The press has chosen to focus on the motivation of Scott McClellan for writing his book so negative of the Bush White House. What they should be considering is whether engaged in impeachable offenses for starting a war that had no legitimacy:
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, whose new memoir has sparked controversy about the Bush administration's plans before the Iraq war, said Thursday he is "disappointed that things didn't turn out the way we had hoped they would turn out" at the beginning of the administration.
McClellan, whose memoir claims the administration manipulated facts to "sell" the Iraq war, told NBC's Today Show that he became "increasingly disillusioned with things" during his time in the White House.
"My hope is that by writing this book and sharing openly and honestly what I lived and what I learned during my time at the White House that in some small way it might help us move beyond the destructive partisan warfare of the last 15 years," he said of the memoir, excerpts of which were first disclosed earlier this week.
Let's hear from those who should be defending McClellan:
McClellan's sharp critique drew the wrath of administration officials, past and present, on Wednesday.
"This is a wholesale jumping-ship, using the language of the other side in a very harsh, accusatory manner," said Ari Fleischer, who preceded McClellan as press secretary.
"It is sad," said current press secretary Dana Perino, who was hired by McClellan. "This is not the Scott we knew."
"I'm just flabbergasted," says Trent Duffy, a deputy press secretary to McClellan. "Scott never hinted, whispered, breathed any shred of this when we worked together 2½ years."
Perino said President Bush does not plan to comment, saying he "has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers." But she said he was "puzzled, and he doesn't recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years."
As an original member of Bush's political entourage from Texas, McClellan, 40, wasn't expected to follow in the line of presidential loyalists-turned-critics who date back at least to Franklin Roosevelt's administration. Nor was he considered likely to accuse colleagues of confusing "the political propaganda campaign with the realities of the war-making campaign."
McClellan, who declined to comment Wednesday, also is scheduled to appear National Public Radio's Morning Edition and liberal commentator Keith Olbermann's Countdown show on MSNBC this week, to be followed by a book tour starting Wednesday in New York.
Perhaps McClellan's most important claims have to do with the decision he says "pushed Bush's presidency off course" — the decision to invade Iraq.
In his book, McClellan says the administration did not employ "out-and-out deception" but engaged in "shading the truth." That included efforts to make evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's connections to terrorism "just a little more certain, a little less questionable, than they were."
Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., a White House aide during the Clinton administration and a critic of the Iraq war, said that if McClellan's book is accurate, "the price to America for this presidency is beyond what we actually have calculated."
Leon Panetta, a White House chief of staff to Clinton, joined Bush aides in wondering why McClellan had not expressed his views earlier.
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