Control Congress is a multi-partisan, issue-oriented political forum that brings together the Left, Right, and everyone in between.

Exclusive: McClellan whacks Bush, White House

Bush out of control?

Politico-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.

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

read more

UPDATE McClellan story matches O’Neill WHY???

Posted by JohnKonop on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 3:56 am | under Uncategorized | |RSS 2.0 feed | Comments and pings closed. |

61 Responses to “Exclusive: McClellan whacks Bush, White House”

  1. bb says:
    June 1, 2008 at 9:34 am

    John,

    Why do you trust a guy who defended Bush for years, then upon getting an offer to write a scathing account of his time with Bush, disregards principle and the truth for his own personal financial gain?

  2. JohnKonop says:
    June 1, 2008 at 11:11 am

    Bart

    Why did McClellan story match what O’Neill said and wrote?

  3. bb says:
    June 1, 2008 at 11:46 am

    I already answered that question John….your turn.

  4. JohnKonop says:
    June 1, 2008 at 1:09 pm

    Bart

    How?

  5. captain_menace says:
    June 1, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    bb,

    The concept you are unfamiliar with here is called: “reflection”.

    The free dictionary defines reflection as: “A thought or an opinion resulting from such consideration.”

    See, many human beings are prone to reconsider a previous position after giving the matter some careful, uninterrupted thought.

    I know this concept may seem odd to you, but it can actually help you to be a better person in your life.

    Try it out. You may find that your family and friends start talking to you again.

  6. JohnKonop says:
    June 1, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    McClellan on ‘propaganda campaign’

    Politico-Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan admitted Sunday that he got caught up in the very Beltway culture of spin and obfuscation he blasts in his new book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”

    “One of my biggest mistakes I think, and I blame myself for this, was I put myself in the position of unknowingly passing along false information,” McClellan told Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

    “I was part of this propaganda campaign, absolutely,” McClellan said while discussing the run-up to the Iraq war.

    The acknowledgement came after Russert spent much of the show’s first half airing examples of situations McClellan defended, or was silent on, which he would later criticize in his scathing memoir. Toward the end of the interview, Russert asked the former Bush spokesman what he had learned.

    “The most important lesson is that it’s important to speak up at the time and I was young and I probably should have spoken up about some of these issues sooner,” he said.

    Continuing the publicity tour for his book — to be officially released on Monday — McClellan said the nation was pulled into the Iraq war by a White House with a “permanent campaign mentality” that “wasn’t as open and forthright as it could be.”

    “When you go to war, you have to build bipartisan support and then you have to sustain it. We couldn’t sustain it because we were not open at the beginning and the president could not go back and admit some of the mistakes that were made early in the build up to the war,” he said. “I think that that hurts our troops the most, because they deserve as much bipartisan support as we can get here in Washington D.C. and the president failed to do that.”

    He said he intends to donate some of the profits from the book to the families of the troops who were injured or killed in the Iraq war.

    The other hot topic on the Sunday shows was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s future in the presidential race. Saturday’s decision by the Democratic National Committee to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations at half strength left rival Sen. Barack Obama 66 delegates shy of clinching the 2,118 delegates needed for the nomination.

    Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson argued that the race isn’t over and used an explanation that will likely echo for the next few days.

    “We’re going to continue to make the argument to superdelegates; we’re going to argue we won the popular vote. More people have voted for Sen. Clinton than Sen. Obama. More people have voted for Sen. Clinton in these primaries than anyone in the history of primaries. That’s an important metric that superdelegates ought to be looking at,” Wolfson told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

    He went on to make the familiar argument that Clinton has done better in crucial swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia and is a stronger general election candidate against Republican Sen. John McCain.

    Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said on ABC’s “This Week” that he thinks Obama will lead in the popular vote after the primary season concludes Tuesday.

    “Most importantly, and even as the Clinton campaign has said on numerous occasions, the nomination is decided by the number of delegates that you have and I think the winner of the majority of those delegates will soon be Sen. Obama,” Gibbs said.

    On “Meet the Press,” former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) told Russert that he is confident that after Tuesday’s primary Obama will collect endorsements from the vast majority of remaining uncommitted superdelegates.

    “I think we’re going to have a nominee before the end of this week,” Daschle said.

    Clinton supporters making the rounds on the Sunday shows refused to directly answer questions about whether the New York senator will drop out of the race if Obama collects 2,118 delegates — saying instead that they expect Clinton to be the nominee.

  7. bb says:
    June 1, 2008 at 5:48 pm

    #48 John.

  8. JohnKonop says:
    June 1, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    Bart

    You have no answer.

  9. GaPatriot says:
    June 1, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    If we are “still in Kosovo today”, what are the stats – you know, troop death counts, money, nation rebuilding costs? I never was a Dem supporter, in fact have always voted Republican. That is why Bush is beyond disappointing to me – shock and awe should have continued until the country was leveled if necessary. Boots on the ground are just not doing it and six years is absurd. Although the $$$ to his friends has flowed unabatedly. And, I do support capitalism, not slavery and treason. It is a shame you can’t see Emperor George has no clothes.

  10. bb says:
    June 2, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL31053.pdf

    “Boots on the ground are just not doing it and six years is absurd” — RRREEEAAALLLLLLLYYYYY….How about “boots on the ground” for 9 years in Kosovo, what is that, ultra-absurd?

    Boots on the ground as you call it is working GaP (much to the dismay of all you defeatocrats determined to see America lose this war). Numerous stories are surfacing with details of the turnaround in Iraq…wouldn’t it be something if that news was displayed as prominently as all the negative, anti-Bush crap coming from so many naive blame America first folks like you, John, DOR, et al?

  11. Sgt Mac says:
    June 3, 2008 at 9:21 am

    Bart – Re#60 – Nicely said!

« Older Comments |