No need for that type of apology G-man. I'm used to you attacking my character all the time with your exagerations & I think it's apparent that you'll keep doing it.
I guess what it boils down to, MEM, is that your viewpoint is so partisan that its never just a case of "the other side is mistaken." Its always "the other guy is corrupt and/or evil."
The Libby case is just one example. You can have WB and myself saying "well, we think it may have been ill-advised and just one more example of Bush prizing loyalty over competence," but that's not enough for you. It HAS to be, it ALWAYS has to be, that the Republican is corrupt and proceeding with an evil intent.
Conversely, you will bend over backwards to excuse everything a democrat does. Everything. The only criticism of a democrat I can ever recall was your two years later gripe that John Kerry spent too much time windsurfing.
Yes you've made it clear that you feel your views are reasonable.
When I say a Democrat looks guilty I can count on you agreeing with me & even giving me credit for being fair. I also know when I dissagree with you I'll get attacked for being so one sided & "Conversely, you will bend over backwards to excuse everything a democrat does". If you want to concentrate the discusion on your exagerated claims, I'm used to it.
You're both so partisan neither one of you will ever be willing to see the other's point of view.....and unfortunately much of our country is in this state of mind right now. It will take a great Uniter to bring both parties back to the middle of the spectrum and try and govern for all of America.
Like your Vince Foster speculation I'm pretty clear that it's me guessing that is what Bush will do. At any rate time will tell if I'm right. Personally I feel accusing somebody of cold blooded murder should require far more than you've ever presented.
Time will tell.
I've made the argument for Clinton conspiracy in the Vince Foster death across a number of topics over the years.
Foster was left handed, the gun was found in his right hand.
His wound would have caused a lot of bleeding, but there was little blood where his body was found, indicating he was moved to the park where he was found, after his death.
Pressure was given to have Foster's death investigated by local police, rather than FBI, who would have been more likely to find additional evidence.
At precisely the time Foster's body was found, files were already being cleared out of Foster's office.
In addition, DNC-chair/Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was under investigation for pending indictment, and he basically said "If I'm going down, I'm not going down alone." A few days later, he went down over Bosnia, in a plane, and was never heard from again.
There are many other allegations against the Clintons. Regarding Whitewater, the McDougals were imprisoned, one died of cancer in jail, the other was pardoned by Clinton when leaving office (indistinguishable from Bush, if Bush pardons Libby as you speculate, before he leaves office).
My point is, in answer to your statement, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence against bill and Hillary, but not enough to convict the Clintons, beyond what has already been proven.
But there is no lack of arguments to assert my belief in their guilt. I also can accept they might not be guilty of these other charges, but there is some considerable basis for my beliefs, in how much Bill Clinton denied, that he was found to be unquestionably guilty of.
I've probably posted this before but here's Snopes Urban Legends site that addresses "The Clinton body count" It boils down to if somebody died who knew Clinton he is then accused of killing him. Here's the section on Vince Foster...
Quote:
2. Vincent Foster - former White House Counsel, found dead of a gunshot wound to the head and ruled a suicide. He had significant knowledge of the Clintons' financial affairs and was a business partner with Hillary. If the Clintons are guilty of the crimes they are accused of by Larry, Vincent Foster would have detailed knowledge of those crimes.
