he should have done it then, but I'd even be worried now. He might meet with an unpleasant "accident" if he's not careful.
Mr. McClellan’s book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” is the first negative account by a member of the tight circle of Texans around Mr. Bush.
It's like they NEVER HEARD of Paul O'Neill and Ron Susskind, huh, readers?
Why the MSM can't be believed about anything, folks!
Mr. McClellan, 40, went to work for Mr. Bush when he was governor of Texas and was the White House press secretary from 2003 to 2006.
The revelations in the book, to be published by PublicAffairs next Monday, were first reported Tuesday on Politico.com by Mike Allen. Mr. Allen wrote that he bought the book at a Washington store. The New York Times also obtained an advance copy.
Mr. McClellan writes that top White House officials deceived him about the administration’s involvement in the leaking of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. He says he did not know for almost two years that his statements from the press room that Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr. were not involved in the leak were a lie.
“Neither, I believe, did President Bush,” Mr. McClellan writes. “He too had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”
Ummm, Democraps, time to IMPE.... hey, where you going?
He is harsh about the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, saying it “spent most of the first week in a state of denial” and “allowed our institutional response to go on autopilot.” Mr. McClellan blames Mr. Rove for one of the more damaging images after the hurricane: Mr. Bush’s flyover of the devastation of New Orleans. When Mr. Rove brought up the idea, Mr. McClellan writes, he and Dan Bartlett, a top communications adviser, told Mr. Bush it was a bad idea because he would appear detached and out of touch. But Mr. Rove won out, Mr. McClellan writes.
A theme in the book is that the White House suffered from a “permanent campaign” mentality, and that policy decisions were inextricably interwoven with politics.
He is critical of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for her role as the “sometimes too accommodating” first term national security adviser, and what he calls her deftness at protecting her reputation.
“No matter what went wrong, she was somehow able to keep her hands clean,” Mr. McClellan writes, adding that “she knew how to adapt to potential trouble, dismiss brooding problems, and come out looking like a star.”
Like a ROCK STAR, huh?
Throughout the day Wednesday, a number of White House staff members went on the television and radio news circuit to criticize Mr. McClellan and dispute his harshest claims, including his predecessor, Ari Fleischer, who served as the press secretary from 2001 to 2003.
“Scott took the podium,” Mr. Fleischer said on the NPR News show “Day to Day” on Wednesday afternoon. “He repeatedly defended the war and the approach to the war. Even after Scott left the White House, he went on TV shows and defended President Bush and the war. So I don’t know what changed so dramatically for Scott in the last few months.”
He could no longer live with the guilt and wanted to clear his conscience?
Prevent the next war based on lies? To make a buck?
WHO CARES?! At least he SAID WHAT had to be SAID!!!!!!!!
In his book, Mr. McClellan does not exempt himself from failings — “I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be” — and calls the news media “complicit enablers” in the White House’s “carefully orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval” in the march to the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003.
He does have a number of kind words for Mr. Bush, particularly from the April day in 2006 when Mr. Bush met with Mr. McClellan after he learned he was being pushed out. “His charm was on full display, but it was hard to know if it was sincere or just an attempt to make me feel better,” Mr. McClellan writes. “But as he continued, something I had never seen before happened: tears were streaming down both his cheeks.”
Oh, isn't that touching, readers?
How come Dana didn't point out that passage at the news conference?
More from the Times (in the Globe):
"White House strikes back over tell-all; Tries to paint McClellan as disgruntled" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times News Service | May 29, 2008
WASHINGTON - As President Bush's press secretary, Scott McClellan was a dutiful practitioner of the swift, efficient, and highly coordinated strategy the White House typically employs to take on Bush's critics.
Yesterday, McClellan got a taste of life on the other side.
Yup!! He sure did!!!!
As news of McClellan's new tell-all book - in which he calls the war in Iraq a "strategic blunder" and accuses Bush of engaging in "self-deception" - dominated the airwaves, the White House and a tight-knit group of former aides pushed back. They sought to paint the former press secretary as a disgruntled man trying to redeem his own reputation after long remaining silent about concerns he is suddenly taking public.
That's not what they said when they pushed him out the door!!!
And is it me, or is the tone of this article sympathetic to Bush so far?
Of course, the Times would need to do that since they carried and continue to carry his water bucket of lies!!!
The result was a kind of public excommunication of McClellan, waged by some of the people with whom he once worked most closely, among them Karl Rove, the political strategist; Frances Fragos Townsend, the former domestic security adviser; Ari Fleischer, Bush's first press secretary; and Dan Bartlett, the former counselor to the president.
Their cries of betrayal served as a warning to other potential turncoats that, despite some well-publicized cracks, the Bush inner circle remains tight.
Better AVOID SMALL PLANES, Scotty!!!!
Their language was so similar that the collective reaction amounted to one big inside-the-Beltway echo chamber.
