Froomkin: Vindication for the Bush Critique

[maddezmom]

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, June 2, 2008; 1:53 PM

As the response to former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book enters its second week, the focus has shifted to the messenger rather than his message.

McClellan is a flawed vessel for any serious communication. From behind the podium, he made a mockery of the press and the public's right to know, most notably by repeating non-responsive and sometimes ludicrous talking points. He has yet to persuasively explain his change of heart. And his insistence that self-deception rather than a conscious disregard for the truth was behind what he now describes as the White House's consistent lack of candor is spectacularly self-serving.

But the significance of McClellan's book is that his detailed recounting of what he saw from the inside vindicates pretty much all the central pillars of the Bush critique that have been chronicled here and elsewhere for many years now. Among them:

* That Bush and his top aides manipulated the country into embarking upon an unnecessary war on false pretenses;

* That Bush is an incurious man, happily protected from dissenting views inside the White House's bubble of self-delusion;


more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/06/02/BL2008060201318.html/?hpid=opinionsbox1

[Captain Hilts]

1. Somebody, PLEASE ax him about Jeff Gannon's repeated access to the White House. nt

[MissWaverly]

2. did you see Bush's comment on Scottie's book

He said that if Scottie want him to know something that a book would be the last place
he would put it. He said that if he hadn't read the book done by the Iraq Study group
then he wasn't going to read this one. That means that he rejected their findings w/o
looking at them and started the SURGE, based on what exactly?