This laundry list of deaths always refers to someone taking his life as "ruled a suicide," thus implying another conclusion of equal likelihood was capriciously dismissed by someone who had the power to do so. From here on, read "ruled a suicide" as "an investigation was carried out, arriving at this as the only reasonable conclusion." White House deputy counsel Vince Foster committed suicide on the night of 20 July 1993 by shooting himself once in the head, a day after he contacted his doctor about his depression. A note in the form of a draft resignation letter was found in the bottom of his briefcase a week after his death. (Note that this letter was not, as is often claimed, a "suicide note." It was Foster's outline for a letter of resignation.) Foster cited negative Wall Street Journal editorials about him. He was also upset about the much-criticized role of the counsel's office in the controversial firing of seven White House travel office workers. On 10 October 1997, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr released his report on the investigation into Foster's death, the third such investigation (after ones conducted by the coroner and Starr's predecessor, Robert B. Fiske) of the matter. The 114-page summary of a three-year investigation concluded that Foster shot himself with the pistol discovered in his right hand. There was no sign of a struggle, nor any evidence he'd been drugged or intoxicated or that his body had been moved. If Foster had been murdered or if unanswered questions about his death remained, Starr would have been the last person to want to conclude the investigation prematurely. Or are we to believe Starr is part of the cover up, too? And if we buy into the conspiracy theory, what are we expected to believe? That a group of professional killers capable of carrying out dozens of murders all over the world shot Vince Foster, then clumsily dumped him in a park (after he had bled out), planted a gun he didn't own in his hand (without bothering to press his fingerprints onto it), amateurishly forged a suicide note (in several different handwritings), then expected the nation would believe it was suicide?
You're both so partisan neither one of you will ever be willing to see the other's point of view.....and unfortunately much of our country is in this state of mind right now. It will take a great Uniter to bring both parties back to the middle of the spectrum and try and govern for all of America.
I've probably posted this before but here's Snopes Urban Legends site that addresses "The Clinton body count" It boils down to if somebody died who knew Clinton he is then accused of killing him. Here's the section on Vince Foster...
It really boils down to: If Bill Clinton lied, and was proven beyond the slightest doubt to have lied and been guilty of some crimes, then chances are he's guilty of the other things he was accused of, and there just isn't another semen-stained dress to prove it.
It boils down to inconsistencies (in the Vince Foster case, with the McDougals, in the Paula Jones case, and in a number of other circumstances) that cannot be fully explained, and indicate Clinton's guilt.
I've probably posted this before but here's Snopes Urban Legends site that addresses "The Clinton body count" It boils down to if somebody died who knew Clinton he is then accused of killing him. Here's the section on Vince Foster...
It really boils down to: If Bill Clinton lied, and was proven beyond the slightest doubt to have lied and been guilty of some crimes, then chances are he's guilty of the other things he was accused of, and there just isn't another semen-stained dress to prove it.
It boils down to inconsistencies (in the Vince Foster case, with the McDougals, in the Paula Jones case, and in a number of other circumstances) that cannot be fully explained, and indicate Clinton's guilt.
so if he lied about getting a blow job and cheating on his wife he must also be guilty of murder?
It really boils down to: If Bill Clinton lied, and was proven beyond the slightest doubt to have lied and been guilty of some crimes, then chances are he's guilty of the other things he was accused of, and there just isn't another semen-stained dress to prove it.
It boils down to inconsistencies (in the Vince Foster case, with the McDougals, in the Paula Jones case, and in a number of other circumstances) that cannot be fully explained, and indicate Clinton's guilt.
Originally Posted By: Friendly Neighborhood Ray-man
so if he lied about getting a blow job and cheating on his wife he must also be guilty of murder?
The charges were perjury before a grand jury, and obstructing justice.
For which Clinton was disbarred as a lawyer, fined, and was censured by the Congress and Senate.
Out of disdain for Clinton's actions, the Supreme Court also did not attend Clinton's subsequent State of the Union address. So obviously the highest authorities on law and justice in our country see the significance of Clinton's actions as considerably more severe than you dismissively try to minimize them. While you partisanly hold a much higher and disproportionate standard for Republicans, I might add.
Again: in Watergate, Republicans crossed over and supported impeachment, which finally compelled Nixon to resign. I'm proud that Republicans put justice and the best interests of the nation above party loyalty. Likewise, in the recent Harriet Myers nomination, in the crushed immigration bill, and in social security reform, among others. (A higher concern for the national interest over political loyalty that George W. Bush and members of his administration do not share with more mainstream ideological Republicans.)
