White House ‘puzzled’ by ex-spokesman’s book bashing Bush:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The White House Wednesday said it was “puzzled” by a former spokesman’s memoir in which he accuses the Bush administration of being mired in propaganda and political spin and at times playing loose with the truth.
In excerpts from a 341-page book to be released Monday, Scott McClellan writes on the war in Iraq that
Bush “and his advisers 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.”
“[I]n this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security,” McClellan wrote.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called McClellan’s description of his time at the White House “sad.”
“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House,” Perino 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.”
McClellan’s former White House colleagues had harsher reactions to McClellan’s book.
Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security adviser to Bush, said advisers to the president should speak up when they have policy concerns…
“Scott never did that on any of these issues as best I can remember or as best as I know from any of my White House colleagues,” said Townsend, now a CNN contributor. “For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional.”
Fox News contributor and former White House adviser Karl Rove said on that network Tuesday that the excerpts from the book he’s read sound more like they were written by a “left-wing logger” than his former colleague.
Rove declined to comment to CNN after the Fox News interview.
In a brief phone conversation with CNN Tuesday evening, McClellan made clear that he stands behind the accuracy of his book. McClellan said he cannot give on-the-record quotes yet because of an agreement with his publisher
Another former Bush aide-turned-critic says the reaction to McClellan’s book by his former colleagues has a familiar ring to it.
“They’re saying some of the exact same things about McClellan they said about me,” Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, told CNN.
Clarke left government in 2003. The following year, he accused President Bush of ignoring warnings about the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and of using the attacks to push for war with Iraq.
But Clarke gave McClellan little credit for speaking out now.
“I think the difference with McClellan’s book is he’s now telling us something we all know — that the war with Iraq was a disastrous war [and] was sold with deception. It’s a little different when you say something as I did and a few other people did four or five years ago, when the war was popular and when we were unpopular for saying what we said.”
Besides his criticism of how the administration handled the run-up to the Iraq war, McClellan also sharply criticizes the administration on its handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in the book.
“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency,” he wrote. “Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term.”
Early in the book, which CNN obtained late Tuesday, McClellan wrote that he believes he told untruths on Bush’s behalf in the case of CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked to the media.
Rove and fellow White House advisers Elliot Abrams and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were accused of leaking the name of Plame — whose husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, had gone public with charges the Bush administration had “twisted” facts to justify the war in Iraq…
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/28/mcclellan.book/index.html
The White House said it was puzzled by accusations of:
(1) Propaganda:
Then consider the “news” that Saddam Hussein had a yellowcake link to Niger.
(2) Political Spin:
After loosing the Iraqi terrorism fight – switched focus to world terrorism while still mired in Iraq..
(3) Playing loose with the truth:
Those 16 words.”The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”.
(4) Speak Up when you have policy concerns:
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”…
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml
(5)Karl Rove said: “LEFT WING LOGGER”
Typical neocon NAME CALLING. One neocon that I observed needed four(4) hyphens to put together the name he wanted to call his “LEFT WING” targets.That was the longest name I have seen a neocon assemble. That name did include “bible thumpers”
Do you think you can MAKE a neocon talk about Katrina? Do you think you can MAKE a neocon talk about why America went to war with Iraq? Do you think you can MAKE a neocon talk about any major FOREIGN POLICY performance. Do you think you can MAKE a neocon talk about ANY major DOMESTIC POLICY performance?
DOMESTIC performance is a train-wreck. FOREIGN performance is a train-wreck.
So neocons would like to talk about which terrorists likes what democratic presidential hopefuls. And the same neocons GAVE THE STREETS OF BAGHDAD to the terrorists for about four years. There was NO law and NO order provided by the neocon WAR LOVERS. The streets of Baghdad were left to the terrorists for recruiting, training, human target practice and the like. It would be silly to believe that terrorists were given the run of the streets under Saddam Hussein.
And about the book: it looks like each member of the Bush team successfully “ducked” responding to any accusation in the book. That is typical neocon.
Neocons have been “ducking” the essentials for years.
Tags: baghdad, Bush, karl rove, neocons, propaganda, Scott McClellan, terrorists, White House
