Exclusive: McClellan whacks Bush, White House

[JoeChalupa]

I just don't understand how intelligent people can still support the Bush administration.

As much as we all through around insults, it has to be said that Xray, Aggie, WC, and Yoni are intelligent individuals, but through either hubris or thorough brainwashing, they still cling to the dying embrace of a movement that has lost its way

I don't understand it either.

[ChumpDumper]

No way my boy, no way. No one would have known he
wrote a book if it had been all good for Bush. More than
likely wouldn't have gotten published to begin with.

So Bush is THAT unpopular.

OK.

[George Gervin's Afro]

have you seen that list of all of those people who died and were associates of the clintons? Now that my friend is the truth..!

sincerely,

yoni and xray

[Nbadan]

Must have been a liberal blogger who wrote this book, because 'it doesn't sound like Scott' - I have admit the Republican attack machine has lost some of it's teeth recently..

[DarkReign]

As much as we all through around insults, it has to be said that Xray, Aggie, WC, and Yoni are intelligent individuals, but through either hubris or thorough brainwashing, they still cling to the dying embrace of a movement that has lost its way

To be fair, Aggie doesnt like anyone. Nor do I *think* he supports Bush in any way.

He is just forced, IMO, into the same situation most normals are, the lesser of two evils.

He chose his 8 years ago. Was he right? Not IMO. But let him have his say.

[boutons_]

Yoni's still drunk on the Repug/neo- koolaid.

Doug Feith as credible? He's slimy, neo tool who fabbed a lot of the "evidence" for Rummy. A war criminal.

[Yonivore]

Oh, I forgot...what Karl Rove says is gospel.

Hey, he just pointed out the obvious contradiction between McClellan's complaint about not being an insider and his memoir supposedly being a "tell-all" from an insider's point of view.

Which is it?

I give attribution and you slam the messenger...I don't give attribution and you about my plagiarism.

Anybody else see why I steal ?

[ChumpDumper]

I steal

Anyway, Rove has got his own ass to worry about now.

[Yonivore]

the WH just gave a statement about scott and said "this is not the scott we know".

how could they know scott if he was on the other side of the door?

Get the quote right. "...we knew." What if they knew a Scott that was an outsider, on the other side of the door...someone with not enough access to be making the claims he's now making?

[clambake]

Get the quote right. "...we knew." What if they knew a Scott that was an outsider, on the other side of the door...someone with not enough access to be making the claims he's now making?

first of all, who cares really?

all he says is that bush deliberately misled the country into war. colin powell said that about 5 years ago. it's not even worthy of debate.

[Don Quixote]

And the book proves what exactly? That the Bush administration is corrupt/inept/stupid/bent on power? You knew that already.

Dog bites man ...

[boutons_]

No instant commentary on McCluckin's book is claiming to be surprised.

Simply confirmation from an insider of ALL the su ions and outright crimes of this WH. There will be more.

Still waiting for an insider to violate the political/WH secrecy for the period 20 Jan - 11 Sep 01. It will come.

[Trainwreck2100]

I'm gonna add this guy to my suicide pool

[ChumpDumper]

Why? Did he write something about the Clintons?

[Yonivore]

I'm gonna add this guy to my suicide pool

This isn't the Clinton administration.

[Yonivore]

first of all, who cares really?

all he says is that bush deliberately misled the country into war. colin powell said that about 5 years ago. it's not even worthy of debate.

First of all, McClellan joined the administration as Press Secretary in 2003, after the invasion. Secondly, he claims to have been left out of the loop. Third, his job was to deliver the administration's message to the press and public...I doubt very many Press Secretaries are involved in the construction of that message.

And, finally, Secretary Powell did no such thing. Source it, clam.

This should be an interesting development...

Wexler: McClellan Must Testify Under Oath Before House Judiciary Committee

Maybe they can use some actual do entation on the events heavily sourced and referenced in Douglas Feith's book on the same time period.

I know there are some big words and all but, I find it interesting the press is showing absolutely no interest in a book that contains references to the actual meetings, do ents, and notes from the period for which Scott McClellan claims to have intimate knowledge...but, because his tenure didn't start until afterward, could not.

Douglas Feith served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from July 2001 until August 2005. His government service extends back to work at the NSC and the Pentagon during the Reagan administration. His work at the Pentagon during the Reagan administration earned him the Defense Department's Distinguished Public Service medal, the department's highest civilian award.

