Scott McClellan Hits White House in New Book

Re: McClellan whacks Bush, White House


Lie as he did, Joe, he was still only a piker, a nothing nestled among a group of monumental liars.

How long before the wingnuts show up? Is it at all possible that they have the cojones necessary for this?

That's my thought as well. Supposedly, the book started out over a year ago as a positive Bush spin book, but by the time it was done, it was pretty negative. Perhaps the process of writing all of it down made it clear just how complicit he was in the process. Perhaps this book is the apology. Not a bad payday either.

Come on , please. It is ALWAYS about the money.

I'm just enjoying watching these bastards begin to turn on and eat each other....

Re: McClellan whacks Bush, White House

No question about that. Ari Fleischer, his predecessor -- now there was an accomplished liar. He wasn't the prince of darkness, but he was at least a minor princeling. Li'l Scottie, on the other hand, was nothing more than a stooge, a patsy. As Lenin (or someone else) might have put it, he was a useful idiot.

well put Joe.

Re: McClellan whacks Bush, White House

I heard snippets of an Ari interview yesterday. He seemed truly perplexed and not all anti-McCellan. That may change as the Bush team coordinates their attacks.

BBB
Condi Rice, master liar, has spoken. We can all go back to sleep now that we know the truth.

BBB

Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative
CNN/ABC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative
"The higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives ... to put on positive stories about the president."
Glenn Greenwald - Salon
May. 29, 2008

Jessica Yellin -- currently a CNN correspondent who covered the White House for ABC News and MSNBC in 2002 and 2003 -- was on with Anderson Cooper last night discussing Scott McClellan's book, and made one of the most significant admissions heard on television in quite some time:

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.

I think, over time...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?

YELLIN: Not in that exact -- they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.

The video of that exchange is here.

Yellin's admission is but the latest in a growing mountain of evidence demonstrating that corporate executives forced their news reporters to propagandize in favor of the Bush administration and the war, and censored stories that were critical of the Government. Katie Couric yesterday said that threats from the White House and accusations of being unpatriotic coerced the media into suppressing its questioning of the war. But last September, Couric revealed even more specifically the type of pressure that was put on her by NBC executives to refrain from criticizing the administration, after she conducted a "tough interview" with Condoleezza Rice:

After the interview, Couric said she received an email from an NBC exec "forwarded without explanation" from a viewer who wrote that she had been "unnecessarily confrontational."

"I think there was a lot of undercurrent of pressure not to rock the boat for a variety of reasons, where it was corporate reasons or other considerations," she said in an interview with former journalist and author Marvin Kalb during "The Kalb Report" forum at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

In April of 2003, then-MSNBC star Ashleigh Banfield delivered a speech at Kansas State University and said that American news coverage of the Iraq war attracted high ratings but "wasn't journalism," because "there are horrors that were completely left out of this war." She added, echoing Couric:
The other thing is that so many voices were silent in this war. We all know what happened to Susan Sarandon for speaking out, and her husband, and we all know that this is not the way Americans truly want to be. Free speech is a wonderful thing, it's what we fight for, but the minute it's unpalatable we fight against it for some reason.

That just seems to be a trend of late, and l am worried that it may be a reflection of what the news was and how the news coverage was coming across. . . . I think there were a lot of dissenting voices before this war about the horrors of war, but I'm very concerned about this three-week TV show and how it may have changed people's opinions. It was very sanitized.

Shortly thereafter, Banfield was demoted, then fired altogether, and -- as Digby put it in her great analysis of Banfield's speech -- "she's now a co-anchor on a Court TV show."

At the same time, MSNBC fired the only real war opponent it had, Phil Donahue, despite very healthy ratings (the highest of any show on MSNBC, including "Hardball"). When interviewed for Bill Moyers' truly superb 2007 documentary on press behavior in the run-up to the war, Donahue reported much the same thing as Yellin, Couric, and Banfield revealed:

BILL MOYERS: You had Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector. Who was saying that if we invade, it will be a historic blunder.

PHIL DONOHUE: You didn't have him alone. He had to be there with someone else who supported the war. In other words, you couldn't have Scott Ritter alone. You could have Richard Perle alone.

BILL MOYERS: You could have the conservative.

