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Former Bush Spokesman Describes Iraq War Propaganda |
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Former Bush press secretary Scott Mclellan has written a memoir that, among other things, describes the administration as using “propaganda” to sell the war in Iraq. Mclellan is not the first insider to spill the beans about incompetence and deception–he is preceded by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. John DiIulio, and Richard Clarke, among others, Mclellan also notes that Rove and Libby “at best” misled him in their role about the administration’s retaliation against Valerie and Joe Wilson, and concedes that some of his own statements to the press were “badly misguided.”
The administration’s use of propaganda to push for war in Iraq is no surprise — for one thing, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported on the administration’s deceptions in late 2002. What’s curious is that  Mclellan professes to “still like and admire President Bush.” How can Mclellan still likes and admire a president who, in Mclellan’s own words, used propaganda to mislead a nation into war? Perhaps this helps to explain Bush’s solid 30% of diehard supporters–like Mclellan, it’s not clear what, if anything, could make them stop liking and admiring Bush.
A question begs to be answered, and perhaps Mclellan gets around to it somewhere in his book: if Mclellan knew that the president was lying to the American people about the need to go to war in Iraq, why didn’t he speak up sooner, and leave the administration? (he stayed on as press secretary until 2006). I guess if he can still admire a president who uses deception to sell an unnecessary war, he could still feel ok feeding ”badly misguided” information to the American people.
You know we’ve hit scandal overload when a former press secretary can accuse a sitting president of using propaganda to sell war to the public and the media’s likely reaction is a yawn.
maybe the media reaction won’t be a yawn…I hope I’m wrong. this morning, MSNBC and CNN were digging into this story, for what it’s worth
Fox News is already working hard to discredit Scott Mclellan’s Book,since Carl Rowe is now a political henchman for them.