Yet Another Republican "We Have Always Been at War with Eurasia" Moment

We watch the dead-ender wingnuts attack Scott McClellan, and conclude it is time to shut down the Republican Party--a new opposition with totally new personnel is needed, badly.

Outsourced to TBogg:

TBogg » We have always been at war with Scott McClellan: Under the headline: "Is this book really necessary?" Power Line today:

When Scott McClellan was the president's press secretary, I usually winced when I heard him speak. The wincing finally ended when Tony Snow replaced McClellan. Now, with the publication of his new book, we get the chance to wince once more. It's an opportunity I intend to pass up.... JOHN adds: McClellan was a lousy press secretary.... Tony Snow... said that he came away with a deep appreciation of President Bush's character, judgment and knowledge of the issues. Unless McClellan can come up with some facts to back up his claims--facts have been notably absent from the press accounts I've seen of his book--I think Tony's assessment is considerably more reliable.

Power Line then:

Scott McClellan resigned as White House press secretary this morning. I think McClellan has done a capable job, and it's probably wishful thinking to imagine that the President would appoint someone who would take a more combative attitude toward the White House press corps. To be fair, McClellan has sometimes pushed back. But I think there is a lot of room to take a more aggressive approach.

This would be hilarious if it weren't so predictable.

And:

TBogg » We are so very sad. Very very sad.: Now even harder to lie to the press. Life is not fair. Dana Perino, who is apparently still gruntled with her job, is just so disappointed in Scott McClellan:

White House press secretary Dana Perino released this statement on Scott McClellan's critical book on the Bush White House: "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." More from Perino: "The book, as reported by the press, has been described to the president. I do not expect a comment from him on it -- he has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers."

It doesn't take much to puzzle Dana Perino. The next gaggle should be a hoot.

And:

TBogg » What lies beneath the lies: Stopped clocks have a better record. Weekly Standard All-Star Fabulist, Stephen F. Hayes:

Ask fifty Washington reporters for an assessment of Scott McClellan and forty-nine of them will give you some version of this: He's a nice guy who was in way over his head. (Most of them will be tougher in their analysis of his intellect.)

Does Stephen really want to go there? Probably not, but tough shit. This would be the same Stephen F. Hayes who parlayed a leaked memo from Doug Feith into this even though it didn't pan out. As Spencer Ackerman wrote:

Hayes, in the Standard, has made a career out of pretending Saddam and Al Qaeda were in league to attack the United States. He published a book -- tellingly wafer-thin and with large type in its hardcover edition -- called "The Connection." One infamous piece even suggested that Saddam might have aided the 9/11 attack. Hayes can be relied on to provide a farrago of speciousness every time new information emerges refuting his deceptive thesis. Unsurprisingly, Cheney has repeatedly praised Hayes's work, telling Fox News, "I think Steve Hayes has done an effective job in his article of laying out a lot of those connections."...

Every single inquiry into the Saddam/Al Qaeda link has revealed it to be untrue. First, in 2004, the 9/11 Commission's definitive study found "no collaborative operational ties" between the two. (Hayes' response was first to attack the commission, and then to claim that this was a legalistic way of saying that Saddam and Al Qaeda were actually in league.) Then, in 2006, the Senate intelligence committee rejected it. Then, in 2007, the Pentagon inspector general -- albeit in a more circuitous way -- rejected it. Now, in a report released last week, the U.S. military's Joint Forces Command rejects it. The Joint Forces Command study combed through 600,000 pages of captured documents about Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism throughout the years. It documents, in great detail, precisely that. But the label "terrorism" is a misleading category. The study refutes the idea that there was any "direct connection" between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Saddam's support for terrorism was largely limited to Palestinian, anti-Kurdish and anti-Gulf state terrorist groups. (See the JFC's Executive Summary here, another excerpt here and conclusions.)

About as close as anything could come to linking Saddam to Al Qaeda was a memo from one Saddam's intelligence services "written a decade before Operation Iraqi Freedom." It says: "In a meeting in the Sudan we agreed to renew our relations with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt." That organization would eventually merge with Al Qaeda in the late 1990s, long after the apparent meeting in Sudan. It also says that for a time in the mid-1990s, Saddam and Al Qaeda had "indirect cooperation" by offering "training and motivation" to some of the same terror organizations in that country.

Out of this thin gruel, Hayes attempted to make a meal in the Standard's pages this week. He lifted as many bullet points from the report as he could that, out of context, seemed to bolster his theory. He then went about attacking reporters who accurately wrote that the study found no direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Hayes tacitly promised his readers that history will ultimately vindicate him, writing that "as much as we have learned from this impressive collection of documents, it is only a fraction of what we will know in 10, 20 or 50 years." And he expressed puzzlement that an administration with an obvious credibility problem had not "done anything to promote the study."

How stupid do you have to be to be the the official stenographer for the stupidest f------ guy on earth? Pretty f------ stupid.

And PGL of Angry Bear:

Angry Bear: Jonan Goldberg must omniscient as he pens a stinging review of Scott McClellan’s What Happened even though:

I have not read the book. I will once I finish eating the contents of my sock drawer (which ranks slightly higher on my to-do list).

Now if you think the second sentence in this quote is juvenile – don’t bother reading the rest of Goldberg’s rant. OK, I lied. It is not a stinging review. In fact, it is about as idiotic as anything from this worthless pundit. But please consider this:

McClellan’s only legitimate beef seems to be his unjust treatment during the Valerie Plame investigation.

Really? The book has no other legitimate complaints? How on earth would Jonah know if he hasn’t even bothered to read anything? I guess his mommy told him so.

And special Bob Dole is the last one in the Republican Party bonus:

Jonathan Martin's Blog: Bob Dole unloads on McClellan - Politico.com: Bob Dole yesterday sent a scalding email to Scott McClellan, excoriating the former White House spokesman as a "miserable creature" who greedily betrayed his former patron for a fast buck.... "There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," Dole wrote in a message sent yesterday morning. "No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."... "In my nearly 36 years of public service I've known of a few like you," Dole writes, recounting his years representing Kansas in the House and Senate.  "No doubt you will 'clean up' as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me.' Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years"

Dole assures McClellan that he won't read the book --  "because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job. That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively," Dole concludes.  "You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"