WASHINGTON — The White House called former press secretary Scott McClellan "disgruntled" after he wrote a blistering review of the administration and concluded that his longtime boss misled the nation into an unnecessary war in Iraq in a book due out Monday.
That's what they said about Paul O'Neil and just about anyone who has written or said anything negative about this appalling administration and who has been on the inside, Everyone else they just ignored, like the millions of demonstrators, most of them peaceful, world wide, who begged, pleaded and demanded that this war not happen. But as we all know, George Bush and Dick Cheney, for different and some of the same reasons, were going into Iraq if it hair-lipped hell and half of Georgia. Where, Scott, are the apologies to us; those who opposed this war in the streets and on blogs, letters to editors (which were rarely published) and letters to our congress critters. Why can't the Right ever just simply apologize to their fellow Americans who were right about this administration and this hellish war? That would go a long way toward unifying this country again. My strong hunch is that the Rights' last wish is unity. That which is referred to as the Left in this country is, more often than not, moderates who simply see things as they are and they don't like it one bit and so they move to the left. Seems the only thing to do when the Right has slipped into a very dangerous theocratic fascism that will destroy this nation just as surely as Hitler and his band of happy corporatists brought on the destruction of Germany.
"History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided — that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder," McClellan wrote in "What Happened," due out Monday. "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."
Scott, we are already feeling it's impact and it is only going to get worse because no matter whom we elect in November, the Bush administration has made sure that the final collapse will be on someone else's watch. But history will know who caused this catastrophe for our nation and for the Iraqi people, as well as others around the globe who will suffer as a result of being to closely tied to us and our economy (read sociopathic corporations which form this horrendous empire).
"What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary," he wrote in the preface.
So, it was a war of aggression, Just as we all said it was, the mother of all war crimes, from which other war crimes are born, like the son's of the real Whore of Babylon, the multinational corporations, which are raping and pillaging a land for no good reason, killing and torturing innocent people who have never been any threat to us. Of course, this is only the most obvious incidence of that. It has been going on for years. Just ask the people of Bhopal, India.
Scott, why haven't your blown your own brains out by now, like many of our soldiers who cannot sleep and have nightmares of wrong doing and risking their lives for George W Bush and his corporate pals? I can't help but wonder.
White House aides seemed stunned by the scathing tone of the book, and Bush press secretary Dana Perino issued a statement that was highly critical of their former colleague.
Oh who cares what that addled bitch has to say? She is simply a better liar than Scott.
"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."
Perino said the reports on the book had been described to Bush, and that she did not expect him to comment. "He has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers," she said.
Yeah I bet he won't care to comment. I doubt anyone but the usual 30 percent of delusional "bags of hammers" in America would listen anyway.
The volume makes McClellan, a Texan picked by the president and paid by the people to help sell the war to the world, the first longtime Bush aide to put such harsh criticism between hard covers. It is an extraordinarily critical book that questions Bush's intellectual curiosity, his candor in leading the nation to war, his pattern of self-deception and the quality of his advisers.
His adviser were mostly NeoCon egg heads who, like Bush himself, had never been in a field of battle as a soldier, actually went out of their way to avoid serving their country, even during peace time. Hell, none of them even served in the Peace corps. All of that drudgery is beneath them. yet, they have the unmitigated gall to call Obama an elitist? Black is White, War is Peace, up is down, and Eurasia has always been at war with Oceana. Orwell is spinning in his grave.
"As a Texas loyalist who followed Bush to Washington with great hope and personal affection and as a proud member of his administration, I was all too ready to give him and his highly experienced foreign policy advisers the benefit of the doubt on Iraq," McClellan wrote.
Bad move, Scottie. This should be a lesson to you and everyone else about loyalty, Loyalty is not listed among the virtues for a very good reason. Loyalty, in and of itself, is not a virtue. The Nazis were loyal too, Scott. Having faith, real faith in your own mind, heart and instincts, working in balance, and the courage to step up or down, whatever the situation calls for, is a virtue. Scott, you, like Coln Powell should have stepped down and told the American people the truth then. It doesn't do much good now. But thanks for saying what most of us already knew.
