"Liars OR Fools" or "Liars AND Fools"?

As I believe I posted a lifetime ago, I recently found myself smack on my first jury. It has been quite an experience, including a feeling that a good part of my life was no longer my own in the sense that it had been before. Perhaps more on that later. We reached a verdict today and were released, probably in more than a few cases to return to jobs with a whole new level of chaos induced by prolonged absence.

I have been of a mind to post on Scott McClellan's book-bombshell, but the disruption and all have made that difficult. I hope and trust that at least many of you are quite well aware of the event of publication of "What Happened" and the pretty tawdry aspects of former uncritical, unthinking bushivik stooge seemingly now that it is too late (but not too late to sell a book) shedding his tail and growing legs. But I risk mortal offense against amphibians, and I am far fonder of all of those I have ever met than I will ever be of lil scottie the stooge.

But if are aware of that you are probably also on some level at least aware of the ferocious push-back by both the increasingly desperate ideologists of the right and the mainstream press who have been their reliable lapdogs these many years. A more unpleasant yowling is hard to imagine.

Anyway, in case you are needing leads, I am offering two. The McClatchy folks are quite rightly calling the cowardly mis-named "journalists" who are flinging spitwads at McClellan out on their crap:

Until now, we've resisted the temptation to post on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, which accuses the Bush White House of launching a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

Why? It's not news. At least not to some of us who've covered the story from the start.

(Click here, here and here to get just a taste of what we mean).

Second, we find it a wee bit preposterous -- and we are being diplomatic here -- that a man who slavishly - no, robotically! -- defended President Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere is trying to "set the record straight" (and sell a few books) five years and more after the invasion, with U.S. troops still bravely fighting and dying to stabilize that country.

But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business.

Bush loyalists have responded in three ways:

1) Scott, how could you? This conveniently ignores the issue of what Bush did or didn't know and do about intelligence on Iraq, converting the story line into that of wounded leader and treasonous former aide. (That canard was the sole focus of a CBS news radio report Wednesday night).

2) Invading Iraq was the right thing to do. Okay. When do Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, et al *not* say that? Dog bites man.

3) It was an intelligence failure. The CIA gave us bad dope on WMD and, well, they're the experts. More on this in a second.

The news media have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the war.

Here's ABC News' Charles Gibson: "I think the questions were asked. 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.” And “I’m not sure we would have asked anything differently."

Really?

Or this from NBC's Brian Williams: “Sadly, we saw fellow Americans — in some cases floating past facedown (after Katrina). We knew what had just happened. We weren’t allowed that kind of proximity with the weapons inspectors [in Iraq]. 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.” And this: "“It’s tough to go back, to put ourselves in the mind-set. It was post-9/11 America."

So the Pentagon tells the media what kind of reporting is in- and out-of-bounds?

Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH.

We confess that here at McClatchy, which purchased Knight Ridder two years ago, we do have a dog in this fight. Our team - Joe Galloway, Clark Hoyt, Jon Landay, Renee Schoof, Warren Strobel, John Walcott, Tish Wells and many others - was, with a few exceptions, the only major news media organization that before the war consistently and aggressively challenged the White House's case for war, and its lack of planning for post-war Iraq.

Here are Bill Moyers and Michael Massing on the media's pre-war performance.

Enough self-aggrandizing trumpet-blowing. OK, Scott, What Happened?

Here's what happened, based entirely on our own reporting and publicly available documents:

* The Bush administration was gunning for Iraq within days of the 9/11 attacks, dispatching a former CIA director, on a flight authorized by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to find evidence for a bizarre theory that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. (Note: See also Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on this point).

* Bush decided by February 2002, at the latest, that he was going to remove Saddam by hook or by crook. (yes, we reported that at the time).

* White House officials, led by Dick Cheney, began making the case for war in August 2002, in speeches and reports that not only were wrong, but also went well beyond what the available intelligence said at that time, and contained outright fantasies and falsehoods. Indeed, some of that material was never vetted with the intelligence agencies before it was peddled to the public.

* Dissenters, or even those who voiced worry about where the policy was going, were ignored excluded or punished. (Note: See Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson and all of the State Department 's Arab specialists and much of its intelligence bureau).

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There's more there, and I would put this in the "must-read" category altogether.

Meanwhile, Digby seems to have the limited taxonomy of these folks pretty well worked out in a post entitled "Liars or Fools":

From Crooks and Liars comes this gem from Byron York on Fox News Sunday:

York: ... I think the thing that kind of distinguishes McClellan is he was amazingly naive and his belief that George W. Bush would kind of bring us all together which was why he comes to Washington. Uh, if you remember that conference where Bush is asked to name a mistake that he’s made. And he gives an awful performance. He can’t name a mistake and this is terrible. And, but Bush realizes, and he told McClellan, he said look if I name a mistake my enemies are just going to keep pushing for more and more and more. And McClellan doesn’t see if that way. He actually writes in the book “I believe that by embracing openness and forthrightness, he could have, it could have redeemed him. It could have transcended partisanship and brought together leaders of both parties to try to consensus his way forward on Iraq. (crosstalk)

That is a naive point of view.

Yeah, It's hard to figure out where anyone got the idea that Bush was that kind of guy. As C&L points out:

Bush used the phrase I’m a uniter not a divider, over and over again.

I believe all laws and public policy should support strong families. I believe in individual responsibility, that all individuals are responsible for their actions and decisions. A responsible leader sets a clear agenda and brings people together to achieve it.

Responsible leadership sets a tone of civility and bipartisanship that gets things done. I am a uniter, not a divider and, as the governor of Texas, that is how I have led. It is how I will lead in the White House.

Finally, together we can give this nation a fresh start after a season of cynicism. In that spirit, I make this pledge to you, the American people: Next January, when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear not only to uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.

Perhaps the most touching speech of this kind was the night of the Supreme Court decision, when he promised to "lead the entire nation" and work across the aisle in the spirit of reconciliation after a disputed election result. it was very heartwarming.

Of course many of us weren't buying, considering what we knew about how the Republicans play politics, but there were a few who did. And nearly all of them were addled Village gasbags like Richard Cohen:

"Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush."

That worked out really well.

Scott McClellan apparently didn't realize that his boss and mentor George W. Bush was a baldfaced liar. He was a naive true believer. The real question is why the Villagers were so taken in by what nearly half the country could see was an anti-intellectual manchild with a mean streak a mile wide? Are they baldfaced liars too or just naive fools like Scott McClellan? They are one or the other --- and either makes them unfit to be political commentators.