The Osterley Times: Falling out with the President: the devious world of George Bush

Rupert Cornwell - in today's Independent newspaper - is giving his critique of Scott McLellan's new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" and is in agreement with most people that this:

"is no falsely touted insider memoir, jazzed up with a few titillating anecdotes to boost sales. It is a 341-page disquisition on Mr Bush, on his misbegotten war in Iraq, and on his entire conduct of the presidency, which Mr McClellan says was built on the use of propaganda, and on the technique of government as permanent campaign.

"History appears poised to confirm," he writes in arguably the most damning paragraph of a book full of them, "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 ... What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

It's hard to overstate how damning this indictment is, coming from a man who owes his entire Washington career to Bush, a man who was part of the "Texas mafia" which Bush brought to Washington.

Indeed, the only comfort the Bush team can take from this is the fact that their boss has fallen so far that even this searing indictment of his job as president is unlikely to damage him further. When you've hit the floor, there's simply no further to fall.

However, Cornwell picks up on passages that have, so far, not been reported on which go to the centre of the Bush presidency and where it all went wrong.

In fact, Mr McClellan's portrait of the President – a man he says he still respects and admires – is far more nuanced. Which of course only makes it more telling. Mr Bush comes across in now familiar guise, as a skilled politician, possessed of charm and an engaging wit, who is, "plenty smart enough to be President". On the other hand, he is utterly incurious and uninquisitive on policy matters, preferring to rely on gut instinct than a detailed sifting of the arguments.

For the 43rd President, a decision once taken is always right. The approach reflects not only Mr Bush's ingrained stubbornness but his ability to deceive not only others, but also himself.

That's utterly damning for the simple fact that it rings so true. The Bush presidency has been one where Bush thinks that once "the Decider" has made the call then it is the duty of everyone else to make what he wants happen.

And as for his ability to deceive himself as much as others, McLellan offers a damning example:

Mr McClellan offers as illustration a moment on the campaign trail in 1999, when he heard the governor/candidate talking on the phone to a friend about reports that he had used cocaine in his youth. Apparently, Mr Bush remarked that ... "the media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumours. The truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back then, and I just don't remember."

In 2000 voters – battle-hardened by having to confront Bill Clinton's marijuana use ("I did not inhale") and explain to their curious children the finer points of the Monica Lewinsky affair – did not seem greatly bothered. They assumed Mr Bush might indeed have indulged in cocaine, just as he had indulged in the bottle which he had emphatically given up. But Mr McClellan drew a different lesson from the episode. "I remember thinking to myself, how can that be?" he writes. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."

On the other hand, Mr Bush wasn't, "the kind of person to flat-out lie." So, McClellan concludes, "I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine ... I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true. And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious – political convenience." And thus, by implication at least, it was with Iraq and Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

If Bush could convince himself that he couldn't remember whether or not he had ever used cocaine, then he really was capable of convincing himself of anything.

And that brings us to Iraq. Wolfowitz had already confessed to Vanity Fair that WMD were not the reason for the invasion, but merely "something everyone could agree on". McLellan goes further stating that the reason for the war was "the neoconservative dream of creating a democratic Iraq that would pave the way for an enduring peace in the region."

In other words, the war was for Israel, that continual neo-con obsession. But how does one sell such a war for such a purpose? It's here that McLellan sticks the knife firmly between the shoulder blades of his former friends.

But the White House had to sell the war as necessary because of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. They accordingly took a different tack, not of "out-and-out deception", but of "shading the truth". This was achieved by "innuendo and implication", and by "intentionally ignoring intelligence to the contrary".

They simply made a decision to ignore any evidence which might prevent their war. That's something which we have always suspected and which McLellan has just confirmed.

There's nothing of stunning originality here, what's mind boggling is that it comes from a former member of Bush's inner circle, it's coming from someone who was there at the time. And he's not only saying that Bush and Co. conned the US into the Iraq war, he goes as far as to say that, if Bush knew then what he knows now, that Bush would never have gone to war in the first place:

"I know the President pretty well," Mr McClellan writes. "If he had been given a crystal ball in which he could have foreseen the cost of war, more than 4,000 American troops killed, 30,000 injured, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis dead, he would never have made the decision to invade, whatever he says or feels he has to say publicly today."

But his criticism is not limited to Bush alone:

What Happened delivers tough criticism of the President's once vaunted national security team. One member of it of course was Dick Cheney, referred to by Mr McClellan as "the magic man" who somehow "always seemed to get his way" on every issue that mattered to him, be it the war, boosting the executive power of the presidency, or the harsh treatment of detainees.

Even more damning is his verdict on Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser in the run-up to the invasion. Her main talent, Mr McClellan suggests, was a Teflon quality. Whatever went wrong, "she was somehow able to keep her hands clean," even when the problems related to areas for which she was responsible, such as the WMD rationale for war (including the infamous "16 words" in the 2003 State of the Union address about Saddam seeking uranium in Africa, that led to the CIA/Valerie Plame affair) and the planning for post-war occupation. History, he predicts, will not be kind to Ms Rice. But "she knew well how to adapt to potential trouble, dismiss brooding problems and always come out looking like a star".

History, I suspect, will not be kind to any of them. Rarely does an administration get it this wrong on so many different levels. Rarely does an administration act with such arrogance and so little common sense. This really has been the first Frat presidency, run by a man who gained his position solely through his father's achievements and who governed based on the notion that he didn't care what anyone - including history - thought of his actions.

A man who could convince himself that he didn't know if he had ever tried cocaine, really could convince himself of anything. And a presidency which was not based on facts was always going to hit the wall. At times like this I am very proud to be part of the reality based community which Bush and his cohorts so despised:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

It was that mindset which defined Bush's presidency and which led it to be the unqualified disaster which McLellan describes.

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