PHIL DONOHUE: You could have the supporters of the President alone. And they would say why this war is important. You couldn't have a dissenter alone. Our producers were instructed to feature two conservatives for every liberal.

BILL MOYERS: You're kidding.

PHIL DONOHUE: No this is absolutely true.

BILL MOYERS: Instructed from above?

PHIL DONOHUE: Yes. I was counted as two liberals.

A leaked memo from NBC executives at the time of his firing made clear that Donahue was fired for ideological reasons, not due to ratings:
The study went on to claim that Donahue presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war . . . . He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
NBC executives then proceeded to hire Dick Armey as an MSNBC commentator and give a show to Michael Savage. Michael Savage.

This is nothing less than compelling evidence that, in terms of our establishment press, our media is anything but "free." Corporate executives continuously suppressed critical reporting of the Government and the war and forced their paid reporters to mimic the administration line. The evidence proving that comes not from media critics or shrill left-wing bloggers but from those who work at these news outlets, including some of their best-known and highest-paid journalists who are attesting to such facts from first-hand knowledge despite its being in their interests not to speak out about such things.

* * * * *

Yesterday was actually quite an extraordinary day in our political culture because Scott McClellan's revelations forced the establishment media to defend themselves against long-standing accusations of their corruption and annexation by the government -- criticisms which, until yesterday, they literally just ignored, blacked-out, and suppressed. Bizarrely enough, it took a "tell-all" Washington book from Scott McClellan, of all people, to force these issues out into the open, and he seems -- unwittingly or otherwise -- to have opened a huge flood gate that has long been held tightly shut.

Network executives obviously know that these revelations are quite threatening to their brand. Yesterday, they wheeled out their full stable of multi-millionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan's claims. One media star after the next -- Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer -- materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are "deferential, complicit enablers" in government propaganda.

I have little doubt that they would be telling the truth if they denied what Yellin reported last night. People like Williams, Gibson and Gregory don't need to be told to refrain from reporting critically about the war and the White House because challenging Government claims isn't what they do. And amazingly, they admitted that explicitly yesterday. Gibson and Gregory both invoked the cliched excuse of the low-level bureaucrat using almost identical language: exposing government lies "is not our job."

Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and company are paid to play the role of TV reporters but, in reality, are mere television emcees -- far more akin to circus ringleaders than journalists. It's just as simple as that. David Halberstam pointed that out some time ago. Unlike Yellin, Donahue and Banfield, nobody needed to pressure the likes of Williams, Gibson and Russert to serve as propaganda handmaidens for the White House. It's what they do quite eagerly on their own, which is precisely why they're in the corporate positions they're in. They are smooth, undisruptive personalities who don't create problems for their executives. Watching them finally describe how they perceive of "their role" leaves no doubt about any of that.

* * * * *

This is the most vital point: this is not a matter of mere historical interest. This is not about how the media operated five years ago during an aberrational time in our history. This is about how they functioned then and how they function now. The same people who did all of this still run these media organizations and it's the same coddled, made-up personalities still playing the role of "journalist."

That's what makes the NYT "military analyst" story so significant, and it's why it's so revealing that the establishment media black-out of that story continues. Not just in 2003, but through 2008, the networks relied upon Pentagon-controlled propagandists to masquerade as their "independent analysts." Those analysts repeatedly spouted patently false government propaganda without challenge. The numerous financial incentives and ideological ties these analysts had were concealed. And these networks, now that this is all revealed and even with multiple investigations underway, still refuse to tell their viewers about any of it.

Clearly, if these network media stars think they did nothing wrong in the run-up to the war and in their coverage of the Bush administration -- and they don't -- then it's only logical to conclude that they still do the same things and will do the same things in the future. As people like Jessica Yellin, Katie Couric, Phil Donahue and Scott McClellan are making clear, these media outlets are controlled propaganda arms of the Government, of the political establishment generally. For many people, that isn't a new revelation, but the fact that it's becoming clearer by the day -- from unimpeachable sources on the inside -- is nonetheless quite significant.

