It's hard not to notice the explosion of "toldyaso" rhetoric and absolute jubilation at the revelations made by former WH Press Secretary Scott McClellan in his new memoir. Many of us here are looking to this as yet another tool to use in undoing the damage done by the current president and his permanent camapaign syndicate.
However, I can't help but think it's another game of misdirection being played to both hide the truth and provide cover for Bush himself and his own culpability.
Just from reading through this morning's article on Politico you can see evidence that McClellan could be working the whitewash detail. No I'm not talking about the happy moments when Shrub and Scottie were holding hands with the rest of the gang and skipping circles around the press corps (which I assume is the "authentic" and "sincere" part).. I mean the following items:
- 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.
It's always been kinda hard for me to believe that Bush wasn't aware of this situation, no matter how controlling and underhanded Cheney might have been in compromising a CIA operative.
.... He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House "spent most of the first week in a state of denial," and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.
But he writes that he later was told that "Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed."
A state of denial, Scott?
29 Aug 2005, 4:40PM in New Orleans: Bush is in California pimping his Medicare prescip. drug swindle, makes no mention of Katrina.
Oh and I'm sure you all remember this famous picture..
You've got your timeline and your descriptive words mixed up Scotty. If you go by the actual events, Bush wasn't in a state of denial for a week. He was just plain ignorant for the first 72 hours and AT BEST he was a cheerleader to his PISS POOR CROWD OF HAND-PICKED BAFOONS to deal with what was happening in Louisiana.
"I still like and admire President Bush," McClellan writes. "But he 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. ... In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security."
Terribly ill-served? By people he has DELIBERATELY CHOSEN to work with, in some cases multiple times in his political and failed private sector careers. That doesn't sound like someone who is "ill-served" Scott. That sounds like someone who doesn't give a shit what people do as long as they're part of the in crowd.
Like yourself Scott. You were with Bush back in his Texas days, and you followed him to Washington. You stood there for years and shoveled bullshit for these criminals. And now you want to claim that your were duped; that you not only had absolutely no idea what was going on, but that you and Dubya were misled by the big nasty Washington insiders, and that it's the liberal media's fault for not being liberal and doing their job!
FORGIVE ME FOR BEING SO SKEPTICAL OF YOUR FISH STORY.
Oh and by the way Scotty, enjoy all the money you're gonna pull in for "coming clean". You're a real fuckin' hero.