Scott McClellen and his book

Scott McClellen has written a book, in which he claims that the Bush Administration propagandized us into war, he claims to have seen Karl Rove and Scooter Libby having a clandestine conversation, and he claimed that the media was overly deferential to the White House. Can you figure out which of those three claims the Conservative and the Mainstream Media aren't touching with a ten foot pole. That's right. Everybody knows we have a liberal media or an aggressive professional media; for McClellen to to claim they are just lapdogs is crazy!

So instead we get bizarre attacks, like this one from Mike Gallagher's latest article.

I often wonder if people like Scott McClellan ever stop and think about the pain and grief their money-grubbing antics cause the families of the brave men and women who are serving their country overseas. After all, if one accepts the premise that President Bush erred in going to war, then the mission of the United States military is absolutely in vain. Perhaps when McClellan cashes his hefty paychecks, he'll be like Ebeneezer Scrooge seeing the face of Marley on the door post and see the pained faces of men and women who simply cannot understand why a man like him would want to publish an anti-war book smack dab in the middle of a war.

Do you suppose Osama bin Laden will read McClellan's book? If he does, he's sure to enjoy it.

That's just down right nasty, isn't it? Telling the truth about this war is practically an act of treason and it stabs our brave fighting men and women in the back. Nasty. And untrue.

We have civilian control over the military and thus it is our duty as citizens and civilians to keep an eye on the military. We need to protect our military from being used unwisely, a task that we, as a nation, failed at in 2001. The fact that we were propagandized into invading Iraq is not a slur on the soldiers, as Gallagher asserts, but instead a condemnation on us and the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration for deceiving us, and us for letting ourselves be deceived.

For more on what I think is McClellen's most damning complaint, that the media was too compliant in the run up to the Iraq War, here is a post from Glenn Greenwald.

Just consider how remarkable that is. George Bush's own Press Secretary criticizes the American media for being "too deferential" to the Government. He lays the blame for Bush's ability to propagandize the nation on the media's uncritical dissemination of the Republican administration's falsehoods. And most notably of all, McClellan actually uses cynical scare quotes when invoking the phrase which, in conventional political discourse, is deemed the most unassailable truth of all: The Liberal Media.

How much longer can this preposterous myth be sustained when even the White House Spokesman not only mocks the phrase but derides the media for being "too deferential" to the right-wing Government "in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during [his] years in Washington"?

Yeah, I guess I can see why the Media and Conservatives aren't keen to talk about this.