Independent UK: Falling out with the President: the devious world of George Bush

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Falling out with the President: the devious world of George Bush

As presidential spokesman until 2006, Scott McClellan had the task of defending some of the administration's most unpopular decisions. But his new book reveals what he really thought of his master


By Rupert Cornwell
Thursday, 29 May 2008

He was the most plodding, the most robotic, and – until this week – apparently the most loyal of presidential spokesmen. But now Scott McClellan, White House press secretary for George Bush between 2003 and 2006, has delivered the most wounding critique yet of this unhappy administration by one of its erstwhile senior officials.

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception is no falsely touted insider memoir, jazzed up with a few titillating anecdotes to boost sales. It is a 341-page disquisition on Mr Bush, on his misbegotten war in Iraq, and on his entire conduct of the presidency, which Mr McClellan says was built on the use of propaganda, and on the technique of government as permanent campaign.

"History appears poised to confirm," he writes in arguably the most damning paragraph of a book full of them, "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 ... What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

And those are not the words of a disgruntled outsider, summoned to the colours and then casually tossed aside. Mr McClellan largely owes his career to Mr Bush. He was spokesman for Mr Bush and part of the "Texas Mafia" along with the likes of Karl Rove and Karen Hughes.

A man with deep political connections in the Texan capital, Austin, Mr McClellan first worked for then governor Bush in early 1999. He was travelling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000 before becoming chief deputy White House spokesman in the first Bush term. In July 2003, he took over from Ari Fleischer, and served as press secretary for almost three years.

It was a wretched period. True, his boss did win a narrow re-election in 2004 but, thereafter, it was downhill all the way. The draining CIA leak affair (in which Mr McClellan claims he was misled by both Mr Rove, Mr Bush's closest adviser, and by Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff who was ultimately convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice) was followed by Hurricane Katrina and the administration's disastrously botched response, and by ever growing public disenchantment with the war. By the time Mr McClellan was eased out in April 2006, Mr Bush had become one of the most unpopular US presidents of recent times, and has remained so ever since. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/falling-out-with-the-president-the-devious-world-of-george-bush-835868.html