UPDATE: The central excuse offered by self-defending "journalists" is that they didn't present an anti-war case because nobody was making that case, and it's not their job to create debate. This unbelievably rotted view found its most darkly hilarious expression in a 2007 David Ignatius column in The Washington Post. After explaining how proud he is of his support for the attack on Iraq, Igantius explains why there wasn't much challenge made to the Administration's case for war (h/t Ivan Carterr):

In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own. And because major news organizations knew the war was coming, we spent a lot of energy in the last three months before the war preparing to cover it.
They were "victims of their own professionalism." It's not up to them to create a debate where none exists. That's the same thing Charlie Gibson, David Gregory, and Tim Russert -- among others -- have all said in defending themselves.

The idea that journalists only convey statements from politicians rather than "create debates" is the classic Stenographic Model of "Journalism" -- "we just write down what people say. It's not our job to do anything else." Real reporting is about uncovering facts that the political elite try to conceal, not ones they willingly broadcast. It's about investigating and exposing -- not mindlessly amplifying -- the falsehoods and deceit of government claims. But our modern "journalists" (with some noble exceptions) don't do that not only because they can't do it, but also because they don't think it's their job. That's because, by definition, they're not journalists.

But beyond that, this claim is just categorically, demonstrably false. As Eric Boehlert and Atrios both demonstrated yesterday, Ted Kennedy in September, 2002 "delivered a passionate, provocative, and newsworthy speech raising all sorts of doubts about a possible invasion." Moreover, Al Gore (the prior presidential nominee of the Democratic Party) and Howard Dean (the 2003 Democratic presidential frontrunner) were both emphatically speaking out against the war.

Thus, three of the most influential voices in the Democratic Party -- arguably the three most influential at the time -- were vehemently opposing the war. People were protesting in the streets by the hundreds of thousands inside the U.S. and around the world. In the world as perceived by the insulated, out-of-touch and establishment-worshiping likes of David Ignatius, Brian Williams, David Gregory, and Charlie Gibson, there may not have been a debate over whether we should attack Iraq. But there nonetheless was a debate. They ignored it and silenced it because their jobs didn't permit them to highlight those questions. Ask Jessica Yellin. She'll tell you. She just did last night.


-- Glenn Greenwald

The first one slithers in, plants a seed and slithers back out. Have they no shame whatsoever?

Before he wrote his own memoir, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was rather critical of those who did the same.

In fact, some of the same language now being used to trash McClellan he himself used to trash previous administration authors.

On the book critical of the Bush White House written in cooperation with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill," McClellan said on January 12, 2004:

McCLELLAN: "It appears to be more about trying to justify personal views and opinions than it does about looking at the results that we are achieving on behalf of the American people."

McClellan also took issue with the book by former Bush White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," on March 22, 2004:

McCLELLAN: Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. Certainly let's look at the politics of it. His best buddy is Rand Beers, who is the principal foreign policy advisor to Senator Kerry's campaign. The Kerry campaign went out and immediately put these comments up on their website that Mr. Clarke made. ...

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/05/as-scottie-sowe.html

It's always about the money!

Here is a good discussion of McClellan's latest assertions, and the carefully orchestrated administration attacks on him in response.


ADMINISTRATION
Bush's Former Mouthpiece Tells All
In his "scathing" new memoir, which will be released next week, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan accuses his former colleagues in the Bush administration of not being "open and forthright on Iraq," arguing that they engaged in a "political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people." President Bush "signed off on a strategy for selling the war that was less than candid and honest," writes McClellan, "not employing out-and-out deception but by shading the truth." McClellan, who is "the first longtime Bush aide to put such harsh criticism between hard covers," also claims in his book that former Bush adviser Karl Rove and former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney Scooter Libby "allowed" and even "encouraged" him to "repeat a lie" about their involvement in the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. In one shocking revelation, McClellan "suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case." The White House reacted with indignation yesterday, calling McClellan "disgruntled about his experience at the White House." Though current White House Press Secretary Dana Perino initially said Bush was not likely to comment on the book, she later told CNN that Bush "didn't recognize the same Scott McClellan that he hired and worked with for so many years." On background, White House aides were even more blunt, telling MSNBC's Kevin Corke that McClellan is a "traitor."

