Bush's former press secretary says Bush misled U.S. on Iraq

McClellan has some kind words for Bush, calling him "a man of personal charm, wit and enormous political skill." He writes that the president "did not consciously set out to engage in these destructive practices. But like others before him, he chose to play the Washington game the way he found it, rather than changing the culture as he vowed to do at the outset of his campaign for the presidency."

This seems to be the case with many elected officials. Let's see if that changes with the next President.

This is a very important statement in my mind. For me it begs the question, who of the upcoming presidential candidates, if any, have the "balls" to change the culture of the White House, rather than just go with the flow? Because I'm not entirely sure there are any candidates that would stick with their policies as they said before they became president.

Remember kids, you can't sugarcoat shit and try to pass it of as caramel apple.

b0sNJhphi7U

Yeah I definitely think, from all I've heard and read, that Rumsfeld played a huge role in all this mess. More so than advertised. W's decision to essentially fill his staff with people who have been in the White House since the Ford administration was probably more so a curse than a blessing. I think it's important to have a mix of established people and fresh faces. Or he could have done like my man Ike and totally gone with outsiders.

rumsfeld almost single handedly f'd the whole thing up himself. the military and various civilian advisers who knew what they were talking about and had planned for the post war contingencies and logistics were completely (and i mean COMPLETELY) ignored, because he thought he was SOO much smarter than everyone else's combined intellect.

we had a plan, but the guy torched it so he could play it by ear. brilliant! i guess it's not that bad, i mean, it's not like those decisions cost large scale loss of life... oh wait.

Remember kids, you can't sugarcoat shit and try to pass it of as caramel apple.

b0sNJhphi7U

wow, i'm generally not a fan of his, but that's pretty amazing.

Is Bush the commander in chief or not? He's not a decorative item in the white house. Apparently his lack of competence seems to give him some leeway around here. Rumsfled this, Rumsfeld that, Bush was standing right next to him and praising him after being forced to resign for god sake. Same goes for Gonzales, same goes Brownie, etc, etc.

Any Republican President that employs someone named Mclellan is obviously asking for trouble. The name itself is synonimous with weakness and disloyalty. If I were President, and someone came to me and said, "Sir, we want to promote McClellan", I would say, "Good Lord ,Man read your history".

George B. McClellan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._McClellan)

Interesting, what about employing someone with the name McCain as president?

Cain and Abel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cain_and_Abel)

I know the McClellan book is causing a big stir. I've not read it and probably won't beyond the excerpts seen and heard on tv and radio, but I don't feel his criticism is as warranted as that from Paul O'neill or Richard Clark. For one thing I doubt McClellan sat in on cabinet level meetings where the real dirt gets mixed. Part of what made O'neill's confession so scathing is that he discussed the idiocy witnessed in cabinet meetings... the pres would agree that letting the federal budget fall back into massive deficit was totally unacceptable but at the next meeting (after vp "deficits don't matter" cheney and karl "i don't give an f about responsible public policy" rove had worked the pres over) the story would be completely different.

That said, i understand McClellan is one pissed off mo-fo. I wouldn't take a million dollar cash payment to associate w/ a single person in the admin and would probably put a bullet in my brain before I'd defend policy and appointments from the past 8 years. Bottom line is his job sucked and now he wants revenge... can ya really blame him.

This right here is why I feel that GW2 is a rather unremarkable president.

Lots of the decisions he made, that people hound him for, seemed to be decisions of circumstance. A better man perhaps would have gone beyond the status quo, and made the less fundamental decision and would have produced better results, but GW pretty much was the run-of-the-mill decision maker.

We've seen better, we've seen worse, and we will probably have worse in the future. That's my official position on the Bush Administration.
What B's GW has gone against the grain and the media for a ton of things that have brought his ratings down just because he thought it was protecting the US. Do I really need to start naming them. There everyday in the news for the past 6 years or so.

Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green, Whig, Tory...doesn't matter. Bush sucks as a president. I don't care how much of a "good guy" he is, he was our worst president besides Hoover. I'd rather have a president who's an asshole as long as he or she knows how to run the country with forsight, intelligence, tact, diplomacy, creativity, toughness, open mindedness and humility. None of which George Bush possesses.