"Unfortunately, subsequent events have showed that our willingness to trust the judgment of Bush and his team was misplaced."
Misplaced isn't the word for it. This administration has committed war crimes and should be in the dock at the Hague and I'm afraid, Scott, confessions in book form, from which you will probably make a mint, won't help you if that day ever comes.
McClellan worked for Bush from 1999, when he signed on as a deputy in the governor's press office, until 2006, when he was forced out as White House press secretary.
"President Bush has always been an instinctive leader more than an intellectual leader. He is not one to delve into all the possible policy options — including sitting around engaging in extended debate about them — before making a choice," McClellan wrote. "Rather, he chooses based on his gut and his most deeply held convictions. Such was the case with Iraq."
Which makes him an idiot, just as we have all suspected, People like him, while seeming decisive, are not. Long intellectual, insightful discussions bore him or throw him off balance because he already knows what he wants to do and he's going to do it, because the god-damned Supremes put the idiot in power. Had there been no George Bush in the White House, there probably would have been no 9/11 and if there had been, I doubt very seriously that Al Gore would have started WWIII over it.
In an interview Tuesday, McClellan said he retains great admiration and respect for Bush.
Then you, Sir, are as big an idiot than he is. Why don't you tell that to the grieving families and friends of our fallen.
"My job was to advocate and defend his policies and speak on his behalf," he said. "This is an opportunity for me now to share my own views and perspective on things. There were things we did right and things we did wrong. Unfortunately, much of what went wrong overshadowed the good things we did."
Just following orders, eh? That didn't fly to well at Nuremberg, as I recall.
He said the Bush administration fell into the "permanent campaign" mode that can cripple a White House and has tainted much of Washington.
Of course it did, because from the get-go, it was all about power and creating a one party rule for generations to come. Just ask Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Junior made a very good cheerleader and that was, essentially, his job....well, that and firing any general that disagreed with him.
In the book — subtitled "Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" — McClellan said that Bush's top advisers, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "played right into his thinking, doing little to question it or cause him to pause long enough to fully consider the consequences before moving forward," according to McClellan.
"Contradictory intelligence was largely ignored or simply disregarded," he wrote.
Or intercepted by Cheney
Bush's real motivation for war
In Iraq, McClellan added, Bush saw "his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness," something McClellan said Bush has said he believes is only available to wartime presidents.
So, that is why we now have the deaths of millions and their blood on our hands? The man is a twisted sociopath, one of the most narcissistic people I have ever encountered. He should be tried for murder, right along with Cheney, Rice, and all the rest that aided and abetted this insane individual.
The president's real motivation for the war, he said, was to transform the Middle East to ensure an enduring peace in the region. But the White House effort to sell the war as necessary due to the stated threat posed by Saddam Hussein was needed because "Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitions purpose of transforming the Middle East," McClellan wrote.
Of course we wouldn't. Because, it is not our place to transform anything or anyone. We can assist a peoples' own efforts to over throw a cruel dictator and to join with other countries in stopping genocide, But the very thought that this war was about re-creating the middle-east is nothing more than a NeoCon wet-dream and it is sickening. Furthermore, the NeoCons should be treated as just what they are: Real modern day Nazis who feel that it is quite OK to murder millions of innocent people because they have a theory of how wonderful things will be, once the enemy, which seems to be the entire Muslim world, gives up the fight and does what they are told.
Well, problem is, you murderous egg-heads, you don't know your enemy. They won't give up, You can nuke them, and they still won't give up. These people have seen evil empires before. They have seen shock and awe before. All you have done is manage to cause more and more people to hate Americans. You should all be rounded up and put on trial, just like the Nazis, because that is who you really are.
"Rather than open this Pandora's Box, the administration chose a different path — not employing out-and-out deception, but shading the truth," he wrote of the effort to convince the world that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, an effort he said used "innuendo and implication" and "intentional ignoring of intelligence to the contrary."
