HotmailA Bush loyalist turns harsh critic in memoir
 | Scott McClellan's book on Bush |
 McClellan on the run-up to Iraq war May 29: Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says the Bush administration saw post 9/11 as "an opportunity to look at the war on terror in a broad way and to try to implement this idealistic vision that [they] had of spreading democracy." |
|
 The last roll Nov. 27: Parsons, Kansas, is place that still processes Kodachrome color film, but Kodak has stopped making it, leaving this little town pondering a big question. NBC’s Bob Dotson reports. |
'Political propaganda campaign'
As spokesman, McClellan ardently defended Bush's decision to invade Iraq and the conduct of his presidency over the course of nearly 300 briefings in two years and 10 months. Now, two years after leaving the White House and eager to make money on his book, McClellan concludes Bush turned away from candor and honesty and misled the country about the reasons for going to war.
It wasn't about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction, McClellan writes. It was Bush's fervor to transform the Middle East through the spread of democracy. "The Iraq war was not necessary," writes McClellan, who never hinted at any doubts or questioned his talking points when he was press secretary.
McClellan writes that Bush and his team sold the Iraq war by means of a "political propaganda campaign" in which contradictory evidence was ignored or discarded, caveats or qualifications to arguments were downplayed or dropped and "a dubious al-Qaida connection to Iraq was played up.
"We were more focused on creating a sense of gravity and urgency about the threat from Saddam Hussein than governing on the basis of the truths of the situation," McClellan wrote.
McClellan is not the first presidential spokesman to write a tell-all book, but his is certainly the harshest, at least in recent memory. He says his words as press secretary were sincere but he has come to realize that "some of them were badly misguided. ... I've tried to come to grips with some of the truths that life inside the White House bubble obscured."
White House colleagues were stunned, but not lacking for the day's response. "We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew," said Dana Perino, the current press secretary who was first hired by McClellan as a deputy.
Later in the day, she relayed the reaction of Bush himself: "He's puzzled, he doesn't recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years."
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
-
Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM WHITE HOUSE |
 White House Section Front |
| Add White House headlines to your news reader: |
Sponsored links
Resource guide