McClellan on Bush *Breaking News*

Okay, I'm not actually breaking this news, but it is pretty big news being broke by Politico, MSNBC and Drudge. Read about it here. More comment on this later.

Here is another good article previewing the book and talking a bit about McClellan's assertions.

My thoughts on this right now are that McClellan is not saying anything that is surprising to anyone who has followed this White House, who has paid attention to the news, or observed the President.

"Contradictory intelligence was largely ignored or simply disregarded," -OOOOOAAAAAAH! Really Scott?


The book recounts an evening in a hotel suite "somewhere in the Midwest." Bush was on the phone with a supporter and motioned for McClellan to have a seat.

"'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say. 'You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember.'"

"I remember thinking to myself, How can that be?" McClellan wrote. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."

Bush, according to McClellan, "isn't the kind of person to flat-out lie."

"So I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It's the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true," McClellan wrote. "And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious — political convenience."

I am sorry Scott, but this is the same game (albeit on a different level) that you played as Press Secretary. What you are describing is FLAT-OUT-LYING! Convincing yourself that something not true is true and then propagating this "convinced truth" is in fact lying.