In the same situation, while unable to dismiss the charges, Democrats did everything they could to keep an unquestionably corrupt Bill Clinton in office, to selfishly preserve their own political dominance, despite Clinton's proven and undeniable guilt.
uh huh. Nixon covered up a burglary, Bush abused his power to free a man who lied about an act which ruined a career, and Clinton lied about screwing around with some intern in his office. You have look at the gravity of the act. and the motives behind it.
Originally Posted By: Friendly Neighborhood Ray-man
Bush abused his power to free a man who lied...
Other than the fact that you, personally, disagree with his action, do you have any legal other competent authority to argue that he "abused his power", considering that the law provides him unfettered discretion to grant clemency?
I checked your sites WB that you feel seem to trump all the official investigations including Starr's 3 year investigation that all concluded Foster committed suicide. The second one starts out declaring "This is the story that nobody dares touch. " and then uses Rush Limbaugh & Matt Drudge as examples.
For the harder claims I suggest this site that debunks much of the right wing conspiracy theorists and exposes some of the behind the scenes antics. Moldea: Vincent Foster committed suicide
There's at least as much evidence that Vince Foster was murdered as there that Bush caused 9-11.
Let's face it: what probably happened to Foster was that he finally saw the Hildebeast without any makeup. That would kill any man. Having no way to explain this, the Clintonistas concocted the suicide.
I checked your sites WB that you feel seem to trump all the official investigations including Starr's 3 year investigation that all concluded Foster committed suicide. The second one starts out declaring "This is the story that nobody dares touch. " and then uses Rush Limbaugh & Matt Drudge as examples.
For the harder claims I suggest this site that debunks much of the right wing conspiracy theorists and exposes some of the behind the scenes antics. Moldea: Vincent Foster committed suicide
I just read the whole page you linked, MEM, thanks for taking the time to post it.
Even before you posted your link, I looked at Michael Rivero's site as more of a "raw data" link than the other site I posted. And by that I mean that I think he posted what some of the basic controversial discrepancies were/are in the Foster suicide case. I don't take as absolute fact what he says, but I do accept that he outlines what the basic points of controversy are, and I recognized immediately on reading Rivero's site that he isn't a journalist. That doesn't mean Rivero is absolutely wrong on any or all points from the outset, but I do recognize his site is written with a strong opinion.
Modea, in defending his book against Rivero's attacks, doesn't dispute the basic points of controversy, he only disputes Rivero's accusation that he glossed over the major inconsistencies of the Vince Foster suicide investigation. And in his explanations in answer to Rivero's comments, Modea certainly satisfies any doubt on my part that he (Modea) glossed over any of the points. Modea acknowledges all the inconsistencies, but still comes to the conclusion that Vince Foster committed suicide and was not murdered.
I still have my suspicions about those points of controversy in Foster's suicide, and while I don't say with absolute certainty that Foster was murdered, there are some noteworthy inconsistencies.
Like John F. Kennedy's assassination, I've seen (and discussed in previous topics here) that forensics have proven that Oswald could have killed Kennedy alone. And all Oswald's actions described in the Warren report have been duplicated, and shown that Oswald could have done them in the timeframe of the assassination. But I could also accept that there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll. But at this point I still think Oswald did it alone.
Likewise, I could believe Foster committed suicide or was murdered. But in Foster's case, I lean more toward believing in foul play.
If not murder, I still believe (1)that Foster's body was moved for some reason after his death. And (2) that pressure was given to have park police investigate, rather than the far more competent FBI, whose investigation would have likely yielded more results. And (3)I find it highly suspect that at the precise time Foster's body was found, the Clintons were having the files taken from Foster's office. And (4) while Foster owned many guns, it's not clear that the gun that killed him was one he owned.
These things could all have been ass-covering after the fact by the Clintons, upon hearing of Foster's suicide. But they are suspect.
I'm moved to believe that a special prosecutor found Foster's death to be a suicide. And also persuaded that Modea, an experienced crime investigator and reporter, also saw the inconsistencies, and still ruled Foster's death a suicide. But I still am open to the possibility of conspiracy in Foster's death. There are still unanswered questions.
And like the JFK assassination, we'll probably never have all the answers, to our complete satisfaction. It would be great if Carlos the Jackal came out of the woodwork and , Deep-Throat-like, gave us the full record on his deathbed.
What an amazingly refreshing and grown up admission from a former member of the Bush Administration. When shown a clip of Valerie Plame Wilson castigating him for revealing her identity to Robert Novak by Wolf Blitzer, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has really only one thing to say: She’s right.
I still don't buy that he didn't know she was a covert agent though.
In the second clip, Wolf asks Armitage about his work with the CSIS Commission on “Smart Power.” Armitage’s response to the way that Bush & Co. have prosecuted the “War on Terror” sounds amazingly like a progressive position:
Quote:
BLITZER: Are you suggesting that the “War on Terror” is not the central component of U.S. policy right now?
ARMITAGE: There’s two different things. I’m suggesting that it perhaps shouldn’t be. The fact that we make a war on “terror”–which I think is a bit of a misnomer—perhaps it should be a war on extremism, certainly Islamic extremism right now—is keeping us from focusing on other issues, both domestic and international. Look, these terrorists want to hurt us; they’re a real and growing threat. But absent the availability of WMDs to them, they don’t pose an existential threat to us. This is not like fascism during the second world war or communism. The threat they pose to us is whether we in response to their activities will actually do harm to ourselves by changing our way of life, by suspending writs of habeas corpus and by engaging in such activities as torture.
Well to be fair to Armitage didn't expect that a covert agent would be named in a memo circulated by the White House.
Quote:
"Amitage had been sent a key memo about Wilson's trip that referred to his wife and her CIA connection, and this memo had been written, according to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, at the request of I. Lewis Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. ... The memo included information on Valerie Wilson's role in a meeting at the CIA that led to her husband's trip. This critical memo was ... based on notes that were not accurate."
Although I guess Armitage also described himself as "a terrible gossip" during the Iran-contra scandal & was accused of providing false testimony by Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh.
Last edited by Matter-eater Man; 2007-11-1311:06 AM.
"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
There was one problem. It was not true.
I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself." - [Former White House press secretary] Scott McClellan
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative.
In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.
"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."
Bush's chief of staff at the time was Andrew Card.
The excerpt, posted on the Web site of publisher PublicAffairs, renews questions about what went on in the West Wing and how much Bush and Cheney knew about the leak. For years, it was McClellan's job to field — and often duck — those types of questions.
Now that he's spurring them, answers are equally hard to come by.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said it wasn't clear what McClellan meant in the excerpt. "The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass on false information," she said.
McClellan turned down interview requests Tuesday.
Plame maintains the White House quietly outed her to reporters. Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said the leak was retribution for his public criticism of the Iraq war. The accusation dogged the administration and made Plame a cause celebre among many Democrats.
McClellan's book, "What Happened," isn't due out until April, and the excerpt released Monday was merely a teaser. It doesn't get into detail about how Bush and Cheney were involved or reveal what happened behind the scenes.
Yet the teaser provided enough fodder for administration critics.
"Just when you think the credibility of this White House can't get any lower, another shoe drops," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "If the Bush administration won't even tell the truth to its official spokesman, how can the American people expect to be told the truth either?"
In the fall of 2003, after authorities began investigating the leak, McClellan told reporters that he'd personally spoken to Rove, who was Bush's top political adviser, and Libby, who was Cheney's chief of staff.
"They're good individuals, they're important members of our White House team, and that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved," McClellan said at the time.
Both men, however, were involved. Rove was one of the original sources for the newspaper column that identified Plame. Libby also spoke to reporters about the CIA officer and was convicted of lying about those discussions. He is the only person to be charged in the case.
Since that news conference, however, the official White House stance has shifted and it has been difficult to get a clear picture of what happened behind closed doors around the time of the leak.
McClellan's flat denials gave way to a steady drumbeat of "no comment." And Bush's original pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak became a promise to fire anyone who "committed a crime."
In a CNN interview earlier this year, McClellan made no suggestion that Bush knew either Libby or Rove was involved in the leak. McClellan said his statements to reporters were what he and the president "believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given."
Bush most recently addressed the issue in July after commuting Libby's 30-month prison term. He acknowledged that some in the White House were involved in the leak. Then, after repeatedly declining to discuss the ongoing investigation, he said the case was closed and it was time to move on.
Associated Press writer Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.
Tonight on Countdown, Keith Olbermann talked to MSNBC’s David Shuster about revelations from former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book, that President Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove were directly involved in deceiving the American people about their roles in outing covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame. Anyone paying attention knew these allegations to be true all along, but as you would expect, Olbermann and Shuster nail it.
Keith also spoke with John Dean (video below) about the resurrected scandal and brought up some more than interesting points. The Plame leak investigation is still ongoing, Patrick Fitzgerald never formally closed it. Dean suggests that there is a real possibility that these allegations open the door to a possible conspiracy to defraud the government charge and if Fitzgerald found enough evidence to proceed with his investigation, he could do so at any time. We can only hope…
Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan does not believe President Bush lied to him about the role of White House aides I. Lewis Scooter Libby or Karl Rove in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, according to McClellan's publisher.
Peter Osnos, the founder and editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Books, which is publishing McClellan's book in April, tells NBC from his Connecticut home that McCLellan, "Did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him."
Osnos says when McClellan went before the White House press corps in 2003 to publicly exonerate Libby and Rove, the problem was that his statement was not true. Osnos said the president told McClellan what "he thought to be the case." But, he says, McClellan believes, "the president didn't know it was not true."
Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan does not believe President Bush lied to him about the role of White House aides I. Lewis Scooter Libby or Karl Rove in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, according to McClellan's publisher.
Peter Osnos, the founder and editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Books, which is publishing McClellan's book in April, tells NBC from his Connecticut home that McCLellan, "Did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him."
Osnos says when McClellan went before the White House press corps in 2003 to publicly exonerate Libby and Rove, the problem was that his statement was not true. Osnos said the president told McClellan what "he thought to be the case." But, he says, McClellan believes, "the president didn't know it was not true."
Well that's all well and good but the larger point still stands. Where does the buck stop in this White House? How can a President, if this is in fact so, surround himself with people who deliberately mislead him? Into war even.
Let Jack Cafferty set you straight. (transcript provided for the YouTube impaired)
Quote:
Jack Cafferty: Well, a couple of things occur to me. The first one is, whoever is doing the PR for McClellan’s book ought to get a raise, because he’s doing a masterful of creating buzz and interest in a book that won’t even be out until next April. The second thing is, it doesn’t really seem to me like it’s breaking news that the administration, the White House, may have misled one of their own about something. After all, they’ve been lying to the rest of the country about a whole bunch of stuff for the better part of six and a half years. You remember when the story broke about the CIA agent and President Bush said I will fire anybody in the White House who was involved in compromising the identity of a CIA agent? Well, that was a lie wasn’t it? Because Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and some of those folks, they were up to their armpits in the compromising of Valerie Plame’s identity. so the President changed and he said I will fire anybody who is convicted of committing a crime in conjunction with the outing of a C… So I mean that place has turned into an oil slick a long time ago and I don’t believe a whole bunch of anything that comes out of there these days. … [snip]
Suzanne Malveaux: Gloria, how’s this going to be perceived by the White House? Who’s the potential fall guy in all of this?
