I can understand "having no sympathy" for him (oceanstar17, and others responding to Scott McClellan "Meet The Press" Interview - Videos, Comments).
Since May, 2004, I've been a student of the "Ridhwan School," which is also known as the "Diamond Approach to the Enneagram." A fundamental commitment of the school is "love of the truth for its own sake." As I see comments about McClellan's book and as I notice how hard it is for me to love the truth for its own sake,
I find myself wanting to cut him some slack. Yes, I wish that he had "come to" earlier and had done and said things that would have helped prevent or amelioriate the Iraq tragedy and many other debacles of the Bush admin. In that sense, I agree with Chris Matthew's criticism of George Tenet and Colin Powell that they should have spoken up when it mattered.
My own experience in the Ridhwan School teaches me, however, that "waking up" takes patience with ourselves, courage within ourselves, compassion toward ourselves. Once we've begun to imagine an alternative universe, powerful waves of judgment pound our second thoughts and sweep them away. It's not easy to get them back. I've spent a lot of my life in "if-only" land, beating myself up for not noticing the truth sooner. And I imagine that McClellan has been there, or still goes there from time to time, too.
Compared to McClellan, Tenet and Powell disappoint me most. Esp. Powell. He came from the military. He knew the ethics of resignations, even resignations in protest, when the highest military officers disagree with the president.
I don't know who taught McClellan the ethics of press-secretary-ship or what he was taught. So I cut Powell a lot less slack. Even so, my heart aches for Powell. I'm infuriated to think that this honorable man caved in to Bush's omerta culture and delegated his integrity to Tenet and Bushspeak. Even Tommy Franks retired, when he could have been elevated to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (as I remember it), rather than stay involved in Iraq. As did other generals. I hope that Powell tells his story soon. I think we'll learn something about back-room pressure in this WH.
When McClellan now says that he has a higher loyalty, the loyalty to the truth, I trust him and I rejoice. I wonder what he had to go through to get to this amount of loyalty to the truth. I think he needed the time to decompress that he mentioned on KO. He may well have been unable to come out with this story if he had resigned immediately and gone public with it then.
I hope that he learns one day that his narrative for the war is probably the less accurate version. The more accurate version, as I understand it, is incredibly hard to accept: The WHIG cabal of Rove, Libby, Hughes, and two others planned the Iraq invasion as a way to protect the Republican majority in 2002.
Coming to love the truth for its own sake requires more than individual honesty and courage. It requires some pushback against the powers that be. My wife and I opposed the Bush war from the beginning. We did not believe that Saddam had WMD's. We saw no evidence requiring us to rush in and overthrow Saddam. We were getting enough counter-information from Scott Ritter and Hans Blix to make us think that the US could wait. We also thought that Bush was falling into Saddam's trap, believing Saddam's line that he had WMD's. We thought that Saddam's line was directed toward the Middle East, not the US. We felt sick at the thought of a pre-emptive war being waged in the name of our country.
We also remember feeling isolated. Ours was one of the few houses in our area that had a "No War in Iraq" sign in the window. People were being criticized as unpatriotic for opposing the war.
All this heartache could have been avoided if enough people at the right levels in the Bush administration had had the balls to say no. I doubt that McClellan's speaking out at that time would have mattered. The Bush slime machine was more effective then. All it had to say was "he wasn't in on the meetings."
Even now, Repug loyalists are saying that McClellan should have waited till Bush was out of office. When the buildup for an Iran war is at stake and when Iraq is high on the agenda for this presidential election, his "disloyalty" and "treason" to his former patron may be payback, but it is also supreme patriotism.
Powell or Tenet were old pros. They knew they could resign and could make a fuss about what the President was doing. Compared to them, McClellan was a tyro. So I cut him some slack.