Oh screw all that. They flat out lied to the American people and to Congress, over and over again. Deception and fear-mongering like I have never seen before was on the news every damned day. Calling anti-war people traitors and questioning everyones' patriotism, while all the while, shredding the Constitution and habeas corpus. If I had my way, you would all be hanged on the National Mall, an example to any other presidential candidate and any future administration: The American people will not put up with international criminals in power in this nation, nor enemies of our constitution.
"President Bush managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option," McClellan concluded, noting, "The lack of candor underlying the campaign for war would severely undermine the president's entire second term in office."
Well, of course he did, because he was planning to invade Iraq long before he was even selected. Get real Scott! Do you really believe that he told his public spokesperson the truth about everything? What president does that?
Bush's national security advisers failed to "help him fully understand the tinderbox he was opening," McClellan recalled.
He would have fired them if they did. Just look at all the fired generals, you know the ones he always claims he listens to? General who know w heel of a lot more about war than the slackers in the White House.
"I know the president pretty well. I believe that, if he had been given a crystal ball in which he could have foreseen the costs of war — more than 4,000 American troops killed, 30,000 injured and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis dead — he would never have made the decision to invade, despite what he might say or feel he has to say publicly today," McClellan wrote.
He would have busted it into a gazillion pieces and gone to war anyway, because he wanted to be a war president. He told any one who would listen that that is what he wanted.
'Plenty smart enough'
In a summation, McClellan said the decision to invade Iraq "goes to an important question that critics have raised about the president: Is Bush intellectually incurious or, as some assert, actually stupid?"
"Bush is plenty smart enough to be president," he concluded. "But as I've noted his leadership style is based more on instinct than deep intellectual debate."
Then, he isn't smart enough. We should not think with our gut. That is not the purpose of the gut, Scott.
McClellan also expresses amazement that Bush seemed flummoxed by a query by NBC's Tim Russert in February 2004 as to whether the invasion of Iraq was "a war of choice or a war of necessity."
"It strikes me today as an indication of his lack of inquisitiveness and his detrimental resistance to reflection," McClellan wrote, "something his advisers needed to compensate for better than they did."
How in the hell can anyone compensate for a stubborn mule who believes he is God's chosen president, with help, I'm very sure, from the TheoCons, and therefore can make no mistakes. No one can compensate for someone who is truly delusional. Besides, they did not want to compensate for it, as his delusion played right into the NeoCon vision as plainly laid out in the Project for the New American Century. Like Mien Kemp, any one who had read the PNAC document, knew exactly what was coming the minute Cheney was chosen as Vice President. I knew when Bush was selected that we would be in Iraq within two years. Afghanistan slowed Bush down a bit, but it would have been hard to ignore Osama all together. That would have seemed too strange even for the most retarded among us, especially the vengeance seekers.
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."
That's not all that odd for a full blown alcoholic at a young age, when still partying hardy. He may well have blacked-out regularly. There is no memory trace made-while a person is in a blackout from bathing their CNS in a sedative anesthetic on a regular basis and in large quantities. Of all the insanity that has gone on in the Bush administration, this is run-of-the-mill stuff for an alcoholic. It would have been a good thing to know that he said that before he was president, but now the damage is done.
It is however another plank in the platform for the public demanding that anyone wanting to run for president or vice president have a thorough mental work up, and then every two years, if they should win. If campaigns are so damned rigorous that it causes people to imagine they were under sniper fire when they weren't, just think what the presidency must be like. I would like to be told whether or not he is off his rails. This administration, if not a number of them in my lifetime, convince me that we need reports on the president's and vice president's complete health. This is especially true of a president and vice president who are in office when something terrible does happen, like 9/11.
Bush, according to McClellan, "isn't the kind of person to flat-out lie."
Not unless he has to. He would prefer to leave the lying to others. Plausible deniability and all that, don't you know.
"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."
Uh huh. That's the reason for everything all of you did because the main goal of this administration, other than the NeoCon thing, was holding power in the Republican party forever.
