Bush 'shaded the truth' on Iraq
Updated on 28 May 2008
A former White House press secretary has criticised President George Bush over the war on Iraq.
In his book, What Happened - Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, Scott McClellan claims the President shaded the truth and manipulated public opinion to make the case for the "unnecessary" war.
Mr McClellan presents himself as a one-time true Bush believer who mistakenly fell in line behind "the campaign to sell the war" in Iraq.
While he had argued strenuously from the White House podium on why the war was justified, Mr McClellan wrote that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a "fateful misstep."
"What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary," he said.
Mr McClellan, the first Bush insider to write a book criticising his former boss, has drawn condemnation from former White House colleagues who wondered why he stayed on in the job.
Mr McClellan was replaced as White House press secretary in 2006 by Tony Snow, and Mr Snow gave way to Dana Perino about a year ago.
Ms Perino said of Mr McClellan's book: "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad - this is not the Scott we knew."
Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said he was "heartbroken and stumped" by the book.
"If Scott felt this, why didn't he ever come to me privately and express it, or why did he take the press secretary job if he thought the President and the White House were disseminating propaganda," Mr Fleischer said.
George Bush, at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado, ignored the book and instead sought Americans' patience for the prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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