All seemed to take their cues from Dana Perino, the current press secretary. Perino used the words "sad" and "puzzled" to describe the White House response, as if McClellan had undergone some kind of emotional breakdown, while making the case that if McClellan had problems with Bush, he should have raised them while in the president's employ.
That's what makes this White House so distasteful -- and the HYPOCRISY of complaining about "loyalty," Sig Heil!
As for emotional breakdowns and nutters, turn round and look at your boss, will you?
And all seemed to suggest that maybe McClellan had been hijacked by liberal New York book editors who prodded him to turn out a memoir that did not reflect his own beliefs.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!! That's a real knee-slapper!!!
Except for the terminology, as if the "liberal" New York editors committed a "terrorist" act, huh?
Why I no longer visit the New York Times web site. If I get them, it is off the Google.
"This doesn't sound like Scott; it really doesn't," Rove said on the Fox News Channel. (In the book, McClellan accuses Rove of being untruthful with him about the administration's involvement in leaking the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame Wilson.)
Something the New York Times doesn't go near these days -- because it exposes them for the complicit enablers they are!
"You've heard the way Scott briefed - it doesn't sound like him," Fleischer said. He said he could not wait to hear McClellan talk about the book on television, "to see if there's a written Scott and an oral Scott."
McClellan is hardly the first Bush insider to write a negative account of life in the White House. But because he comes from Bush's Texas inner circle - he joined the staff of Governor Bush in 1999, and his brother, Mark, is a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration - and because his criticisms of the Iraq war go to the heart of the Bush presidency, his words seemed to cut deep.
"At least Paul O'Neill raised these questions while he was in office," Bartlett said, referring to the former Treasury secretary, who was openly critical of Bush after leaving.
Oh, I DON'T BELIEVE IT!!! O'Neill GOT a MENTION!!!
"I think what makes this surprising is that a completely different person is emerging in this book than the one we knew. This one is kind of like an out-of-body experience."
Did the White House write this story for her or what, readers?
Pfffffttt! The New York Times!!!!
The book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," is due out next week; copies leaked out Tuesday night. In it, McClellan, who was press secretary from 2003 to 2006, bluntly accuses Bush of misleading the nation into war, though he says the biggest mistake the White House made was "a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed."
He also uses the book to drop a personal bombshell, recounting a phone conversation between Bush and a political supporter in which, he says, he overheard the president dismiss "ridiculous campaign rumors" about accusations of cocaine use by saying he could not recall if he had tried the drug.
Then HE IS either MENTALLY ILL or the GRANDEST LIAR and SELF-DELUDER of ALL TIMES!!!
He should be IMPEACHED on his MENTAL COMPETENCY ALONE!
"We had some pretty wild parties back in the day," McClellan writes, recounting Bush's words, "and I just don't remember."
Yeah, I've had nights like that, but I've always remembered the blow!!!
Thank God those days are LONG GONE!!!!
Bush was in Colorado Springs yesterday defending the Iraq war in a commencement speech to the graduates of the Air Force Academy. Perino said he had been briefed on the book but was unlikely to comment. The president, she said, "has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers."
Like racking up mass-murder totals and carrying out Israel's wishes for more wars!!!!
So he left that task to other former staff members, some of whom, in the time-honored way of Washington, insisted that there were no hard feelings between them and McClellan - even as they went on television to attack him.
Yeah, no hard feeling -- as they plant the knife in his back with an arm around his shoulder!!!!
"I'm always going to feel close to Scott," Fleischer said, adding that he and McClellan - his onetime deputy - had exchanged e-mail messages yesterday.
As for McClellan, he was mum yesterday, apparently deciding it was best to cede the airwaves to his former colleagues-turned- critics. But not for long. Today is another day. It will begin, according to NBC, with a morning appearance by McClellan on the "Today" show.
The heart of the book concerns Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, a determination McClellan says the president had made by early 2002 - at least a full year before the invasion - if not earlier.
"He signed off on a strategy for selling the war that was less than candid and honest," McClellan wrote. McClellan says Bush's main reason for war always was "an ambitious and idealistic post-9/11 vision of transforming the Middle East through the spread of freedom." But Bush and his advisers made "a marketing choice" to downplay this rationale in favor of one focused on increasingly trumped-up portrayals of the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.
As did the New York Times here -- which is why this is saved for the end of the piece, I'm sure!!!!
During the "political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people," Bush and his team tried to make the "WMD threat and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appear just a little more certain, a little less questionable than they were." Something else was downplayed as well, McClellan says: any discussion of "the possible unpleasant consequences of war."
The New York Times did its job of selling it to us just as well, too!!!!
Time to go back to the blogs. Oh, I LIKE this NEXT SUGGESTION!!!!!!!