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."
The greatest deceiver of all is the deceiver who first completely deceives himself. Scott, you are a Bible-toting republican. Do you remember who the great deceiver is?
"Bush, similarly, has a way of falling back on the hazy memory to protect himself from potential political embarrassment," McClellan wrote, adding, "In other words, being evasive is not the same as lying in Bush's mind."
Of course not, because he is a liar. People who aren't born-liars, like most really good politicians and corporate officers are, know that a lie of omission is as bad as a lie of commission, as long as it is intentional and meant to deceive for personal purposes of self-gain or protection and we know by now that Bush lies are intentional because, you see, they are always done to further his goals or to protect his political power.
And McClellan linked the tactic to the decision to invade Iraq, a decision based on flawed intelligence.
A decision, based on ignored intelligence - not so much flawed as ignored, Scott. Here's the question for you, Scott. How come we all knew, and in "we," I include Obama? We all know that the chances of Saddam having a nuclear weapon within the next 20 years was almost nil and that's the one that always scares Americans witless and your bosses knew that Scott. Americans have a huge fear of karma, especially the nuclear kind, as well we all might. When our very own government uses that against us, then our very own government can be called terrorists. Then they also played the vengeance card, Scott. Saddam had something to do with 9/11 and was tennis partners with Osama at the Baghdad country club or whatever. It was ludicrous, absolutely, ludicrous, and anyone who had the good sense to educate themselves about Islam and its history, after 9/11, would have known it, but you guys count on us being anti-intellectual, dumb-bells, totally incapable of picking up a few books and reading them or even, God forbid, asking Muslims to educate us about what they knew about their own religion and its laws or being capable of understanding anything longer than a sound bite. Didn't God say, "vengeance is mine," Scott? Oops. So, much for the moral high ground, let alone the Christian one.
"It would not be the last time Bush mishandled potential controversy," he said of the cocaine rumors. "But the cases to come would involve the public trust, and the failure to deal with them early, directly and head-on would lead to far greater suspicion and far more destructive partisan warfare," he wrote.
Partisan warfare? If you ask me, there was far less partisan warfare than I would have liked to see, but then I don't trust either of the political parties any further than I could throw Dennis Hastert, and the whimpy way the dembulbs have behaved just proves my point. Anytime some president, I don't care with which party he or she identifies him or herself, makes a lame attempt to lie the American people into an illegal, unjust war, all hell should break lose. The opposing party should go crazy and the news media should go ballistic. (That's how you get the average American's attention.) It isn't patriotic to keep mum at a time like that, nor is it in the best interest of this country or her people.
'Too stubborn to change and grow'
The book also recounts Bush's unwillingness or inability to come up with a mistake he had made when asked by a reporter to do so.
"It became symbolic of a leader unable to acknowledge that he got it wrong, and unwilling to grow in office by learning from his mistake — too stubborn to change and grow," McClellan concluded.
God' chosen president does not make mistakes, Scottie.
The next president had better know how to admit mistakes, because there are a number he will have to admit to, on behalf of our nation. We cannot fix anything until we admit there is a problem. We cannot possibly expect to regain the trust and friendship of the world until we admit that Iraq was not only a huge blunder but was a crime as well and that we, as a people, intend to do all we can to see justice served and the people of Iraq are safe from outside interference at the point of a gun and it's borders secured by a multinational force, including their neighbors, and be able to re-build there own country with the help of the world community. They are a damaged but proud people. What's more, they are a part of the same human family that the we all belong to.They must be protected from those who would harm or steal from them, while they decide what kind of government and life they want for themselves and their progeny. If that is some form of democratic socialism, so be it. The Scandinavians seem to do that well. They are a lot better off than we are.
Capitalism (or the worship of capital) is not the only economic system that goes well with democracy. As a matter of fact, we are seeing that it does not go so well, when it becomes corporatism or fascism, which are the same thing and where capitalism goes off the rails with greed gluttony and lust for power fascism is the result, just as when socialism goes too far, it can become a totalitarian communism that is just as bad for the people. Odd, isn't it, that it is almost always the same "cardinal sins" that push any economic system over the edge; greed is always number one and lust (for power), a close second.
