Scott McClellan – Zero Credibility

["In my nearly 36 years of public service I've known of a few like you," Dole writes, recounting his years representing Kansas in the House and Senate. "No doubt you will 'clean up' as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me.' Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years" Dole assures McClellan that he won't read the book — "because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high-profile job." "That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively," Dole concludes. "You’re a hot ticket now, but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"He signs the email simply: "BOB DOLE"] – From ST BLOGUSTINE via Politico.

Scott McClellan has created quite the stir by writing a book insinuating purposely manipulated information to get the public and Democrats on board to invade Iraq.

Now the House Judiciary Committee is giving McClellan free publicity for his book “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.” The Committee listened to McClellan testimony concerning the outing of Valerie Plame as a covert CIA spy.

Like McClellan can shed any light after Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was only able to convict one person (Scooter Libby). Libby’s conviction was not even for outing Plame. Libby was hunted down by Fitzgerald because Libby’s memory was conflicted enough that he was convicted of perjury.

The guy that did out Plame was an anti-Bush RINO Richard Armitage in which Fitzgerald KNEW was the culprit. The image is that prosecution did not follow through for Armitage because of his anti-Bush stance. Fitzgerald had to convict somebody to justify the waste of taxpayer money so he entrapped Libby with testimony based on memory. Shucks partner, I sometimes forget why I walked into the kitchen in five minute period of time and Libby was convicted because his memory events did not line up from years in the past. All well, that is another story.

Now a Democratic Party controlled Judiciary Committee is wasting taxpayer money by show casing McClellan about Plame. The reality is the Democrats are show casing McClellan to drive more nails of hate into Bush and the Republican Party.

Now here’s the thing: the MSM is hopping on McClellan’s book and anti-Bush message like flies on bull dung. No one is listening to the facts that demonstrate the lack of credibility of McClellan’s book. For God’s sake he was a Press Secretary that was told what to say to the Press, not a policy maker or political strategists that viewed and disseminated National Intelligence.

Check this out:

The former White House press secretary suggested that Bush could do much to redeem his credibility on the Plame matter and his reasons for going to war in Iraq if he would embrace "openness and candor and then constantly strive to build trust across the aisle."

"This is a very secretive White House ... There's some things that they would prefer not to be talked about," McClellan said.

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McClellan accused Bush of a lack of candor in other areas, including what he called the "packaging" of intelligence to justify the Iraq war and the president's handling of allegations that many years ago he had used cocaine. (Yahoo News)

Now here are some thoughts on McClellan from a more Conservative perspective (which as you can guess, I view as closer to the truth):

If Scott McClellan’s allegations about President Bush sound as if he copied them from the editorial page of any liberal newspaper, there is a reason for it: As White House press secretary, McClellan was not privy to sensitive policy decisions and therefore has no specifics to back up his charges.

…

McClellan cites no details, and for good reason. McClellan was not invited to attend classified meetings where the decisions about going to war were discussed.

“The role of the press secretary does not have him in the most sensitive military and intelligence briefings that the president conducts with his national security advisor and secretary of defense,” Fran Townsend, the former White House counterterrorism chief who was at many of those crucial meetings, tells me. “So the facts and policy discussions he sees are limited.”

Instead of supplying specifics, McClellan makes sweeping allegations that contradict the underlying facts and therefore lack credibility.

…

McClellan claims Bush's real reason for invading Iraq was "an ambitious and idealistic post-9/11 vision of transforming the Middle East through the spread of freedom." In making that claim, McClellan seems to suggest that Bush himself did not consider Iraq a threat. McClellan thus ignores the fact that the CIA and every other intelligence agency in the world believed that Iraq had WMD and that former President Clinton, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton all said they considered Iraq a threat. But then on NBC's "Today Show," McClellan said he thinks Bush did believe Iraq was a "grave danger." So what is all the fuss about? That WMD were never found? That is not exactly news.

Townsend calls the allegations “self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional.” She says, “If Scott had concerns, he had an obligation to voice them at the time or even resign. He did neither. Even when he left no one had the slightest idea of any of these allegations. I knew him as a good White House colleague, and I find this shocking and disappointing.”

The bottom line is that, as Saddam told Piro, he was planning to resume his WMD program — including developing a nuclear weapon — within a year. That was when Saddam thought United Nations sanctions would be lifted, in part because he was paying off UN officials.

“His goal was to have the sanctions lifted,” Piro says in an account the media have largely ignored. “And they likely would have been lifted if it were not for 9/11. Even the United Nations changed after 9/11. So Saddam was on the right track. His plan to have sanctions lifted was working. But he told me he recognized that he miscalculated the long-term effects of 9/11. And he miscalculated President Bush.” (Ronald Kessler)

God only knows why McClellan chose to smash the President behind his back in a book. If McClellan felt the information given was smoke and mirrors he should have the guts to tell the President his thoughts, argued his case and if Bush was truly heinous then quit his job. According to several witnesses in the Administration and McClellan’s immediate superiors, McClellan did not once even act squeamish about his role as the Press intermediary between the White House and the Press. That makes McClellan a two faced coward.

There is an even handed editorial out from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal written today about McClellan. That editorial takes a middle ground saying it is good to see free speech work in America and also questions McClellan’s credibility.

JRH