Kritik mot Bush från oväntat håll

Scott McClellan har skrivit en bok om sina år som presstalesman för Bush i Vita Huset - What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

Att döma av Washington Post som fått läsa en förhandskopia är den oväntat öppen och kritisk mot hur Bush fungerar som president och hur processen fram till invasionen av Irak gick till.

"But in a chapter titled "Selling the War," he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."
"Over that summer of 2002," he writes, "top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war. . . . In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage."
McClellan, once a staunch defender of the war from the podium, comes to a stark conclusion, writing, "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary." "

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"The criticism of Bush in the book is striking, given that it comes from a man who followed him to Washington from Texas.
Bush is depicted as an out-of-touch leader, operating in a political bubble, who has stubbornly refused to admit mistakes. McClellan defends the president's intellect -- "Bush is plenty smart enough to be president," he writes -- but casts him as unwilling or unable to be reflective about his job."

Den beställer jag idag. Släpps på måndag.