Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan has taken up arms against his former boss in a new book, painting US President George W. Bush as having "veered terribly off course" and "rushing" to an unnecessary war in Iraq, US media reported on Tuesday.
In the scathing What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, the one-time presidential aide also blasted the White House staff over the disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 by saying they “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” Washington-based Politico magazine said.
“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency,” McClellan wrote in the excerpts released to Politico.
“The perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath,” he wrote.
McClellan, 40, wrote that with Bush still in office the American public has already concluded “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 when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary,” McClellan wrote.
He also accused former senior Bush strategist and adviser Karl Rove and Lewis “Scooter Libby,” the vice president’s chief of staff, of deceiving him on their role in an explosive CIA leak scandal involving the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
“Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President [Dick] Cheney allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie” that Rove and Libby were not involved in the leak, McClellan wrote.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS