McClellan’s No Hero
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Bush, IraqSo, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has written a book accusing the Bush Administration of numerous misdeeds including relying on propaganda in the lead up to the Iraq invasion. I have no doubt that Bush and his team utilized propaganda techniques in the “selling” of the Iraq War. After all, this administration has repeatedly confused marketing with leadership. But McClellan is no hero for writing a tell-all.
Even if everything he says is 100% true, why did he wait until now to speak? Why wait until a book contract and the promise of royalties came along before opening up? Wouldn’t a better man, a braver man have spoken up when the alleged misdeeds were occurring? If he thought the press was being too easy on the administration during the lead-up to war, couldn’t he have at least done some “off the record” communication with reporters? If McClellan believed the war was being sold on false pretenses, didn’t he have a duty to say something back then? Waiting until he could profit from a tell-all book means either what he witnessed really wasn’t that awful OR he’s a coward for not doing something when something could have been done. Neither scenario speaks well of the man.
Maybe what McClellan has written is completely true. But because he waited until now to make his accusations, we’ll never know for sure.
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May 28th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
It’s of a piece with the various generals who — only after they had their final star and the pension that goes with it — started telling the truth about strategy and tactics in Iraq. It’s interesting. I think it’s probably true. The White House attempt to discredit him is pitiful. But yeah, it might have been helpful if McClellan had found his conscience just a bit earlier.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
If you have to ask then you obviously don’t understand politics.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Ehhh…I think that’s some particularly shaky logic. If he would have written a tell-all right after he got out, it would have been perceived as more true? Highly doubtful. Actually, it probably would have been seen as him trying to cash out quicker.
Also, I think the White House’s spin is telling. They’re saying “this is not the Scott McClellan we knew.” Both Karl Rove and Dana Perino have said the exact same thing now. These people know how to paint McClellan as a money-grubbing opportunist and they’re already doing it. Because let’s not forget what they did to Richard Clarke, in conjunction with Fox News. Everybody asked, “Why write a book?” Well, people write books because there’s a lot to say and they want a verifiable written record that somebody can point to. Yes, there’s money involved, but money doesn’t make accusations false…it just makes them easier to discredit.
You know what I’m waiting for? Somebody who has the means to write a book like this and donate all their royalties to Walter Reed hospital.
One other thing…it’ll be telling to see how many tell-alls are written after this next Presidency. Because if not, it makes the ones about Bush all the more vibrant.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Meh. Mixed motives are the dominant currency of 21st century politics and media. He could have had all sorts of reasons for having waited. And had he “bravely” aired these comments some time ago, he would have been savaged anyway, by Bush loyalists, as a disgruntled, misguided, disloyal, yadayadayada.
As is, he gets to tell his story, and gets paid for it. So what? I don’t really have any sort of actual affirmative evidence that suggests that Mr McClellan’s conscience is not clear. People playing politics LOVE to use questions of timing as license to launch innuendo, such as you have here.
But the stubborn fact is that, absent actual evidence, transcripts, and tapes, we all have to make the individual choice about whether to believe McClellan, based primary on whether his accounts have the ring of truth to them. Ultimately, timing doesn’t really tell us anything. We don’t even know, really, whether he delayed as a FAVOR, or until he was sure about how he felt, or solely at the behest of greedy publishers, or what.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
A lot of what I’m seeing in the news reports of McClellan’s book (I haven’t seen the actual book yet) doesn’t ring true based on my own memories of the run-up to the war and afterward. Also, some of what he’s supposed to be claiming is contradicted by transcripts and other documents available from Douglas Feith’s recent book, “War and Decision.” Feith set up a website so that you can actually click on hyperlinks to many of the source documents.
McClellan’s alleged remarks about Saddam trying to by uranium from Africa are contradicted by the 2004 Butler Commission Report.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Justin,
Actually, what I meant was, if he spoke up at the time, news media would have had the opportunity to investigate his claims while we were still preparing for war. Waiting until years later insures that this can’t really be much more than a he said/she said situation. The whistle-blowers in the Bush administration all seem to blow their whistles after it’s too late.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“I just want to be loved, is that so wrong?”
-Scott McClellan
May 28th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Ahh, I didn’t realize you were talking about so far back. But that’s kind of moot in this argument since he left in 2005, yes? It should be around that time we’re talking about since that’s what actually happened.
As far as whistleblowers go, do you think they’re worried about actually revealing classified information and facing serious criminal charges if they do it before the fact? Also, how can you prove half of this stuff? Most of it is opinions from insiders, and as such should carry the amount of weight you let it.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
“…as such should carry the amount of weight you let it…”
It SHOULD carry little weight at all, in so far as it lacks evidentiary value. It WILL carry as much weight as people who believe it give it.
And no, I didn’t believe the post-Clinton tell-alls either. Credibility declines when money is involved, and no one gets paid for writing a boring memoir that doesn’t stir the pot and generate sales.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
First answer: Valerie Plame. Need more be said about people who speak up?
Second answer: I read this comment on another site. It compared him to the people who were in Scientology, but left, and are speaking out against it today. “If it was so bad, why didn’t they say something then?” Control, environment, etc. Sometimes you have to get some distance in your life from something before you can get your perspective. Reworded: He drank the Kool-Aid. After he left, the reality distortion field of Kool-Aid wore off.
May 29th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Check, please (reality, that is.) So Scotty Joe finally fessed up, got religion or started listening to his wife. Who cares why it took him so long? If what he says is reasonably accurate then it just corroborates all the other similar stories from well-meaning insiders who dared to question the imperial vice…er, imperial presidency. This isn’t the CEO or MBA presidency, it’s the PR presidency. “We make our own reality”…remember? Is it coming back to you? Montel Williams, Jeff Gannon, sign ze papers, old man (ashcroft), uniter-not-divider, compassionate conservative (go f%#@ yourself!), wire-tapping, Plame-outing, mushroom clouds, you’re with us or with the terrorists, mission accomplished, greeted as liberators,we’ll pay for it with their oil revenues, coalition of the willing, 9/11 white wash, ehanced interrogation, unitary executive privelage, alberto “I don’t recall ” gonzalez, pat tillman, jessica lynch, fire the messengers (Gen Shinseki, Paul O’Neil, Clarke, etc.). rummy saying democracy’s messy, cheney’s a few dead-enders… This list is literally endless, people. Am I ringing a bell? How about a 3 alarm fire bell. This democracy is in serious trouble.
People have a lot of nerve to call Scotty a coward. The whole press, Congress and half the electorate drank the Kool-Aid. I get a kick out of people saying he’s got bad motives or should have spoken up earlier. He’s the freaking Press Secretary. He was the Chearleader-In-Chief’f chief chearleader, for chrissakes. When you’re on the team you don’t tell the Captain that the steroids he’s on are illegal, you tell him he’s looking pretty jacked. How about the press should do it’s job and put 2 and 2 together. When most of Europe and the Middle East says they don’t feel threatened by Sadaam and you’ve got rummy saying there are no good targets in Afghanistan, etc., etc… Come on people. We have been sold a bill of goods that stank a mile away. Anyone who doesn’t say right on, good for you, bout time you got your soul back to old Scotty just isn’t paying very close attention. Rove is a greasy lying political machiavelian genious and cheney is the same, but internationally, too. Fool me twice…don’t get fooled again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!