Mr. Feith has written War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. This memoir is an important book, providing the first account of decision making from inside the Pentagon during the war and countering many of the myths promulgated about the events covered.

Failing any comprehensive review by the press, Mr. Feith to previewed the book, in his own words, for a blog I read:

I’ve been doing many interviews about my book in recent days – and I’ve heard from many journalists and others that the book surprises them. It tells a story that contradicts key parts of almost all the major books about the Iraq war.

Interviews that aren't being published or aired on mainstream media...probably because the "surprises" don't fit the media's narrative on the war.

For example, it refutes the notion that President Bush came into office determined to go to war no matter what – that the administration refused or failed to consider the arguments against war. In fact, as my book reveals, the most serious analysis of the downsides and risks of war was produced in the Pentagon by Rumsfeld and his top advisers – not by Colin Powell, Rich Armitage, George Tenet or other officials who are reputed to have been the voices of caution.

Remember, before you call him a liar -- he's sourced the book and posted the do ents on a website.

My book contradicts the common allegation that Pentagon civilians did not plan for post-Saddam Iraq. It explains what is wrong with the charge that the State Department had a plan that Defense officials discarded. It explains what is wrong with the charge that Rumsfeld and his advisers were dupes of the Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi – and what is wrong with the assertion that we intended to “anoint Chalabi” as the leader of Iraq.

My book quotes extensively from previously classified do ents – from numerous memos that were exchanged among Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Tenet, General Myers, VP Cheney and the President. It recounts numerous meetings – and it does so, not on the basis of after-the-fact interviews in which officials remember (or pretend to remember) years after the fact what occurred in those meetings, but on the basis of the notes I took while attending the meetings. In writing the book, I made the radical decision that words would be put in quotation marks only if they were actually spoken by the characters in my history at the very time and place described.

Among the main topics covered in the book are:

· The development of the strategy for the war on terrorism in the hours and days after 9/11 – a strategy that broke with US counter-terrorism policies of the previous decades – a strategy that aimed not simply to punish the perpetrators of 9/11, but (much more ambitiously) to prevent follow-on 9/11-scale attacks.

· For all the errors the administration has made and the terrible problems we have encountered in recent years, especially in Iraq, it is a notable achievement that we are six and half years past 9/11 and the United States has not been hit again as we were hit then. This owes something, I believe, to our strategy.

Another major topic covered in the book is the rationale for the Iraq war. I explain what the President and his top officials were concerned about – why Iraq was a problem made more urgent and more worrisome by 9/11 even though we did not believe that Saddam was responsible for the 9/11 attack itself.

The book reviews the issue of politicization of intelligence – and the accusations of manipulation of intelligence. It explains the actual controversy between my office and the CIA over the intelligence on the Iraq-al Qaida relationship. The actual controversy was not a clash in which Defense officials argued that there was an intimate Iraq-al Qaida relationship while CIA officials argued for a more sober assessment. Rather it was an argument about methodology and professionalism. It was about the criticism by Defense officials of the CIA’s politicization of its own intelligence.

And perhaps most newsworthy, the book explains for the first time anywhere the key postwar plan developed by the administration – the plan for political transition in post-Saddam Iraq. It was a plan developed in the Defense Department – and it aimed to prevent a prolonged US occupation of Iraq. It was a plan to put Iraqis in charge of their own government promptly after Saddam’s overthrow. It was a plan that built on our experience in Afghanistan, where the US overthrew the Taliban regime but did not establish a US occupation government. As I say in the book, it was a plan “which my office drafted, Powell and Armitage tried to delay, President Bush approved, Jay Garner began to implement, and L. Paul Bremer buried.”

Much of the latter part of the book deals with how this plan was undone and the harmful consequences that resulted.

While the book recounts controversies and debates, it does so in a way that I think is far more fascinating than the snide and shallow self-justification that is typical in memoirs of former officials. I refer in the book to the “I was surrounded by idiots school of memoir-writing.” I don’t like that school. I find it boring and bad history. While I was in the administration, I had many disagreements with other officials, but I generally thought that their arguments had important merits. When I disagreed, it was usually because I thought that an alternative strategy or policy had even more merit.

Throughout, I have tried to be critical of all the work I discuss in the book – that of other agencies, that of the Defense Department and that of my own office and myself. Washington Post reporters apparently assume that former officials’ memoirs are inevitably finger-pointing, blame-laying books. Some have asserted this about my book, but they did so without actually having read it. If they eventually do read it, they will find that they were wrong.

