IRAQ: Scott McClellan Blasts Bush, the Administration and the Press
28 May 2008 3:30 pm by Taylor Marsh
BY TAYLOR MARSH
Or, How The American People Were Screwed Because the Fourth Estate and
Democrats in Congress Didn’t Do Their Jobs.
But the real fault lies first at the doors of the traditional media, particularly
The New York Times and their horrific pimping of Judith Miller’s WMD
stories, though there’s plenty of blame to go around.
We also must understand
that the entire political structure of our country lives and breathes in multiple
bubbles of political loyalties where the power is held and the decisions of
our country are made and our futures are sealed. The partisan nature of our
politics also hurts the American public, because so few people are willing to
take on the power base on which they depend. So without the fourth estate our
democratic republic has no chance. That’s why the fifth estate, the world of
internet blogging and reporting, is now taking on the traditional press with
the ferociousness they’ve never experienced before.
In his book, according to excerpts reported today, Scott McClellan unloads. I’m particularly pleased that Joseph
and Valerie Wilson get some real candor on what Cheney and the White House did
to both of them.
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.”• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held
a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak
case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan
was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given
him all the facts.• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s
senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s
chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role
in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
Among other notable passages:
• Steve Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, said about
the erroneous assertion about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium, included in
the State of the Union address of 2003: “Signing off on these facts
is my responsibility. … And in this case, I blew it. I think the only
solution is for me to resign.” The offer “was rejected almost
out of hand by others present,” McClellan writes.• Bush was “clearly irritated, … steamed,” when McClellan
informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street
Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion:
“‘It’s unacceptable,’ Bush continued, his voice rising.
‘He shouldn’t be talking about that.’”• “As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the
administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although
the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some
of them were badly misguided.”• “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.”
The press were patsies. Part of the problem was the imbed program. The other
problem is blatant, outright cowardice, because they were trying to protect
their access.
David Gregory is particularly defensive over the shots against the media. To
be fair, I believe Gregory is one of the toughest reporters to go at Bush and
the administration, but it’s clear he feels that the glaring attention is unwarranted. When looking at the press as a whole, I couldn’t disagree with him more.
I also think the American people have to take blame in not questioning more. In relinquishing their duties as citizens of a democratic republic, which rises and falls on the bravery of the citizenry.
However, Democrats in Congress have a huge burden to carry on why we went to
war in Iraq. Anyone who voted to authorize Bush’s misadventure in Iraq will
have to carry this burden for the rest of their lives, though I clearly do not have to tell them something of which they are painfully aware.
As for the political implications in the primary season, Iraq has been there
from the beginning. The voters were hungry to grab on to anyone who was against
the war, that’s how desperate voters have been to absolve themselves of their
own complicity at the time. It’s important to report that Senator Clinton has
paid dearly for her vote on Iraq, which I believe is the main reason her nomination
fight has been so incredibly difficult. She didn’t apologize, for good reason,
but she wants that vote back. It doesn’t work that way. Meanwhile, Barack Obama,
in a safe district, gave an anti-Iraq war speech, which at the time no one noticed.
The reality is, however, that though Clinton voted for the war, there
is no evidence whatsoever that Obama would have voted against the war in Iraq
if he were a senator at the time, which I’ve written and talked about again
and again. Whether it’s the MoveOn.org Petreaus vote, which he
ducked; or the Kyl-Lieberman vote, which he ducked; or his speech against a
timeline for Iraq when he was in the Senate; or his “present” votes
in the Illinois legislature, Barack Obama has never shown any courage whatsoever
in stepping out on anything controversial and taking a tough stand. That he
gets credit for a speech, which was followed by no action when he had the chance
illustrates the pitiful standards by which the Democratic electorate holds their
“leaders.”
As for the general election, John McCain will be on damage control for the
duration. If Bush wasn’t nuclear before he sure is now.
But as to Obama and Clinton on Iraq, Joseph Wilson said it best in
an interview he and his wife Valerie gave to me a few months ago. It’s a
perfect time to let him speak again.
“Well, I think the fact that’s dominated the narrative is an
indication of how little people really understand the dynamics of the debate
as it was going on at the time. And the people making a lot of hay over this
weren’t there. I was there. I was fighting the fight. I looked to the left
of me. I looked to the right of me. I didn’t see Barack Obama anywhere. I
was out there and there is nobody who can deny that. … I didn’t
talk to Edwards about it because he was a co-sponsor of that particular resolution,
whereas a lot of us were trying to fight for more restrictive language. Being
in the minority, you couldn’t get that restrictive language at that time.
So what happened the day after the bill was passed?
Hillary Clinton and Robert
Byrd went down and submitted another bill which further restricted, attempted
to restrict the ability for the president to act. But in actual fact, those
who were there are the debate will remember that the American people and the
U.S. Congress were sold on this resolution not because the president wanted
to go to war, because he said publicly, I do not want this resolution to go
to war. I want this resolution so I can get to the United Nations and get
intrusive inspections. That’s what Colin Powell said. That’s what the president
of the United States said and that’s what they got. They got a resolution
that permitted the president of the United States to go to the U.N. and get
intrusive inspections. The great betrayal of the America people is not in
that Resolution. It was in the president not allowing the inspections to reach
their natural conclusions. Her short circuited the process. That is the betrayal
of the country. That is the betrayal of the Congress. That’s the betrayal
of the American people. That’s the betrayal of the world. People who don’t
remember that are trying to spin this for their own particular short-term
partisan interest and they should not be allowed to get away with it. The
most important thing of course now, that aside, … is what is it going to
take to get out of there in a way that, one, protects our national security
interests, which has been terribly compromised in the region. … ..”
