Another Bush Defector: Scott McClellan

...These are the same people who were screaming 10 years ago that we should impeach a President if he is A LIAR....

On the occasion of the publication of a book by Bush's former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, the Times Staff Writer, Tim Rutten, introduces his review: "The evidence seems to suggest that you'd have to go back to the Borgia court to find anything close to the miasma of feral self-interest that must hang in the air during one of this administration's staff or cabinet meetings. If you worked for this crew, you'd want to wear a Kevlar undershirt to the office."

McClellan did not publish this monument lightly. His book, WHAT HAPPENED; Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception (2008), clearly and repeatedly documents examples of LIES and deceit as a practiced lifestyle of this Administration.

McClellan has worked with Bush since Texas. In his confessional, he notes that Bush spent almost no time investigating actual crises, and was devoted to a kind of "permanent political campaign" of distortion. The following points appear undisputable -- fully and long-ventilated, with uncontested public domain documentation:

* The War. The President KNEW that each reason given for going to war against Saddam Hussein was pure fabrication -- there was no evidence of links to international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction (except for the poison gas that Cheney/Halliburton cynically sold to Saddam 20 years earlier).

* Karl Rove and Cheney's Chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, lied to McClellan about their roles in leaking false information in the Valerie Plame affair. In turn, McClellan ADMITS that he lied to the public and the media.

* Karl Rove's influence led Bush to play power politics even in the face of and in spite of other priorities such as national security, natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina), or moral imperatives.

* Vice President Dick Cheney raised the VP office to unprecedented levels of secrecy, expense, and arrogance, either with delusion, lies, or both. He seized unprecedented power, demanded unprecedented secrecy, and ran rough-shod over the concept of balancing power with separation of Powers ("checks and balances").

* The two campaigns in the national elections were filled with fraud. The slogans were designed to deceive. For example, "no child left behind" while stealing from education budget, betrayal of the "Christian coalition", lies ("Swift Boating"), distortion (Reaganomics, tort reform), criminal influence (Secretary of State of Florida announcing result before counting ballots). At bottom, Bush was not actually elected on either occasion. The office was stolen.

Perhaps history would have wanted to be kind to a President who will claim to have been elected, twice, by the American People. This book should put that possibility to rest. These are the same gentlemen who were screaming, screaming, "IMPEACH!!!" when Clinton denied "having sex" with Monica Lewinsky and the accuser's attorneys defined "having sex" as penile-vaginal intercourse. Semen stains in the breast area of the infamous blue dress is actually PROOF that Clinton did NOT lie.