Gloria Borger: Well, they are not happy obviously because nobody wants to see the President accused of lying and I think the key word to look at here which everybody seems to be throwing around is “knowingly.” I did not “knowingly” tell somebody a falsehood. If the President actually told Scott McClellan that nobody in the White House had leaked Valerie Plame’s name, that is probably what the Vice President, what the President was told. I agree with John. The question is who told the President that? Was it the Vice President? And we know how close the vice President was to Scooter Libby. And did Karl Rove technically leak Valerie Plame’s name or did he say to the Time correspondent when the Time correspondent raised it, said Yeah, I heard that.’ Is that technically leaking her name? Maybe not. I think this whole thing is a bunch of technicalities right now and by the way, I agree with you Jack this is a big publicity stunt because really nobody cares anymore.
Cafferty: Well I care, and I’ll tell you why I care. George Bush is the President of the United States and this idea that he was somehow victimized by his own people, he didn’t know what was going on. He’s the President. This was a huge story at the time.
Borger: But what if he’s lied to Jack? What if somebody lied to the President?
Cafferty: Excuse me. Excuse me. The buck stops at the oval office. He’s in charge. It’s up to him to find out who’s telling the truth and who isn’t. It’s up to him to tell the American people what went on in his White House. It’s his, it’s his White House. It’s his White House.
Borger: I think we’ll hear that in his memoir. I think when he writes his memoir, when he writes his memoir maybe we’ll get to the bottom of it. ( )
Cafferty: I’d like to hear it now. No, I’d like to hear it now. There might still be time to impeach him.
Borger: I would to. I’d like to hear it.
Malveaux: Should we wait for the memoirs? Does anybody believe the President should jump in now, or the next 15 months?
Cafferty: No. How about the American public be told what the chief executive office of the United States government is up to? How about if we were told the truth? Wouldn’t that be a switch?
Thank God for Jack Cafferty. Wait for Bush's memoirs. Because they've been so truthful and forthcoming about so many other things.
President Bush “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment,” and has engaged in “self-deception” to justify his political ends, Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, writes in a critical new memoir about his years in the West Wing.
In addition, Mr. McClellan writes, the decision to invade Iraq was a “serious strategic blunder,” and yet, in his view, it was not the biggest mistake the Bush White House made. That, he says, was “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed." ...
Mr. McClellan writes that top White House officials deceived him about the administration’s involvement in the leaking of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. He says he did not know for almost two years that his statements from the press room that Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr. were not involved in the leak were a lie.
“Neither, I believe, did President Bush,” Mr. McClellan writes. “He too had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”
To quote Morpheus in the Matrix. Welcome to the real world, Scott. A shame we'll probably not know until this White House is gone, just how much damage the bush Administration did as as far as Iran's nuclear program is concerned. Contrary to the right wing lie, Plame wasn't just a secretary, she was the head of a CIA dummy corporation which was investigating Iran's nuclear program. The one all the right wingers are suddenly so worried about. Funny how it wasn't that big a deal when it was about getting Joe Wilson via his wife for not repeating the Iraq lie.
You know, if the right wasn't always so busy trying to repeat and defend lies and liars, we'd probably actually be a lot safer than we are today.
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.”
• 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.
A few reporters were offered advance copies of the book, with the restriction that their stories not appear until Sunday, the day before the official publication date. Politico declined and purchased “What Happened” at a Washington bookstore.
The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.
McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.
Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. 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.”
“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”
McClellan, who turned 40 in February, was press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. An Austin native from a political family, he began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999, was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and was chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush’s first term.
“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.”
In a small sign of how thoroughly McClellan has adopted the outsider’s role, he refers at times to his former boss as “Bush,” when he is universally referred to by insiders as “the president.”
McClellan lost some of his friends in the administration last November when his publisher released an excerpt from the book that appeared to accuse Bush of participating in the cover-up of the Plame leak. The book, however, makes clear that McClellan believes Bush was also a victim of misinformation.
The book begins with McClellan’s statement to the press that he had talked with Rove and Libby and that they had assured him they “were not involved in … the leaking of classified information.”
At Libby’s trial, testimony showed the two had talked with reporters about the officer, however elliptically.
“I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood,” McClellan writes. “It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively. I didn’t learn that what I’d said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later.
“Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He, too, had been deceived and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”
McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case.
“There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” he writes. “It was in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. … Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], … Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.
“I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. … At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much. …
“The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. … I don’t know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people’s involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence.”
McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush's liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.
“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
Decrying the Bush administration’s “excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance,” McClellan recommends that future presidents appoint a “deputy chief of staff for governing” who “would be responsible for making sure the president is continually and consistently committed to a high level of openness and forthrightness and transcending partisanship to achieve unity.
“I frequently stumbled along the way,” McClellan acknowledges in the book’s preface. “My own story, however, is of small importance in the broad historical picture. More significant is the larger story in which I played a minor role: the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off course.”
Even some of the chapter titles are brutal: “The Permanent Campaign,” “Deniability,” “Triumph and Illusion,” “Revelation and Humiliation” and “Out of Touch.”
“I think the concern about liberal bias helps to explain the tendency of the Bush team to build walls against the media,” McClellan writes in a chapter in which he says he dealt “happily enough” with liberal reporters. “Unfortunately, the press secretary at times found himself outside those walls as well.”
The book’s center has eight slick pages with 19 photos, eight of them depicting McClellan with the president. Those making cameos include Cheney, Rove, Bartlett, Mark Knoller of CBS News, former Assistant Press Secretary Reed Dickens and, aboard Air Force One, former press office official Peter Watkins and former White House stenographer Greg North.
In the acknowledgments, McClellan thanks each member of his former staff by name.
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.”
• McClellan describes his preparation for briefing reporters during the Plame frenzy: “I could feel the adrenaline flowing as I gave the go-ahead for Josh Deckard, one of my hard-working, underpaid press office staff, … to give the two-minute warning so the networks could prepare to switch to live coverage the moment I stepped into the briefing room.”
• “‘Matrix’ was the code name the Secret Service used for the White House press secretary."
McClellan is on the lecture circuit and remains in the Washington area with his wife, Jill.
Wait for it... here's where another bush loyalist who comes clean gets attacked mercilessly by the right in order to keep their stack of cards from collapsing even further.
President Bush “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment,” and has engaged in “self-deception” to justify his political ends, Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, writes in a critical new memoir about his years in the West Wing.
In addition, Mr. McClellan writes, the decision to invade Iraq was a “serious strategic blunder,” and yet, in his view, it was not the biggest mistake the Bush White House made. That, he says, was “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed." ...
Mr. McClellan writes that top White House officials deceived him about the administration’s involvement in the leaking of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. He says he did not know for almost two years that his statements from the press room that Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr. were not involved in the leak were a lie.
“Neither, I believe, did President Bush,” Mr. McClellan writes. “He too had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”
To quote Morpheus in the Matrix. Welcome to the real world, Scott. A shame we'll probably not know until this White House is gone, just how much damage the bush Administration did as as far as Iran's nuclear program is concerned. Contrary to the right wing lie, Plame wasn't just a secretary, she was the head of a CIA dummy corporation which was investigating Iran's nuclear program. The one all the right wingers are suddenly so worried about. Funny how it wasn't that big a deal when it was about getting Joe Wilson via his wife for not repeating the Iraq lie.
You know, if the right wasn't always so busy trying to repeat and defend lies and liars, we'd probably actually be a lot safer than we are today.
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.”
• 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.
A few reporters were offered advance copies of the book, with the restriction that their stories not appear until Sunday, the day before the official publication date. Politico declined and purchased “What Happened” at a Washington bookstore.
The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.
McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.
Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. 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.”
“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”
McClellan, who turned 40 in February, was press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. An Austin native from a political family, he began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999, was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and was chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush’s first term.
“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.”
In a small sign of how thoroughly McClellan has adopted the outsider’s role, he refers at times to his former boss as “Bush,” when he is universally referred to by insiders as “the president.”
