The International Writers Magazine: Reality Check

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Scott McClellan • James Campion " Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign."  - Press Secretary Scott McClellan on former Bush administration anti-terrorism czar, Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror".

March 22, 2004    Scott McClellan wants to go to heaven now. He thinks writing a book confessing his sins will get him there. Dick Nixon and Bill Clinton tried it. Chuck Colson and Ed Meese too. George Tenet, Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill gave it a shot recently, and some may have forgiven them for it, but God is not likely to be counted among them. God has different criteria, and it is not designed to make exceptions for manipulating the American public as bucket-carrying surf for the Commander-in-Chief and his band of cronies on matters of war and treason. Public opinion and cleansing the soul may be good business for Jesus and Judge Judy, but for omnipresent judgment it is something akin to white noise.
   Fuck Scott McClellan.

   This is what God will say when the final writ comes due, and he will have his family and country and president to thank for it, because they were the ones who convinced the chubby Texan momma's boy that there would be a final reward for blindly following the guiding light of George W. Bush, Republicanism and loyalty.

    Oh, it was loyalty that put Baby Mac in the rumble seat of the Big Ride long enough to laugh all the way from Austin into history; a history he hopes to queer by thrashing a few random thoughts together about how horrible and unjust his government was while he spun it happy-go-lucky for the voting hordes.

    Poor, misguided, stupid fool the former White House press secretary was. He lied repeatedly and without shame for the Big Machine. He was cast before the public as a puppet of Machiavellian demons battling to keep Dick Cheney and Karl Rove out of prison, while defending the federal government's mishandling of natural disasters and cobbling together incriminating fabrications about Middle Eastern invasions.

    Victimhood, the rascal's last refuge; a cozy place to lick the wounds and pass the blame, conveniently weaving a quilt of denial -- it will put The Dirt on you, the kind that doesn't wash off.

      Many who held the position of press secretary wrestled with The Dirt when leaving the post. Private discussions with Franklin Pierce's press representative revealed suicidal dreams and long nights of self-flagellation after failing to properly explain the plunging of a nation into Civil War. The Dirt was also on the sad sack who tried to locate all those missing Japanese citizens during World War II, while failing to mention that the country's chief executive was almost always minutes away from mental and physical incapacity. Some even claim that Andrew Jackson's press people went mad from lack of sleep after the "mass evacuation and systemic execution of entire races".

    "Oh, woe is me, the messenger, duped like a child in these trying times! Oh, how the evil network of cruel monsters used me as a tool of incompetence and propaganda."

    That is a direct quote from the public relations firm that spun the nasty deeds of Jesse James into paperback gold, while he was busy shooting innocent rail workers in the face for spare change. They claimed innocence as well, victims of corporate greed and misrepresentation. Over and over they asked their detractors if they would have so easily refused boatloads of cash to paint an obvious psychopath as the playful rogue of the Wild West.

    McClellan wants to free his soul; the opening quote for his book, "What Happened: Inside The Bush White House And Washington's Culture Of Deception" is "The truth will set you free", the most abused Bible verse in a fantastically mangled litany of them. The truth sets one free when it is served up during the time of a terrible lie being perpetuated, not after all the money was made and the plaudits were handed out and then you can't sleep at night because you think the Devil is nipping at your heals.

    This would have been a whole lot bigger if the book had been titled, "What's Happening", and it hit the shelves when McClellan stepped down. Now it simply justifies from the inside what everyone has since learned from simple observation and a minimum of investigation. Great, thanks for adding to the parade of Bush-bashers months before he becomes a private citizen and his approval ratings are that of the final days of Nero.

    If McClellan truly wanted to "set the record straight", he would have come clean years ago in an interview or by making a statement to the congress, not after receiving a healthy advance from a major publisher and going on the Today Show and whining like a school girl. Then maybe these revelations, spoken from the heart of the Bush inner sanctum, would have rightfully fueled a public outcry that made it politically solvent for the spineless legislative branch to wrest what McClellan clearly describes as blatant criminals from the halls of federal government.

    The liberating magic of the truth applies to Colin Powell, who stood up to the president of the United States about his misgivings on foreign policy and war in 2004, two months before resigning his post as secretary of state, admitting before a senate committee on governmental affairs that his speech to the UN in February of 2003 about Iraq's stockpile of weaponry was "wrong". Powell, treated like a punk and a sell-out by his party and administration, stood his ground and went on record, legally binding and lasting, to the press, the citizenry, and the world that there were serious and dangerous problems with the government's transparency. Like John Dean a generation before, he stood up, against the pressure to keep quiet and cover-up when it was most useful to the country, not when it was financially and spiritually expedient.

    What McClellan should have done without hesitation and in front of a grand jury, was expose these serious charges completely and without equivocation. Because among the litany of crimes McClellan levels against his former boss and his cabal, admitting that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby deliberately told him to lie to save the vice president from being indicted for treasonous acts by revealing the identity of a CIA agent for political smearing is grave.

    If McClellan's observations are correct, Libby, Rove, and Dick Cheney must be tried and executed for treason against the United States in a time of war. Period.

    But his words are merely passed off as that of a "disgruntled employee manipulated by an avaricious publisher", and that he is just piling on an already disgraced lame duck president.

    Perhaps McClellan should heed his own words, as flaccid and incredible as they appear now, when he criticized a former colleague for conveniently trickling out major indictments in a book years after the fact; "If you look back at his past comments and his past actions, they contradict his current rhetoric."
    Yup.
© James Campion June 2008
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

John McCain
James Campion
McCain has to distance himself from the currently doomed Washington atmosphere

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