And so, I think that at the time I was there, I started realizing or started thinking that, well, maybe Washington can't be changed. Maybe this is just the way it is and both parties share all the responsibility.
But no one shares more responsibility than the president of the United States to set the right tone and to change things, and no one has more of a bully pulpit to be able to do that. But it requires embracing candor and honesty to a high degree, particularly in this transparent society that we live in.
And this White House was too secretive or has been too secretive, too compartmentalized, and you know, too willing to embrace the unsavory political tactics that are at the heart of the excesses of the permanent campaign."
McClellan admits that the media was right about the hypocrisy of the Iraq war as the article continues "Well-I think certainly in terms of Iraq there was a lot that they were right about. As I went back and reflected on this, it's not that I'm necessarily aligned with them on some other views and things, but certainly on the buildup to the Iraqi war, we should have been listening some more to what they were saying, the American people should have been listening a little bit closer to some of what was being said.
But I, like a lot of Americans, was caught up in the moment of post 9/11 and wanting to put my faith and trust in the White House and president I was serving."
"What Happened" is that big bro 43 used propaganda to push into us into an illegal pre-emptive, non-sanctioned by the UN, war. W used perpetual campaigning to ram down our throats lies about WMD, and his lies were so pervasive he fooled experienced Senators. W prattled that Congress didn't have access to the information he did so how could the Congress not agree with him. They were told they were being left out of the loop regarding "means and methods" of collecting information about Hussein. W attacked all of foes as being in league with bin laden if they didn't agree meekly with his propaganda. McClellan might not have been in every meeting at the beginning of W's administration, but O'Neill was and the two agree that big bro 43 pushed us into Iraq and O'Neill claims that the pushing began prior to 9/11.
Two contemporaneous sources note the media half-heartedly tried to tell the US that we were being lied to by W, but none of the stories had legs. Why would a media that was obsessed about a stain on a blue dress not be obsessed with an "everlasting crusade against terrorism" and the lies that got us into its' Iraqi theatre?