LOYAL BUSHIES STRIKE BACK: Bush was only one voice in a "chorus" of current and former Bush administration officials pushing back against McClellan's explosive allegations, often in very personal terms. "This now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional," former Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend said on CNN. Rove, whom McClellan describes in the book as willing "to push the envelope to the limit of what's permissible ethically or legally," responded on Fox News by calling McClellan "irresponsible," adding that he "sounds like a left-wing blogger." Former White House Counselor Dan Bartlett called allegations in the book "total crap," saying that in hearing McClellan's criticisms, "it's almost like we're witnessing an out-of-body experience." McClellan's predecessor, Ari Fleischer, told NPR that he was "heartbroken" by the harsh tone of the book. Interviewing Fleischer for the CBS Evening News last night, Katie Couric noted that the former Bush administration officials now criticizing McClellan all sound like they "are operating out of the same playbook" by claiming "this doesn't sound like the Scott McClellan they knew."

THE USUAL AUTOMATIC SMEAR RESPONSE: McClellan is experiencing the same automatic smear response the White House deploys against former allies who dare to criticize the administration, including former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former head of faith-based initiatives John DiIulio. In 2004, when Bush's first Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said publicly that "the Bush administration began planning to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq within days" after Bush took office, White House aides pushed back hard with personal attacks. One senior official told CNN that "we didn't listen to [O'Neill's] wacky ideas when he was in the White House, why should we start listening to him now." Last year, Bush's former chief campaign strategist Matthew Dowd publicly broke with the President by claiming that Bush had "become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in." Bartlett dismissed Dowd's criticisms by saying Dowd had been "going through a lot of personal turmoil." Ironically, before he published his own criticisms, McClellan was often the one responding to critical books as the White House's top spokesperson. In 2004, when former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote a book charging that President Bush had "ignored terrorism for months" before 9/11, McClellan led the White House counter-charge, claiming that Clarke was a bitter ex-employee who "wanted to be the deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department."

MCCLELLAN'S CREDIBILITY CHALLENGE: As ABC News's Jake Tapper pointed out yesterday, "some of the same language now being used to trash McClellan he himself used to trash previous administration authors." For instance, when Clarke published his tell-all book, McClellan claimed he was doing it for money because "he has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book." But McClellan's credibility challenge goes beyond the fact that he once attacked people in his current position. McClellan charges the White House with not being "open and forthright on Iraq," which is a drastic shift from his past rhetoric regarding the war. As a White House spokesperson, McClellan repeatedly defended the conduct of the war, justified the case that was made to launch it, and defended Bush's handling of the war. "There were irresponsible and unfounded accusations being made against the administration, suggesting that we had manipulated or misused that intelligence. That was flat-out false," said McClellan in a 2006 press briefing. "We've been very straightforward about where we are, in terms of the theater in Iraq," he claimed in another. In 2004, he insisted, "This President is someone I think the American people recognize as a straight shooter."

--americanprogressaction.org

Katie Couric, Others (Finally) Admit Flubbing War Coverage
'NYT': Katie Couric, Others (Finally) Admit They Flubbed War Coverage
By E&P Staff
Published: May 30, 2008 7:45 AM ET

In an article on Friday, The New York Times explores the new mea culpas by leading TV anchors and some reporters in the wake of the revelations in the new Scott McClellan book.

Katie Couric and others now admit that they performed poorly in the runup to the Iraq war and that in some cases pressure was brought on them to slant coverage.

E&P Editor Greg Mitchell is quoted in the story charging that the media did very little self-assessment on the recent fifth anniversary of the start o the war. His new book is on these issues, "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq."

The Times article is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/washington/30press.html?

When Bill Moyers Revealed How the Press Bought the War
In Wake of McClellan Charges: When Bill Moyers Revealed How the Press Bought the War
By Greg Mitchell - E & P
Published: May 30, 2008 11:30 AM ET

Debate continues today over charges by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, in a new book and on TV, that his former boss "hoodwinked" the media, and the public, into going along with the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003. Today, a CNN correspondent, Jessica Yellin, revealed that the MSNBC network, where she once worked, had discouraged, or killed, negative pieces at the behest of the White House. Then she softened her claim.

Other reporters, such as NBC's David Gregory, are actively defending their performance.

So it's worth looking back at what I called, last year, the "most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq." The program appeared on April 25, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called "Buying the War," which marked the return of "Bill Moyers Journal."

I included my review in my new book "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq." An excerpt is published below.

While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility.