Scott McClellan: Bush Misled Americans In Order to Go to War
The time has come to indict George W. Bush for murder. One suspects McClellan is setting himself up to 'cop a plea'. Certainly, Bush should be indicted for capital crimes, namely, the waging of naked aggression from which deaths resulted. Bush must have known he was subject to prosecution [See: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441] Otherwise, he would not have given John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales their marching orders: make war crimes legal!
WASHINGTON — Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."McClellan, 40, includes the charges in his book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," that delivers a harsh look at the White House and the man he served for close to a decade. He describes Bush as demonstrating a "lack of inquisitiveness," says the White House operated in "permanent campaign" mode and says he was deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.He accuses former White House adviser Karl Rove of misleading him about his role in the CIA case. He describes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as being deft at deflecting blame and calls Vice President Dick Cheney "the magic man" who steered policy behind the scenes.McClellan, who was a tight-lipped defender of administration aides and policy, stops short of saying Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq, writing that he and his subordinates were not "employing out-and-out deception" to make their case for war.But in one chapter, "Selling the War," he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."McClellan resigned from the White House on April 19, 2006, after nearly three years as Bush's press secretary. Michael D. Shear, Ex-aide Scott McClellan says Bush misled the US on warIt was several years ago the so-called Lancet study estimated Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of Bush's war at about 655,000. An estimate as of this week is some 1.2 million! Under law, EACH death is one count of murder in the indictment that should be forthcoming against those who would defraud a nation, the world in order to wage a war whose true purpose was the theft of oil. I've been saying this for years and taking the heat when idiots --inspired by Fox and Limbaugh --were burning Dixie Chick CDs and waving flags from an SUV. Chicken hawks! Lately, I've gotten a lot of support.
George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns.With all due respect, Vince, regulars to this blog know that I've been making that case for years. Welcome to the club. Now --who will take this case to a Grand Jury? An indictment now would be timely.
Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That's almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment.
I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe.
That's just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.--Vincent Bugliosi, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
Critics of 'conspiracy theories', just shut up! Labeling is no substitute for critical thinking skills. We are not talking about 'conspiracy theories'. We're talking about the hard evidence --admissible in court --that will get the arch criminal George W. Bush indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced for the crime of mass murder!"
Oh, would THAT ever be a DAY day to CELEBRATE!!!!!!!!
"Former White House spokesman: Bush used 'propaganda' to sell war
"A person who is good at ultimately lying to himself to convince himself that something which happened actually didn't happen out of convenience will ultimately have absolutely no difficulty lying a country into war."
SOCIOPATH!! IMPEACH!!!!
Update: Bush 'didn't remember' whether he'd tried cocaine, McClellan writes
In a new tell-all memoir on sale next week, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes that President Bush depended on propaganda to sell the Iraq war to the American public, The Politico reports.
According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, McClellan also reveals new details about allegations regarding Bush's former drug use that shadowed his 2000 campaign.
McClellan tracks Bush's penchant for self-deception back to an overheard incident on the campaign trail in 1999 when the then-governor was dogged by reports of possible cocaine use in his younger days.
The book recounts an evening in a hotel suite "somewhere in the Midwest." Bush was on the phone with a supporter and motioned for McClellan to have a seat.
"'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say. 'You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember.'"
"I remember thinking to myself, How can that be?" McClellan wrote. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."
Bush, according to McClellan, "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," McClellan wrote. "And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious — political convenience."
In the years that followed, McClellan "would come to believe that sometimes he convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment." McClellan likened it to a witness who resorts to "I do not recall."
McClellan's "surprisingly scathing" and "often harsh" What Happened: Inside the Bush White House... also contains, as Mike Allen writes for Politico, other standout revelations such as:
Bush and his aides "confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war";
Some of McClellan's assertions before the White House press corps were, in retrospect, "badly misguided";
Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby "had at best misled" McClellan about their roles in the notorious CIA leak case, even as McClellan publicly defended them;
The White House was in a "state of denial" during the first week after the Hurricane Katrina disaster;
Bush was "steamed" about his top economic adviser telling The Wall Street Journal that a possible Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion. "He shouldn't be talking about that," said Bush, according to McClellan;
The press was "probably too deferential to the White House" when it came to public discourse over the choice to go to invade Iraq. McClellan also says the "White House press corps went too easy on the administration," reports Allen.
Despite the book's criticisms of the administration he once worked for, McClellan writes, "I still like and admire President Bush," reserving most of his rancor for Bush's top advisers, especially Karl Rove.
Excerpts from the Politico article, available in full at this link, follow...
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The book begins with McClellan's statement to the press that he had talked with Rove and Libby and that they had assured him they "were not involved in ... the leaking of classified information." ...
"[President Bush] too had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth – including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney – allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie."
That sounds like McClellan is protecting Bush -- because Bush was IN ON IT, not out of the loop!!!
McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case. "There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss," he writes. "It was in 2005 during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. ... Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card's office] ... Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. 'You have time to visit?' Karl asked. 'Yeah,' replied Libby.
"I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. ... At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much."
