CovenantNews.com

McClellan whacks Bush, White House

Mike Allen / Politico.com:
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush "veered terribly off course," was not "open and forthright on Iraq," and took a "permanent campaign approach" to governing at the expense of candor and competence. McClellan charges that Bush relied on "propaganda" to sell the 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."

Related:
Bush Misled U.S. on Iraq, Former Aide Says in New Book
By Ken Herman / Cox News Service
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. 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."

In Ex-Spokesman's Book, Harsh Words for Bush
By Elisabeth Bumiller / The New York Times
PHOENIX -- President Bush "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment," and has engaged in "self-deception" to justify his political ends, Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, writes in a critical new memoir about his years in the West Wing. In addition, Mr. McClellan writes, the decision to invade Iraq was a "serious strategic blunder," and yet, in his view, it was not the biggest mistake the Bush White House made. That, he says, was "a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed."

Posted by Editor at May 28, 2008 03:43 PM