The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll for Americans and Iraqis rising again -- yet Moyers points out, "the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses."

Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, "The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should've all been doing that."

At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.

But Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, admits, "I don't think there is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of the press in general in the roll up to the war…We didn't dig enough. And we shouldn't have been fooled in this way." Bob Simon, who had strong doubts about evidence for war, was asked by Moyers if he pushed any of the top brass at CBS to "dig deeper," and he replies, "No, in all honesty, with a thousand mea culpas. ... nope, I don't think we followed up on this."

Instead he covered the marketing of the war in a "softer" way, explaining to Moyers: "I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light - if that doesn't seem ridiculous."

Moyers replies: "Going to war, almost light."

Walter Isaacson is pushed hard by Moyers and finally admits, "We didn't question our sources enough." But why? Isaacson notes there was "almost a patriotism police" after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and "big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'"

Moyers then mentions that Isaacson had sent a memo to staff, leaked to the Washington Post, in which he declared, "It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan" and ordered them to balance any such images with reminders of 9/11. Moyers also asserts that editors at the Panama City (Fla.) News-Herald received an order from above, "Do not use photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails."

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post explains that even at his paper reporters "do worry about sort of getting out ahead of something." But Moyers gives credit to Charles J. Hanley of The Associated Press for trying, in vain, to draw more attention to United Nations inspectors failing to find WMD in early 2003.

The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student's thesis, downloaded from the Web -- with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with "plagiarism."

Phil Donahue recalls that he was told he could not feature war dissenters alone on his MSNBC talk show and always had to have "two conservatives for every liberal." Moyers resurrects a leaked NBC memo about Donahue's firing that claimed he "presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

Moyers also throws some stats around: In the year before the invasion William Safire (who predicted a "quick war" with Iraqis cheering their liberators) wrote "a total of 27 opinion pieces fanning the sparks of war." The Washington Post carried at least 140 front-page stories in that same period making the administration's case for attack. In the six months leading to the invasion the Post would "editorialize in favor of the war at least 27 times."

Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news in the six months before the war, almost all could be traced back to sources solely in the White House, Pentagon or State Dept., Moyers tells Russert, who offers no coherent reply.

The program closes on a sad note, with Moyers pointing out that "so many of the advocates and apologists for the war are still flourishing in the media." He then runs a pre-war clip of President Bush declaring, "We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Then he explains: "The man who came up with it was Michael Gerson, President Bush's top speechwriter.

"He has left the White House and has been hired by the Washington Post as a columnist."

McClatchy's 'Nukes & Spooks' Blog Weighs In On Iraq Pre-
McClatchy's 'Nukes & Spooks' Blog Weighs In On Iraq Pre-War 'Propaganda'
By E&P Staff
Published: May 29, 2008 3:55 PM ET

"Nukes & Spooks," the blog written by McClatchy correspondents Jonathan S. Landay (national security and intelligence), Warren P. Strobel (foreign affairs and the State Department), and Nancy Youssef (Pentagon), today addresses the use of President Bush employing "propaganda" during the run-up to war, as former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has claimed.

Readers will recall that reporters at the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. were among the most persistent -- if not the only major -- questioners of the intelligence reports during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, so this is not exactly new territory for them, as they point out.

"We find it a wee bit preposterous -- and we are being diplomatic here -- that a man who slavishly - no, robotically! -- defended President Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere is trying to 'set the record straight' (and sell a few books) five years and more after the invasion, with U.S. troops still bravely fighting and dying to stabilize that country," an entry today states.

"But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business."

Check it out here.
http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/nationalsecurity/

Recently, a relative of mine was suspiciously "let go" from a high managerial position at a major, major international company, where she had spent her entire career since graduating from college 30 years ago. We've been joking about her knowing where many of the bodies are buried, all over the world, and that a book may be just what she needs to purge the shame, humiliation and deep resentment she feels for what they did to her (her fat-ass separation package notwithstanding).

I don't give a flying damn why Scottie wrote the book. I'm just glad he did.

yup....

The question "why" is irrelevant and just a typical smokescreen thrown up by the people exposed when someone tells the truth in a "tell all book."


I watched McClellan on Countdown and there is no doubt that he is telling the truth as he knows it. The only question in my mind is how much of what he knows is "the truth."