I'm so goddam mad I could bite a nail in two. Scott McClellan's belated epiphany about the manipulation and distortion of the truth and the outright lies about the reasons for Bush's Iraq war is an insult to the intelligence of those who read and write for OEN. Scotty, in his ignorance of the fact that we knew all the while everything that he has just now figured out, presumes to preach to us about what we alrady knew.

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Scott McClellan's book, Oh Migosh, I Just Figured Out That George Bush and His Henchmen and Henchwoman Were Lying About a Whole Lot of Things, makes me so goddam mad I could bite a nail in two.  Where has Scotty been all this time?  Where is any mention that we've known what he's telling us before he knew it?  Where does he get the arrogance and ignorance to presume to preach to us about what we already knew?  It's insulting to the intelligence of those who read and write for OEN.

Some will say that they're so glad that Scotty, at last, has joined with us.  But, we should save our sympathy for those who were misled and deceived by Scotty and his ilk, and properly direct our ire at those who did the misleading and deceiving, like Scotty.  Scotty had access to more information than we did, and we figured out that Bush was lying and he didn't.  It was all right there to be seen, and he didn't see it.  We did.  He has no excuse.  I can forgive the misled, but not the misleader, the deceived, but not the deceiver. 

Take a look at some of the "revelations" Scotty has for us:

Bush is guilty of a "failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and of rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath."

We knew that, even as Scotty was faithfully passing on Bush lies as gospel truth about Iraq, and everything else, for that matter.

Bush "and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war."

Bush has never confused candor and honesty with anything, he doesn't know what it is.  Scotty distributing Bush's propaganda got him the public support to get and continue his war, didn't it?

"If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House."

If the press corps was deferential, it was to Scotty, who was deferential to Bush in passing on Bush's lies.

"The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise"

The collapse of the administration's rationales for war became apparent while Bush was saying them, months before the invasion, and came as no surprise to us that he was lying about the whole thing.  We knew that all along.  We knew then that there was no evidence for anything Bush was saying.  There wasn't then and never has been any evidence to support Bush's lies.

"I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood.  It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively."

That's a hell of an admission, that you were fooled by George Bush.  Scotty may have been so easily deceived, but we weren't, and it seems that Scotty was very effective in serving the president by passing on what we knew were Bush's lies.  Since we knew, why didn't he?  He was right there, watching, while the lies were being invented.

Now, for Scotty's ultimate bit of all-knowing, omniscient hubris:

"History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder.  No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact."

Had Scotty just looked around, he would have seen that history (those of us who were paying attention) had already confirmed that the decision to invade Iraq, even before Iraq was invaded, was a strategic blunder.  We can see these blunders coming a mile away.  And, we knew with absolute certainty that Bush's war was a strategic blunder before he blundered.  We won't have to wait decades to know that.  We knew it then and we know it now.

What's so infuriating about Bush sycophants like McClellan and others who have "seen the light" is that they had ready access to all of the people they now say were lying about the whole thing.  They were right there together, with access to information that the rest of us didn't have.  And yet, we figured it out as it was happening, and screamed and hollered and pulled our hair and pounded on the table and threw things because no one would listen.  Scotty nor any of them listened.

What really pisses me off is now that Scotty has come to realize the truth that we've been saying all along, he refuses to even admit that we existed then and that we were right and he was wrong then.  The last thing he will ever say, a more important truth than what he is saying now, is the overwhelimg truth, "You were right."

Scotty's too late, too little book is sophomoric.  He ignores all of us who have been telling him what he has just now come to know, and, sophomorically, thinks he's the only one who knows it and feels compelled to inform us lesser beings of what we need to know.  It's completely beyond his ability to grasp the fact that we already knew.

We, who have been saying what Scotty is just now saying, will never be acknowledged as having been right.  All we can do is listen, nod our heads knowingly at Scotty's obtuseness, and accept the fact that Scotty, with Bushlike arrogance, still cannot conceive of the fact that there are people who are smarter than he is.  After all, he just wrote a book proving that he is ignorant of that very fact.

If Scotty ever learns that the earth is an oblate sphere, look for another book informing us of that astounding fact.

Authors Bio:
Ed Martin is an ordinary person who is recovering from being badly over-educated. Born in the middle of the Great Depression, he is not affiliated with nor a member of any political, social or religious organization. He is especially interested in the phenomenon of those who view the glaringly obvious with total incomprehension, in other words, out political, social and religious leaders.