McClellan may be a tool...Follow

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new 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 includes the charges in a 341-page 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 admits to having been deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.
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McClellan stops short of saying that 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 in 2002.

But in a chapter titled "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."

"Over that summer of 2002," he writes, "top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war. . . . In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage."

McClellan, once a staunch defender of the war from the podium, comes to a stark conclusion, writing, "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

You say that as if there wasn't a market for jingoistic "How Bush is Single-Handedly Saving Civilization" style exposés.

The contrast between his stance as spokesman and his book now do remind me of the quote Joph used to have in his sig, about the difficulty of admitting something when you salary depended on you telling otherwise. Or something to that effect.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

The response from the White House is telling, though. They are trying so hard to throw him under the bus again.

I think this turnaround only emphasized what a **** McClellan is. He knows he's not going to ever achieve any political credibility again until he renounces being the Bush administration's yes-man.