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That book will be at the discount section within the first week.

"I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.

".....international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone"

Richard Perle

Speech
Institute of Contemporary Arts
London
November 18 2003

Wexler: McClellan Must Testify Under Oath Before House Judiciary Committee
Former White House Aide's Revelations Make Out Case for Obstruction of Justice by Rove and Libby in Valerie Plame Case

(Washington, DC) Today Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) called for former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify under oath regarding the devastating revelations made in his new book on the Bush Administration’s deliberate efforts to mislead the American people into the Iraq War.

“The admissions made by Scott McClellan in his new book are earth-shattering and allege facts to establish that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby – and possibly Vice President Cheney - conspired to obstruct justice by lying about their role in the Plame Wilson matter and that the Bush Administration deliberately lied to the American people in order to take us to war in Iraq. Scott McClellan must now appear before the House Judiciary Committee under oath to tell Congress and the American people how President Bush, Vice President****Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and White House officials deliberately orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq to the American people.”

“The allegations by this former top White House aide – that Rove and Libby deliberately coordinated their stories in order to obstruct justice in the Plame case, that the President deliberately disregarded contradictory evidence related to Iraq, should outrage every American and Congress must respond by initiating immediate aggressive oversight starting with an appearance by McClellan before the House Judiciary Committee. Any continued obstruction by this Administration to prevent White House officials from appearing before Congress cannot be tolerated by this Congress in the face of these shocking revelations.”

Congressman Wexler has led a nationwide campaign in favor of holding impeachment hearings for Vice-President****Cheney. Congressman Wexler is Chairman of the Europe Subcommittee and a senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Judiciary Committee.

McClellan also discussed how, he said, Bush decided to go to war against Iraq soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. The president ordered aides to make arrangements for it, McClellan told "Today."

"I think very early on, a few months after September 11, he made a decision that we're going to confront Saddam Hussein, and if Hussein doesn't come fully clean, then we're going to go to war. There was really no flexibility in his approach," McClellan said. "Then it was put on the advisers: How do we go about implementing this? How do we go about doing this?"

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/mcclellan.book/index.html

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

MATTHEW RYCROFT

http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html

Scott McClellan had an obligation, a responsibility to voice concerns on policy issues. McClellan never did that on any of the issues. For him to do this now is self-serving, disingenuous, and unprofessional.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that you read on the blogs, and I've gone and checked out the Democratic blogs today. They're not particularly worked up about it because this is not new stuff. They've known this since 2000. They don't care about this.

There's nothing new in his book, it's just liberal talking points.

Disagreement over how well the media performed in the run-up to the Iraq war emerged between the three network news anchors Wednesday — but what Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charles Gibson did agree on is that the Bush Administration put pressure on the media during that time.

The three were together on TODAY to promote a collaborative “Stand Up to Cancer” simulcast that NBC, CBS and ABC will simulcast on Sept. 5. But TODAY co-host Matt Lauer used the opportunity to ask them about charges in former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s new book that the media failed to ask the “right questions” in the lead-up to the war.

According to early reviews, McClellan’s memoir “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception” at times paints a scathing picture of the motivations and actions of the Bush White House. It says that President Bush “veered terribly off course” and “rushed” to an unnecessary war in Iraq, according to The Washington Post.

“He said we didn’t do our job and we didn’t ask the right questions,” said Lauer, who co-hosted TODAY with Couric during the buildup to the invasion and the first three years of the war.

“I’ll start by saying I think he’s fairly accurate,” said Couric, now anchor of the CBS Evening News. “Matt, I know when we were covering it — and granted, [in] the spirit of 9/11, people were unified and upset and angry and frustrated — I do think we were remiss in not asking some of the right questions.”

Gibson begs to differ
“I respectfully disagree with the gentlelady from the Columbia Broadcasting System,” said Gibson, the ABC anchor, with facetious grandiloquence. In a serious tone, he continued, “I think the questions were asked.” Gibson remembered skepticism expressed about then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations that alleged that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — allegations that proved to be wrong.

“I think the questions were asked,” Gibson repeated. “It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. It is not our job to debate them. It is our job to ask the questions.”

Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchor, said that one problem the media faced was not being able to independently verify the administration’s allegations.

“In Katrina, the evidence was right next to us,” he said in reference to the devastation wreaked on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “Sadly, we saw fellow Americans — in some cases floating past facedown. We knew what had just happened. We weren’t allowed that kind of proximity with the weapons inspectors [in Iraq].”

Williams agreed that the White House put tremendous pressure on news organizations to hew to the scripted administration line. “I was in Kuwait for the buildup to the war, and, yes, we heard from the Pentagon, on my cell phone, the minute they heard us report something that they didn’t like. The tone of that time was quite extraordinary.”

‘Insidious pressure’
Couric remembered similar pressure: “I remember doing an interview and the press secretary called our executive producer and said, ‘We didn’t like the tone of that interview.’ And we said, ‘Well, tough. We had to ask some of these questions.’ And they said, ‘If you keep it up, we’re gonna block access to you during the war.’ ” She said that NBC did not buckle under, but, she added, “There was insidious pressure that I do think actually affected some of the coverage by the media outlets.”

Lauer observed that hindsight is 20/20, but at the time, the nation was unified behind the administration. “I’m not sure we would have asked anything differently,” if given an opportunity to do it again, Gibson said.

“It’s tough to go back, to put ourselves in the mind-set. It was post-9/11 America,” said Williams.

“There was such a significant march to war, and people who questioned it very early on and as the war progressed were really considered unpatriotic,” added Couric. “I think that it did affect the level of aggressiveness that was exercised by the media, I really do.”

In case some of you don't know what channel Keith Olbermann is on, he's on MSNBC.

McClellan is just part of the picture. The full truth will come out about the Bush administration eventually and it won't be pleasant.

Yes you see, every word posted, does not portray your thoughts.

No attempt has yet been made in refuting Rush Limbaugh, because you cannot

went to the website you provided and Rush Limbaugh's statements are not the same as the poster's.

Story #3.

RUSH: Scott McClellan. I keep getting e-mails: "Rush, stop bashing McClellan. We don't have to hit McClellan. There's nothing new in his book, it's just liberal talking points." That's the whole point! How does a guy in the Bush administration who was the spokesman and ends up getting fired, end up writing a book that could have been written by MoveOn.org bloggers?

There's nothing new in his book, it's just liberal talking points. How does a guy in the Bush administration who was the spokesman and ends up getting fired, end up writing a book that could have been written by MoveOn.org bloggers?

The guy that published Scott McClellan's book is a guy named Peter Osnos. He is a huge, far-left liberal.

There's nothing new in his book, it's just liberal talking points. How does a guy in the Bush administration who was the spokesman and ends up getting fired, end up writing a book that could have been written by MoveOn.org bloggers? Here's a quote from McClellan back when he was the White House spokesman. Richard Clarke came out, he quit the administration. He wrote some tell all book about how the Bush administration and Condoleezza Rice dropped the ball and 9/11 was basically their fault. Turned out he was in the Clinton administration.
But Bush sort of deserved it because they held the guy over from the Clinton administration.
McClellan, as press secretary, was asked about this, and he said: "Why all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns (Richard Clarke) did he not raise these sooner? This is one and a half years after he left the administration, and now all of a sudden he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he's bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book. He certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. Let's look at the politics of it.