(2008-05-30) Mcclellan Deception Book

ScottMc Clellan, ex-WhiteHouse-PressSecretary, has a new book out titled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception ISBN:1586485563. "Over that summer of 2002," he writes, "top George W Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the War On Iraq. . . . In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage."... "The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office," he writes. "And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned."

Mike Turk is supporting Mc Clellan (though he's only read major excerpts of the book).

Dave Winer says The other point being overlooked, and this is a real problem, is that he says that the press (Journalism) was complicit. This is the more important allegation, and unsurprisingly, it's being swept aside by the press. Had they done their job, and pressed for the truth, it would have been easier for insiders to tell them the truth.

Jessica Yellin says that MSNBC execs pressured reporters not to do tough stories on the Bush administration in the run-up to the war.