It's amazing what some people will do for 30 pieces of silver.
Scott McClellan was given the signal honor of being the spokesman for the president of the United States, a distinction few Americans have ever achieved. Being the spokesman for the world's most powerful political figure is no small thing, and I'm sure that the men and women who have held the post view their service as an honor more given that deserved.
It doesn't appear as if McClellan sees it that way. He is not the first press secretary to be forced out of the job, and he won't be the last. But he'll be the first to sink his teeth into the hand that gave him the job in the first place.
It is a tough job, especially when the spokesman of a president the liberal media despises wears a large bull's eye on his chest. It's an even tougher job when the person who holds the job is clearly not up to it, as was the case with McClellan. He was an easy target for the nastier members of the largely hostile White House Press corps.
His lack of competence is what cost him the job, and it is now obvious that he left the White House burning with resentment over his forced departure. The fact that he had held the job as long as he did obviously created no sense of gratitude for his having been given the post to begin with.
His act of vengeance has delighted the media who once excoriated him. Their onetime foe is now their hero, an ally in their never-ending campaign to portray George Bush, a good and decent man, as a bumbling fool if not an outright criminal.
They greet his alleged revelations with none of the skepticism with which they once treated his pronouncements from the White House press room podium, accepting, for example, his attempt to lay the blame for what Richard Armitage did in leaking the name of Valerie Plame on his old friend and Texas colleague, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby.
They let out a great cheer when he joins the chorus of Democrats and their media henchmen attributing the Iraq war to sleazy, dishonest and hugely deceptive White House maneuvering when the real facts show otherwise.
As David Horowitz and his co-author Ben Johnson write in "Party of Defeat," George Bush acted solely to enforce a United Nations ultimatum blatantly ignored by Saddam Hussein.
Wrote the authors: "The United States went to war because it had concluded that Saddam Hussein could not be trusted to observe the arms agreement embedded in the UN resolutions. Twelve years of defiance and obstruction leading up to, and including the December 7 deadline had established that fact. Even then, the Bush administration was prepared to forego war if Saddam and his sons left the country and went into exile, thus allowing the terms of the UN resolutions to be met."
Scott McClellan surely knew this but chose to ignore it, preferring to give ammunition to those who want to advance a false view of the conflict's genesis.
In the end, it's all about money. An honest book about his experiences wouldn't sell. If he wanted to sell his book, it had to dish up dirt, even when there wasn't any underfoot.
When I wrote my first book, "On the Outside Looking in," I had publishers waving huge royalties in my face if I would only sling mud at my father. They couldn't understand that there was simply no mud in his life and work, and I wasn't willing to create any for them for the sake of big bucks.
Too bad Scott McClellan, blinded by the glitter of those 30 pieces of sliver, didn't see it that way.
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