If we had a system where everyone had to vote just maybe we would not get stuck with the likes of Bush and cronies who are experts at knowing how to manipulate the masses.It ought be hart of our democracy. They made a great looking package with nothing but hot air , lies and made us all ashamed to AMericans.

Every corporation or high profile personality has their own hired hacks with their major function being to spin and manipulate the media. That is how it is in this country and always has been as far back as memory serves. You can dislike them and hold contempt for them but to trust them to do anything else is our own fault for being so naive. “Damage control” has become a major industry. Not from the damage they cause others but from the damage of accountability for it. Call it a press secretary, spokes person, public relations person or image consultant it is all the same. I think the question of equal importance is why were the mainstream media and many of the people so ready and willing to accept whatever was being said back then? There were many trying to stop the war and even questioning many aspects about 9/11 and most were disregarded as conspiracy theorists out of hand. The media all but went out of their way to look the other way if not to discredit and misrepresent. Those against the war were immediately labeled as anti-patriotic and accused of being against the troops. Anyone who criticized the administration was likely to be run out of town on a rail. Don’t dare wear a controversial t-shirt to the mall or on the streets. Certainly to openly protest got you mistreated and abused by our own government while others in America pretty much ignored that more than was offended by the repression and deprivations of free speech and expression. Many, throughout our history, gave up their lives to sacrifice for and to defend these freedoms and liberty yet many would not even devote a day of sacrificed time to protest in support of stopping or ending the Iraq war. This was the time of “American fries” in a feeble gesture to insult the nation of France for speaking out against the war on Iraq too. Then there was the burning of CDs to punish free speech as well. Few questioned the infamous “no fly lists” and why even a prominent member of Congress found himself to be listed on it. Like it or not, or like McClellan or not, he was doing what everyone knew he was hired to do. I don’t attempt to excuse him or to disagree with any of the comments posted here. I find most of them very insightful and all true. I would certainly agree that Congress has not only failed their duty to execute the Constitution or to check the Executive Branch’s tyrannical abuses and refusal to enforce the Constitution and laws or the Judicial Branch’s failure and refusal to implement it and legislating exceptions and exclusions to derogate the Constitution and laws. It is Congress that not only refuses to impeach but also enables and facilitates the Executive Branch to make a tyrannical mockery of the controlling existing Constitution and laws and to commit, and continue to commit, the same kinds of crimes against humanity in our name that were tried under American law at Nuremberg in the late1940s. Where was the public outcry as our civil rights and civil liberties were systemically ignored and were targeted by the Bush administration similarly to that of 1930s Germany? What this administration was doing was glowingly obvious and brazenly overt. And yet even if the American people and Congress were so blind to the war rhetoric, if they even thought for a minute that the Iraq war was even remotely as justified as WWII then how is it that they didn’t pay very much attention to the hundreds of billions in no bid contracts to their own cronies. Had President Roosevelt tied anything remotely resembling that in the1940s he would have been impeached in a heartbeat.

He should have resigned at once, but at least he has some remorse. He sure looks a lot better than mealy mouthed Ari Fleischer, who is still lying for the administration.

I think atempts to defend him or anyone who claims they were duped should be rejected out of hand. Millions of us with no special access to information and very little time outside of our 40-plus hour a week jobs, were able to use Google to hear from the career Pentagon and intelligence veterans who were being ignored, fired, and forced out because they knew there wasn't sufficient evidence to go to war. If a normal Joe or Jane can use his or her lowly access to information to clearly understand the dangerous and irresponsible propaganda game being played out from 2002 on, anyone higher up the rung than that simply cannot claim they didn't know or were duped. It's absurd, and if in any cases was actually true, implies a stellar degree of imcompetence. So, the question always remains for these people, were you so ethically and morally bankrupt that you were willing to use lies, cherrypicking and propaganda to plunge so many lives into darkness and death and severely undermine our national security and well-being for decades to come? Or was it that you set a historical record for utter incompetence? Or perhaps a combination of the two?

Ya' know, when it was obvious to all that Libby and Rove were in cahoots in Plamegate, I could see pain in Scott's face --his heart wasn't in it. I think that, as he said, time and other revelations have shown him that he was duped . . . and used, as have others from the Bush Crime Family who have written tell-alls. These writers are not "turn coats", they are trying to save our country while Bush crime Family is still trying to make it a dictatorship. We're in a boatload of trouble in all directions and it will only get worse with McCain serving Bush's 3rd term.

"his allegation saying that there was an effort to shade the truth, that propaganda was used to sell the war to the American people, is patently false," The Bushies don't seem to learn that lying just makes things worse. The evidence is too strong that they were not just shading the truth, but actually lying. There are the Downing St. memos, there is the doctored NIE that was shown to the Congress before the vote on going to war, there is the attempt to get Wilson for outing their lies about the yellow cake, there is the office that Feith ran which one of the operatives was stating at the time was being run solely to produce "intelligence" that could be used to justify the war, there is O'Neill's (sp?) book saying that in the first week of Bush's reign they were talking about invading Iraq, ...

OF COURSE we did. And still the American people voted for the guy again. It is the American people who should fall on their collective sword. An it also is the American people who will pay for many years to come.

waaaah! Waaaah! Whine! Whine! Another "Washington insider" writes a book and tells all a year or two after the fact . Why couldn't he come cleanwhen he left? He could have prevented more lies and b.s. from the Bushies. What a pukey opportunist.

Here he is.

this isn't news, the guy is just trying to make a buck. Everyone knew that was going on as it happened.