McClellan lost some of his friends in the administration last November when his publisher released an excerpt from the book that appeared to accuse Bush of participating in the cover-up of the Plame leak. The book, however, makes clear that McClellan believes Bush was also a victim of misinformation.
The book begins with McClellan’s statement to the press that he had talked with Rove and Libby and that they had assured him they “were not involved in … the leaking of classified information.”
At Libby’s trial, testimony showed the two had talked with reporters about the officer, however elliptically.
“I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood,” McClellan writes. “It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively. I didn’t learn that what I’d said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later.
“Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He, too, had been deceived and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”
McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case.
“There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” he writes. “It was in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. … Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], … Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.
“I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. … At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much. …
“The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. … I don’t know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people’s involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence.”
McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush's liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.
“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
Decrying the Bush administration’s “excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance,” McClellan recommends that future presidents appoint a “deputy chief of staff for governing” who “would be responsible for making sure the president is continually and consistently committed to a high level of openness and forthrightness and transcending partisanship to achieve unity.
“I frequently stumbled along the way,” McClellan acknowledges in the book’s preface. “My own story, however, is of small importance in the broad historical picture. More significant is the larger story in which I played a minor role: the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off course.”
Even some of the chapter titles are brutal: “The Permanent Campaign,” “Deniability,” “Triumph and Illusion,” “Revelation and Humiliation” and “Out of Touch.”
“I think the concern about liberal bias helps to explain the tendency of the Bush team to build walls against the media,” McClellan writes in a chapter in which he says he dealt “happily enough” with liberal reporters. “Unfortunately, the press secretary at times found himself outside those walls as well.”
The book’s center has eight slick pages with 19 photos, eight of them depicting McClellan with the president. Those making cameos include Cheney, Rove, Bartlett, Mark Knoller of CBS News, former Assistant Press Secretary Reed Dickens and, aboard Air Force One, former press office official Peter Watkins and former White House stenographer Greg North.
In the acknowledgments, McClellan thanks each member of his former staff by name.
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.”
• McClellan describes his preparation for briefing reporters during the Plame frenzy: “I could feel the adrenaline flowing as I gave the go-ahead for Josh Deckard, one of my hard-working, underpaid press office staff, … to give the two-minute warning so the networks could prepare to switch to live coverage the moment I stepped into the briefing room.”
• “‘Matrix’ was the code name the Secret Service used for the White House press secretary."
McClellan is on the lecture circuit and remains in the Washington area with his wife, Jill.
Wait for it... here's where another bush loyalist who comes clean gets attacked mercilessly by the right in order to keep their stack of cards from collapsing even further.
Gullible assholes.
Instad of making that post you could have been reading your daughter a bed time story.
November 6th, 2012: Americas new Independence Day.
Actually, at the time he made that post, it was approximately 7:20 am, California time. He could have been fixing her a nice breakfast and playing with her before school (or nursery school).
Actually, whomod, if what is being reported turns out to be accurate, I think the Bush administration deserves a roasting for this.
I will note however, that McClellan, rather than blame Bush, seems to think that Bush was misled too.
Regardless, this would only exonerate him to the extent that it proves he's not unethical, simply incompetent.
A roasting? If this is accurate, this deserves more than a roasting.
As far as Bush being 'misled', McLellan, in his cocaine story details Bush's capacity for self deception and ultimately believing his own lies.
But it's cute how you'd rather see Bush as an incompetent leader rather than a liar and mass murderer. Either one is pretty bad and either one gets thousands of Americans killed just the same.
McLellan is critical of Bush himself for his inability to "change and grow" in the role of president.
Bush seemed unconcerned when the rationale for the war in Iraq — that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction — was shown to be fallacious, he writes.
Bush "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment," McClellan writes.
Any way you slice it, this is damning stuff indeed. Criminal stuff actually.
Nobody cares what a reductive fuck like you thinks. If we need to know how to get to sesame street or the best way to rape barnyard animals then we'll ask you first.
)
Because they've been so truthful and forthcoming about so many other things.