Will McClellan Be John Dean to Bush's Richard Nixon?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20071121/cm_thenation/1253417


The Nation via Yahoo

Will McClellan Be John Dean to Bush's Richard Nixon?

John Nichols Wed Nov 21, 1:33 AM ET

The Nation -- Scott McClellan's admission that he unintentionally made false statements denying the involvement of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Bush-Cheney administration's plot to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson, along with his revelation that Vice President Cheney and President Bush were among those who provided him with the misinformation, sets the former White House press secretary as John Dean to George Bush's Richard Nixon.

(snip)

The only question is whether the current Congress is up to the task of holding the 43rd president to account.

What McClellan has revealed, in a section from an upcoming book on his tenure in the Bush-Cheney White House, is a stunning indictment of the president and the vice president. The former press secretary is confirming that Bush and Cheney not only knew that Rove, the administration's political czar, and Libby, who served as Cheney's top aide, were involved in the scheme to attack Wilson's credibility -- by outing the former ambassador's wife, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency analyst -- but that the president and vice president actively engaged in efforts to prevent the truth from coming out.

(snip)

But it is important to recognize that a bigger issue is at stake. If the president and vice president knowingly participated in a scheme to attack a critic of their administration -- Wilson had revealed that the White House had been informed that arguments Bush and Cheney used for attacking Iraq were ungrounded -- they have committed a distinct sort of offense that the House Judiciary Committee has already determined to be grounds for impeachment.

(snip)

That second article of impeachment against Nixon detailed the president's involvement in schemes to use the power of his position to attack political critics and then to cover up for those attacks. The current chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Michigan Democrat John Conyers, voted for the impeachment of Nixon on those grounds.


(snip)

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John Nichols is the author of THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders' Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson hails it as a "nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the 'heroic medicine' that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to 'reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.'"

He must have realized that it might generate a little interest investigation-wise. I think that's exactly what he wants.

:headbang:
rocknation

it's not like anyone is out there threatening investigation.

Based on past experience with these criminals, my instinct is that this must be calculated in some way for the benefit of the entire cabal... So how can this be spun to actually play into the hands of the GOP and current regime?

There must be an ulterior motive, but this one is hard to spot...

"White House Press Secretary, writing in his new book, tell the world that the President lied to him and to the nation."

You see that in any paper this morning?

in our "papers of record."

perhaps it's time we found new "papers of record."

I typed "Scott McClellan" and got results from the NYT, WaPo, Reuters, the AP, USA Today, Bloomberg, UPI...

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1123859983

folks are looking on the front pages of their papers (or websites today) for coverage.

check out nytimes.com -- there's nothing on today's cover.

Well, I can't help you there.

CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, and even Fox. Not on ABC News however. Of course NOBODY watches TV.

And what do you know? There was Scotty's wittle face (and some reporter talking about his book.

:mad:

It should headlined! Looks like our enabling media is going to do their best to help bury it.

I want to see what the Democrats do with it...

maybe a NEWSPAPER somewhere will ask.


:evilgrin:


if anyone knows the ins and outs of White House publicity it's a former spokesman. it seems likely he'd know how to avoid vetting as well as how to get things thru vetting easily.

and it's slated for release in April. So why leak this five months earlier? Well, you have to admit it's a BRILLIANT way to circumvent the vetting process! Remember, McClellan was taught by "The Master"--Karl Rove.

:evilgrin:
rocknation

Not sure I like the headline, but here it is:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-CIA-Leak-McClellan.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

I agree with the above comment that this should be MAJOR news. Finally one of the rats is leaving the sinking ship, and seems poised to spill his guts. We can only hope...

I just heard this on the BBC World Service and must admit that I was surprised that it was not a top item on DemocraticUnderground as well...

Am I alone in thinking this is huge?

Of course, I can hear the GOP spoonfed response now, "Get over it, that's old news!" - the same response as just days after the 2000 elections were decided by the SCOTUS... But then, the idiots telling us to "get over" little things like the treasonous outing of an undercover agent are the same ones that still scream and whine about Bill Clinton and even Jimmy Carter...

http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2007/11/a-final-plea-to.html

Astute as usual.

I say America wants to - or will want to - see justice served in the end, to have a final reckoning rather than just letting everything slide until the election and letting historians spin it every which way. These are some of the most corrupt and unConstitutional times in the history of the US, and we need resolution, we need someone to take the heat and to pay or the only lesson learned will be that obfuscation and propaganda WORK. IMO any elected Democrat that disagrees is a big part of the problem.

Recent polls indicate that the US (as a whole) is finally waking up, but we still need to get out of bed and get our asses to work.

i think america has been awake for quite some time and i've been baffled at our leadership for not keeping up with the sentiments clearly coming out of poll data.

leadership on the national is so out of touch it's a wonder they even bother showing up to work. we've got people who are afraid to defend the constitution against an out-of-control prez with approval ratings in the low 20s. they can't even defend us against the VP with an approval rating hanging around 11 percent.

yikes.

Yeah, the more I see what the Democratic "Leadership" is doing with stuff like this, the more I am convinced that there is almost literally no difference between the parties - that it is all a sham to keep the corporations and fat cats rolling in it while keeping the rest of us fat, happy and entertained and living in the illusion that we actually have a choice...

The lack of action by the Democrats to take up impeachment for any of a myriad of reasons is something that I cannot understand. Skeptical electioneering is no excuse, and should not be accepted as such.

Times like this remind me of when Jello Biafra used to rant - well over 20 years ago - that, "If you think you are living in a democracy, you're wrong."

I still hope it is not true, but at times I really wonder whether the US is even a 2 party state at all...

When I first tried, I ended up using the search function. Once I realized it was in the AP wire section, it was easier to find. I shouldn't have had to put any effort into finding it. It should be linked on their front page. :argh:

I was out driving this afternoon and heard about it on the BBC WS.

When I got back to work, I Googled it and had to find a link to the NYT article via a blog...

Scottie is a disgruntled former employee...

They used it with Richard Clarke, Christie Whitman, Paul O'Neill and others.

...if this thing actually gains legs, after they have thrown the "we will not address this issue - it is old news" BS at it, if that fails to stick.

If they choose to address it at all.

In that way, the Democrats could really learn something from the GOP. I am against most of their spin and tactics, but framing the debate is something that they are expert in and at which we suck miserably.

That point gets rammed home constantly - whenever one of ours is actually convinced to apologize or is publicly reprimanded for telling the truth.

No apologies. Go after them hard and focused and simply ignore anything that they say that is not on (our) message, and hit them hard and never retreat. Keep control of the issues. It has been the key to the "success" of the idiots on the right, and if we take that stance with a message that actually has some substance behind it (unlike the tripe they are selling), then we cannot lose.

I don't believe Scotty has any positive character traits that would direct him toward doing something that is "right" for the country.

I have a friend who was in Scotty's class in high school and she was totally stunned when he got Ari's job. My friend said he was just a dork and not very bright. At the time she commented that Scotty would believe anything the big guys tell him. In short, he is just a little tool.

Back when I worked for elected officials and on various campaigns we referred to his type of hanger-on as the "driver" - as in, they want to be in on the action but they only thing they are good for is driving the candidate or other important staff members around. Unfortunately, because they are dutiful, they get important jobs sometimes.

It seemed to me that Scottie was often overmatched and stressed out by his job - how many times did we have posts about his meltdown during a WH press conference here on DU?