Scott McClellan Denounces Bush for Misleading US Into Iraq War, Condy Rice Still Defends the War

Ex-spokesman says Bush misleads country into Iraq war

www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-28 11:52:46

WASHINGTON, May 27 (Xinhua) --

In a new book due to be published next week, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President George W. Bush misled the nation into an unnecessary war in Iraq, the New York Times reported Tuesday on its website.

"History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided -- that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder," McClellan wrote in "What Happened," a 341-pagememoir, according to an advance copy obtained by the newspaper. The book, which drew a "no comment" from the White House on Tuesday night, comes from a Texan picked by the president and paid by the people to help sell the war to the world.

The volume makes McClellan the first longtime Bush aide to put such harsh criticism in a book.

"As a Texas loyalist who followed Bush to Washington with great hope and personal affection and as a proud member of his administration, I was all too ready to give him and his highly experienced foreign policy advisers the benefit of the doubt on Iraq," McClellan wrote.

"Unfortunately, subsequent events have showed that our willingness to trust the judgment of Bush and his team was misplaced."

McClellan worked for Bush from 1999, when he signed on as a deputy in the governor's press office, until 2006, when he was forced out as White House press secretary.

In a TV interview Tuesday, McClellan said he retains great admiration and respect for Bush.

"My job was to advocate and defend his policies and speak on his behalf," he said. "This is an opportunity for me now to share my own views and perspective on things. There were things we did right and things we did wrong. Unfortunately, much of what went wrong overshadowed the good things we did."

In the book -- subtitled "Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" -- McClellan said that Bush's top advisers, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "played right into his thinking, doing little to question it or cause him to pause long enough to fully consider the consequences before moving forward".

He brands Vice President Dick Cheney as "the magic man" mysteriously directing outcomes in "every policy area he cared about, from the invasion of Iraq to expansion of presidential power to the treatment of detainees and the use of surveillance against terror suspects."

"Cheney always seemed to get his way," McClellan wrote.

Rice defends war on Iraq

www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-29 18:44:36

STOCKHOLM, May 29 (Xinhua) --

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday defended the U.S.-led war on Iraq in 2003, shrugging off allegations by a former White House press secretary that U.S President George W. Bush had misled Americans into going to war.

Asked how the United States can lead an international consensus on rebuilding Iraq in the context of the charges by Scott McClellan, Rice said she would not comment on a book that she had not read.

But the case for war was clear, said Rice, who was national security adviser when the Iraq war began.

"The concerns about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq were the fundamental reasons for dozens of resolutions within the (UN) Security Council from the time that Saddam was expelled from Kuwait in 1991 up until 2003," Rice told reporters after a meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

Rice is in Stockholm to attend an international conference on Iraq.

"It was not the United States of America alone that believed he(Saddam) had weapons of mass destruction, that he was hiding weapons of mass destruction that led him to throw (UN) inspectors out, effectively leading the Clinton administration to take military action against Iraq," Rice said.

"It was not the United States of America alone that knew Saddam Hussein had of course used weapons of mass destruction both against his own population and against Iranians."

If the world did not believe at the time that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, "then I would ask: why was Iraq under some of the most severe sanctions that the international community has ever imposed?" said Rice.

"The story is there for everyone to see. You can't now transplant yourself into the present and say we should have known what we in fact did not know in 2001, 2002 and 2003," she said.

"The record on weapons of mass destruction was one that appeared to be very clear," she added.

Rice said Saddam was indeed a threat to the Iraqis and to the international community as well. "The threat from Saddam Hussein was well understood," she said.

Asked what was Washington's biggest mistake in Iraq, Rice said it is premature to judge history.

"It is the character of history to not understand the full implications of what has been done until well into the future," she explained.

"There are many things that can be done differently," she admitted. But she was firm that the 2003 Iraq War was not a mistake.

"The one thing I am certain that was not a mistake was to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein," she said.

In his book "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception ", McClellan says Bush made a decision to invade Iraq at least in 2002, if not even earlier.

"He (Bush) signed off on a strategy for selling the war that was less than candid and honest," writes McClellan.

McClellan argues that the Bush administration exaggerated the threat of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq and Iraq's connection to al-Qaida following the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

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