<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>White House 'puzzled' by ex-spokesman's book bashing Bush Story Highlights NEW: McClellan never voiced concerns to him, "heartbroken" predecessor says NEW: "This is not the Scott we knew,"White House spokeswoman says Scott McClellan's coming book is harsh on President Bush and his advisers Book: Bush "confused the propaganda campaign" with honesty WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House Wednesday said it was "puzzled" by a former spokesman's memoir in which he accuses the Bush administration of being mired in propaganda and political spin and at times playing loose with the truth. In excerpts from a 341-page book to be released Monday, Scott McClellan writes on the war in Iraq that Bush "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." "n this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security," McClellan wrote. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called McClellan's description of his time at the White House "sad." Read excerpts from the book » "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," Perino said. "For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew." McClellan's former White House colleagues had harsher reactions to McClellan's book. Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, McClellan's predecessor, said in a statement "something about this book that just doesn't make any sense" and that he was "heartbroken that Scott feels this way about his time at the White House." "For 2 1/2 years Scott and I worked shoulder to shoulder at the White House. Scott was my always reliable, solid deputy," Fleischer said. "Not once did Scott approach me -- privately or publicly -- to discuss any misgivings he had about the war in Iraq or the manner in which the White House made the case for war. "If Scott had such deep misgivings, he should not have accepted the press secretary position as a matter of principle," he said. Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security adviser to Bush, said advisers to the president should speak up when they have policy concerns. "Scott never did that on any of these issues as best I can remember or as best as I know from any of my White House colleagues," said Townsend, now a CNN contributor. "For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional." Fox News contributor and former White House adviser Karl Rove said on that network Tuesday that the excerpts from the book he's read sound more like they were written by a "left-wing blogger" than his former colleague. Rove declined to comment to CNN after the Fox News interview. In a brief phone conversation with CNN Tuesday evening, McClellan made clear that he stands behind the accuracy of his book. McClellan said he cannot give on-the-record quotes yet because of an agreement with his publisher. Watch further details emerge from McClellan's book » Another former Bush aide-turned-critic says the reaction to McClellan's book by his former colleagues has a familiar ring to it. "They're saying some of the exact same things about McClellan they said about me," Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, told CNN. Clarke left government in 2003. The following year, he accused President Bush of ignoring warnings about the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and of using the attacks to push for war with Iraq. But Clarke gave McClellan little credit for speaking out now. "I think the difference with McClellan's book is he's now telling us something we all know -- that the war with Iraq was a disastrous war [and] was sold with deception. It's a little different when you say something as I did and a few other people did four or five years ago, when the war was popular and when we were unpopular for saying what we said." Besides his criticism of how the administration handled the run-up to the Iraq war, McClellan also sharply criticizes the administration on its handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in the book. "One of the worst disasters in our nation's history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush's presidency," he wrote. "Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush's second term." Early in the book, which CNN obtained late Tuesday, McClellan wrote that he believes he told untruths on Bush's behalf in the case of CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked to the media. Rove and fellow White House advisers Elliot Abrams and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were accused of leaking the name of Plame -- whose husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, had gone public with charges the Bush administration had "twisted" facts to justify the war in Iraq. Libby was convicted last year of lying to a grand jury and federal agents investigating the leak. Bush commuted his 30-month prison term, calling it excessive. At the time, McClellan called the three "good individuals" and said he spoke to them before telling reporters they were not involved. "I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood," he wrote. "It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively." McClellan wrote he didn't realize what he said was untrue until reporters began digging up details of the case almost two years later. A former spokesman for Bush when he was governor of Texas, McClellan was named White House press secretary in 2003, replacing Fleischer. McClellan had previously been a deputy press secretary and was the traveling spokesman for the Bush campaign during the 2000 election. He announced he was resigning in April 2006 at a news conference with Bush. "One of these days, he and I are going to be rocking in chairs in Texas talking about the good old days of his time as the press secretary," Bush said at that conference. "And I can assure you, I will feel the same way then that I feel now, that I can say to Scott, job well done." CNN's Ed Henry contributed to this report.</div> Link
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>McClellan wrote he didn't realize what he said was untrue until reporters began digging up details of the case almost two years later.</div> Surely he can't be that stupid.
Now granted this comes from freerepublic.com, but here is some information about the company that published this book http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2022784/posts <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>The company that published Scott McClellan’s new Bush-bashing book is Public Affairs Books, ... The owner of Public Affairs Books is a company called Perseus Book Group. ... The firm is owned by Perseus Funds Group, (holding company Perseus LLC) a capital management firm that grew from about $20 million in 1995 to over $2 billion now. Big infusions of cash seemed to help it grow exponentially and it closed funds almost as fast as it opened them. The board has tons of liberals from the Clinton and Carter Administrations ... If you go to the New York Department of State web site and enter “Perseus” in the “Business Organization” search, you get this on page 2 of the results: </div> http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/perseus/about_us.jsp http://appsext8.dos.state.ny.us/corp_publi...ty_search_entry
From what people are saying he does a great job outlining the failures and blunders of the Administration leading up to the war from considering all intelligence gathered, mixing with the good and the bad, etc. etc. This book sucks for Bush, but it sucks for McCain as well. The sad truth is Obama and the DNC are going to lump him with Bush to McCain's detriment. Whether or not it's fair for McCain (and I don't think it's fair), anything that hurts Bush is going to hurt McCain as a result.
I feel so lied to. People told me Bush wasn't smart, stupid even. Now their new hero comes out with a book saying that Bush is plenty smart enough to be president. Who would have known? Same people told me we went to war with Iraq over oil. Now their new hero comes out with a book saying that Bush went to war to make the Middle East a better place after we left (and that would be his legacy). Don't you hate being misled and lied to and all riled up to action over fear?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Denny Crane @ May 29 2008, 08:17 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I feel so lied to. People told me Bush wasn't smart, stupid even. Now their new hero comes out with a book saying that Bush is plenty smart enough to be president. Who would have known? Same people told me we went to war with Iraq over oil. Now their new hero comes out with a book saying that Bush went to war to make the Middle East a better place after we left (and that would be his legacy). Don't you hate being misled and lied to and all riled up to action over fear?</div> The hypocrisy doesn't suprise me, you're right. I'm not going to draw any conclusions on this guy until I read what he has to say. I will say the timing is very interesting, and I think it's going to hurt McCain unfortunately. I'm interested to see what Karl Rove has to say about this, since McClellan is basically calling Rove a liar.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (huevonkiller @ May 29 2008, 08:50 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>He's clearly just in it for the money but he makes some fair points like Real mentioned.</div> What better way to make money than tell Soros you want to write something negative about Bush and you have the credibility to make it believable?