I’ve been pleased that writers who did read the book have written favorably about it – for example: Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal, Lawrence Di Rita at NRO, and Frank Gaffney in the Washington Times.

I tried to make my book a useful, accurate account – as accurate as one man’s account can be. I care about accuracy. That is why I relied so heavily on the contemporaneous written record. That is why I provided footnotes and endnotes so extensively. The book is 530 pages long, with around 140 pages of notes and reproduced do ents. And I want readers to pay attention to the notes – to read them. I’d be happy if they challenge me on my use and interpretation of the do ents. I have created a website – War and Decision – where anyone can go and easily pull up the unclassified do ents and articles and other material that I cite.

I was very pleased the other day when Professor Dan Byman joked at a talk I gave at Georgetown University that my website will strike fear in the hearts of professors across America. The idea of someone making it easy for people to check one’s footnotes – a terrifying idea, he said, but he complimented it as the essence of scholarship.

I want to invite all of you to read my book and visit War and Decision to plunge into the actual record of the fateful decision of the Bush administration at the dawn of the war on terrorism.

It should be noted that in addition to the book's contribution to history, the book is responsible for another contribution. Mr. Feith is donating all the proceeds from the book to charities that help veterans and their families.

Hugh Hewitt comments here.

So, does anyone recall this book getting as much attention as has McClellan's? If not, why not? Feith was an actual insider with intimate knowledge of the events. McClellan? A paid mouthpiece that came along after we had already invaded...and, formed opinions based on an outsiders observations; not much different than you guys.

[George Gervin's Afro]

First of all, McClellan joined the administration as Press Secretary in 2003, after the invasion. Secondly, he claims to have been left out of the loop. Third, his job was to deliver the administration's message to the press and public...I doubt very many Press Secretaries are involved in the construction of that message.

And, finally, Secretary Powell did no such thing. Source it, clam.

This should be an interesting development...

Wexler: McClellan Must Testify Under Oath Before House Judiciary Committee

Maybe they can use some actual do entation on the events heavily sourced and referenced in Douglas Feith's book on the same time period.

I know there are some big words and all but, I find it interesting the press is showing absolutely no interest in a book that contains references to the actual meetings, do ents, and notes from the period for which Scott McClellan claims to have intimate knowledge...but, because his tenure didn't start until afterward, could not.

Douglas Feith served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from July 2001 until August 2005. His government service extends back to work at the NSC and the Pentagon during the Reagan administration. His work at the Pentagon during the Reagan administration earned him the Defense Department's Distinguished Public Service medal, the department's highest civilian award.

Mr. Feith has written War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. This memoir is an important book, providing the first account of decision making from inside the Pentagon during the war and countering many of the myths promulgated about the events covered.

Failing any comprehensive review by the press, Mr. Feith to previewed the book, in his own words, for a blog I read:


Interviews that aren't being published or aired on mainstream media...probably because the "surprises" don't fit the media's narrative on the war.


Remember, before you call him a liar -- he's sourced the book and posted the do ents on a website.


Hugh Hewitt comments here.

So, does anyone recall this book getting as much attention as has McClellan's? If not, why not? Feith was an actual insider with intimate knowledge of the events. McClellan? A paid mouthpiece that came along after we had already invaded...and, formed opinions based on an outsiders observations; not much different than you guys.

Have you read the book? Or are you basing your knowledge of what he said from right wing blogs?

[Yonivore]

Have you read the book? Or are you basing your knowledge of what he said from right wing blogs?

I've got it on order... Have you? Have you looked at the do ents at his website?

Have you read McClellan's book? Has the media?

The point of my post is to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the media. They've breathlessly and uncritically hyped McClellan's while almost completely ignoring what, on the surface, appears to be a much more revealing, comprehensive, and complete book on the time period in question.

[xrayzebra]

Great post Yoni. I will have to get the book and read it.
And as stated, and I stated, if it shows the Prez in a good
light, the book will be buried.

[Yonivore]

You know, Feith isn't exactly uncritical of the administration...particularly when it comes to how it handled post-invasion Iraq and how it chose to portray the war in public.

In fact, he has a piece in the Wall Street Journal criticizing the way President Bush "sold" the war in Iraq. Feith writes:

In the fall of 2003, a few months after Saddam Hussein's overthrow, U.S. officials began to despair of finding stockpiles of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The resulting embarrassment caused a radical shift in administration rhetoric about the war in Iraq.

