Some snips from Matthew Norman's article in The Independent (UK):
<snip>
Mr McClellan's portrait of President Bush, an old and beloved Texas chum, will be spookily familiar to close students of Alistar Campbell's ex-boss. Mr Bush was less an out-and-out teller of whoppers, he explains, than an arrogant, self-deceiving fantasist. He believed things to be true because he wanted them to be true and kept insisting they were true, and no reasonable doubt or hard evidence could touch his certainty. Small wonder that he and Mr Tony Blair hit it off so splendidly at that very first Camp David date, when Blair squeezed his gonads into those hideous jeans. Psychologically, they are identical twins.
The psychology behind Mr McClellan's bean-spilling is the source of much discussion in the States. You can hardly avoid asking why he didn't mention any of this five years ago, and inevitably he trots out the defence that didn't quite cut it at Nuremberg. He was only obeying orders, but now this devout Christian (who'd have guessed?) wishes to cleanse his soul of the untruths he obediently spouted about WMD, the betrayal of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, and much else besides. Those on the wrong end of his reflections, such as that indescribably poisonous political puff adder Karl Rove, naturally characterise him as a money-grubber seeking revenge for being sacked.
To be frank, Mr McClellan's motivations are of no more interest than his judgement that the war was a grotesque strategic blunder (ya think?), let alone yet more angry debate about the propaganda that preceded it. More intriguing is the effect his book might have on the imminent fight for the presidency.<snip>
Full article here
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(230 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