A page later, he recounts what he perceived as a moment of doubt by a president who never expresses any. It occurred in a dimly lit room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a room where an injured Texas veteran was being watched over by his wife and 7-year-old son as Bush arrived.
The vet's head was bandaged and "he was clearly not aware of his surroundings, the brain injury was severe," McClellan recalled. Bush hugged the wife, told the boy his dad was brave and kissed the injured vet's head while whispering 'God bless you' into his ear.
"Then he turned and walked toward the door," McClellan wrote. "Looking straight ahead, he moved his right hand to wipe away a tear. In that moment, I could see the doubt in his eyes and the vivid realization of the irrevocable consequences of his decision."
Scott, if you were much of a history student, you would know that Hitler, the greatest evil in modern times, one would think, although I can name quite a few more, could not bear to look at the soldiers coming home from the eastern front, the opening of which was a stupid move on his part. Maybe looking at them made him question his own wisdom, as it certainly should have and perhaps it also made him sad. (Of course, Hitler, was a delusional psychopath, made that way by years of self-hatred, a terribly dysfunctional family, fighting in WWI and, finally, the people who surrounded him as he rose to political power, who fueled Hitler's delusions until he thought that he was sent by God to spread the "glories of Nazism" and get rid of what was then called the "Jewish problem."
But, he added, such moments are more than counterbalanced by deceased warriors' families who urge him to make sure the deaths were not in vain.
Since when does more blood honor those already fallen in a senseless war such as this. The best way to honor our fallen is to try our own war criminals or, even better, send them to the Hague and then make it really plain, once and for all, that there will always be a band of citizens watching this government and that a similar fate will befall other leaders who lie to their people about something as serious as war crimes. When America is restored as a nation, a true democratic republic and not a corporate empire, and the people who created this mess are held up before the world and punished according to the roles they played, these soldiers will not have died in vain.
Rice, Cheney not spared from criticism
McClellan's criticism of Rice — who he pegs as "hard to get to know" — is blistering.
"I was struck by how deft she is at protecting her reputation," he wrote. "No matter what went wrong, she was somehow able to keep her hands clean, even when the problems related to matters under her direct purview, including the WMD rationale for the war in Iraq, the decision to invade Iraq ... and post-war planning and implementation of the strategy in Iraq."
With the outstanding exception of Richard Clarke who nailed her big time in his testimony before the 9/11 commission.
McClellan predicts a harsh historical review of Rice.
We are not fooled by her one iota, so don't worry Scott. When war crimes trials are held, she will be right up there with the big boys. If war r=crimes are not held, she will be on someone's hit list.
"But whatever her policy management shortcomings, Rice knew public relations well. She knew how to adapt to potential trouble, dismiss brooding problems and come out looking like a star," he wrote. "Few performed better under the spotlight, glossing over mistakes with her effortless eloquence and understated flair."
In other words, she is intelligent evil, the worst kind.
McClellan brands Vice President Cheney as "the magic man" mysteriously directing outcomes in "every policy area he cared about, from the invasion of Iraq to expansion of presidential power to the treatment of detainees and the use of surveillance against terror suspects."
"Cheney always seemed to get his way," McClellan wrote.
Cheney is a pit viper, slithering around the back halls of power, accountable to no one, unavailable to the press, except for Faux News, almost as evil as he is.
The book is so critical that it becomes difficult to imagine a future scene that Bush predicted on the day that McClellan's forced resignation was announced.
"One of these days," Bush, with McClellan at his side, told reporters that day, "he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas, talking about the good old days and his time as the press secretary. And I can assure you, I will feel the same way then that I feel now, that I can say to Scott, 'Job well done.'"
Maybe McClellan no longer cares to hang out with this bunch. I know I wouldn't be wanting to, especially after they leave the White House.
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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