President Bush no longer stressed Saddam's record or the threats from the Baathist regime as reasons for going to war. Rather, from that point forward, he focused almost exclusively on the larger aim of promoting democracy.

Feith actually quantifies this shift, using a chart he developed for his book (page 476):

In the year beginning with his first major speech about Iraq – the Sept. 12, 2002 address to the U.N. General Assembly – Mr. Bush delivered nine major talks about Iraq. There were, on average, approximately 14 paragraphs per speech on Saddam's record as an enemy, aggressor, tyrant and danger, with only three paragraphs on promoting democracy. In the next year – from September 2003 to September 2004 – Mr. Bush delivered 15 major talks about Iraq. The average number of paragraphs devoted to the record of threats from Saddam was one, and the number devoted to democracy promotion was approximately 11.

One can understood why, after it started to seem unlikely that we'd find significant stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, the administration was relunctant to talk about WMD. However, the administration still could have talked about the more general threat Saddam Hussein posed and explained how our presence was enhancing our security. Instead, he chose to focus on what our presence was doing for the Iraqis.

Feith points to three ways in which the administration's dramatic shift in rhetoric hurt its position. First, by shifting ground, the administration lost credibility. As Feith puts it, "The stunning change in rhetoric appeared to confirm his critics' argument that the security rationale for the war was at best an error, and at worst a lie."

Second, the administration's shift signaled to its critics that the administration would no longer talk about past. It gave them confidence, for example, that President Bush would not cite the prior hawkish statements of his critics back at them. Thus, his critics and opponents were emboldened to rewrite history.

Finally, the administration redefined the goal away from something we indisputably had accomplished (the overthrow of a deadly anti-American, terrorist-supporting dictator) to something we were having a difficult time accomplishing (establishing a functioning democracy in Iraq). It is the administration's change in the definition of success that Feith believes produced the most deleterious consequences.

Feith concludes with this lesson:

To fight a long war, the president has to ensure he can preserve public and congressional support for the effort. It is not an overstatement to say that the president's shift in rhetoric nearly cost the U.S. the war. Victory or defeat can hinge on the president's words as much as on the military plans of his generals or the actions of their troops on the ground.

I don't know whether there was any rhetoric capable of maintaining support for the war as the military situation deteriorated. It's clear, however, that the administration did itself, and the country, no favor when it changed the way it defended the war.

[Yonivore]

Great post Yoni. I will have to get the book and read it.
And as stated, and I stated, if it shows the Prez in a good
light, the book will be buried.

I don't think Feith's book attempts to affect the President's reputation either way; it appears to be a sober do entation of events from the perspective of one that was definitely "in the loop" on these decisions.

His criticism of the administration in his Wall Street Journal editorial is a good example of his objectivity, I think.

Oh well, I'll read the book and let you know.

[JohnnyMarzetti]

Bush and his cronies like yoni and xgayzebra are liars and everyone except the bushies know it and realize it.
Now xgay is riding yoni's balls too.

[boutons_]

yoni's career is believing liars, and Feith is one of biggest liars, nothing but a neo- /PNAC tool.

dubya blamed "bad intel", assuming that let him off the hook for Iraq.

Feith worked for Rummy fabricating "bad intel" to fit neo- /PNAC imperialistic ideology.

Gates is also known, going back to early 80s, as advocating politically "fixing up" the intel to, rather than the CIA/NSA discovering and providing facts to the politicians.

[ChumpDumper]

Don't read yoni's posts.

Just read the powerlineblog he steals from.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../05/020616.php

Have you ever had an original thought -- ever?

I find it hilarious that yoni's plagiarism actually supports some of McClellan's assertions.

I don't think Feith's book attempts to affect the President's reputation either way

I think Feith's book is an attempt to cover his own ass. If Garner's occupation "plan" is what he is championing (I give Garner credit for trying, even though he had little guidance from the inadequate, haphazard preparation of the DoD which was completely unsuited for the task in the first place), then he is throwing Rumsfeld and Bush under the bus for replacing Garner with Viceroy Bremer.

Yoni, do you agree with Feith's assertion that Bush made a terrible mistake replacing Garner with Bremer?

Yes or no?

[Don Quixote]

I don't know why Yoni bothers ...

At least read the books, guys!