Who is lying, Bush or Scott McClellan?

Question

High Crimes and Misdemeanors.....

Shouldn't the investigations commence into impeaching a President who has lied, lied and lied again to the American people and investigators.....?

Answer 1

George Dubya Bush: Promoting Lies, Demoting Democracy

He does not know the TRUTH!

Scott McClellan's admission that he unintentionally made false statements denying the involvement of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Bush-Cheney administration's plot to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson, along with his revelation that Vice President Cheney and President Bush were among those who provided him with the misinformation, sets the former White House press secretary as John Dean to George Bush's Richard Nixon.

It was Dean willingness to reveal the details of what described as "a cancer" on the Nixon presidency that served as a critical turning point in the struggle by a previous Congress to hold the 37th president to account.

Now, McClellan has offered what any honest observer must recognize as the stuff of a similarly significant breakthrough.

The only question is whether the current Congress is up to the task of holding the 43rd president to account.

What McClellan has revealed, in a section from an upcoming book on his tenure in the Bush-Cheney White House, is a stunning indictment of the president and the vice president. The former press secretary is confirming that Bush and Cheney not only knew that Rove, the administration's political czar, and Libby, who served as Cheney's top aide, were involved in the scheme to attack Wilson's credibility -- by outing the former ambassador's wife, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency analyst -- but that the president and vice president actively engaged in efforts to prevent the truth from coming out.

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby," writes McClellan in an excerpt from his book, What Happened, which is to be published next April by Public Affairs.

"There was one problem," the long-time Bush aide continues. "It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration "were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself."

Much has been made about the fact that outing Plame as a CIA operative was a felony, since knowingly revealing the identity of an intelligence asset is illegal. And much will be made about the fact that McClellan's statement links Bush and Cheney to the cover-up of illegal activities and the obstruction of justice, acts that are themselves felonies.

But it is important to recognize that a bigger issue is at stake. If the president and vice president knowingly participated in a scheme to attack a critic of their administration -- Wilson had revealed that the White House had been informed that arguments Bush and Cheney used for attacking Iraq were ungrounded -- they have committed a distinct sort of offense that the House Judiciary Committee has already determined to be grounds for impeachment.

In the summer of 1974, Democrats and Republicans on the committee voted overwhelmingly to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon for having "repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies."

That second article of impeachment against Nixon detailed the president's involvement in schemes to use the power of his position to attack political critics and then to cover up for those attacks.

The current chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Michigan Democrat John Conyers, voted for the impeachment of Nixon on those grounds.

Conyers and his colleagues need to recognize that, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's aversion to presidential accountability, McClellan's statement demands the sort of inquiry and action that Dean's statements regarding Nixon demanded three decades ago.

As former Common Cause President Chellie Pingree notes with regard to Bush, "The president promised, way back in 2003, that anyone in his administration who took part in the leak of Plame's name would be fired. He neglected to mention that, according to McClellan, he was one of those people. And needless to say, he didn't fire himself. Instead, he fired no one, stonewalled the press and the federal prosecutor in charge of the case, and lied through his teeth."

Pingree, a savvy government watchdog who is bidding for an open House seat representing her native Maine, argues that the Judiciary Committee must subpoena McClellan as part of a renewed investigation of the Wilson case.

She is right about that.

She is right, as well, when she concludes that, if what McClellan says is true "it will call into question the legitimacy of the entire administration. And we may see a changing of the guard at the White House sooner than expected."

That changing of the guard -- via the Constitutional process of impeachment and trial for their various and sundry high crimes and misdemeanor -- is long overdue.

Answer 2

Humanist,

I would avoid any conclusions just yet...

Let's take a step back here and analyze.

I believe Scott McClellan is an intelligent man...and that he understands the political consequences of putting out such a contentious book....not to the Bush Administration...but to the nation as a whole. Would an intelligent man like Scott McClellan really put his self-interest before the nation? Don't you think that Mr. McClellan would know that this would brew a firestorm in Washington? And would you think that Mr. McClellan would want this to happen at a vulnerable time in our history. I mean right now...must people have a distasteful view of the American Politics. Do you really think Mr. McClellan would put forth a book that would make it worst for the American people at this crucial time in politics? Even if it were the truth. For the greater good,...I think he would.

Could it just be that the Publisher wanted to put out a controversal exerpt of the book to build a frenzy. To sell more books...and therefore has taken everything out of context.
It would not surprise me if they did.

I could be wrong. If I am, then I am

But remember when Randi Rhodes fell down and all the left-wingers said it was the right wingers who did it. Only for the rumor to be defunct by Randi Rhodes herself. NOW how did that make the left-wingers look? It made them look like a bunch dumb@$$es. And the trap was set off by there emotional incompentence, in which Jon Elliot (colleage of Randi Rhodes) even admitted to.

So my advice to you is...let's wait to April 2008 when the book comes out. Or the Democrats might be falling into a well set up trap. Not the right wings fault...the Democrats are the ones who walked into.

Answer 3

Don't get me wrong..I think Bush is the worst president ever...

...but it's possible that neither he nor McClellan lied re: the Valerie Plame outing scandal. If Bush was just telling McClellan what he himself had been told by Cheney &/or Rove, he wouldn't necessarily have KNOWINGLY lied. If McClellan took Bush/Cheney/Rove at their word, he wouldn't have KNOWINGLY been lying either. He would have been stupid, but not lying.

It's plausible deniability - a trademark of the oval office for generations. Bottom line: At least one (and possibly all) of the following people lied, and probably committed treason: Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby and McClellan. Personally, my money's on Cheney as the mastermind behind the whole thing.

Answer 4

The sooner they start impeachment procedures, the better. They should not be allowed to get away with it scott free. I do not want to support these felons in style for the rest of their lives.

Answer 5

Bush is a lyer but he has control of all the agencies that would prosecute him. We are no longer a nation of checks and balances and Bush and Cheney know it. They pretty well disregard the will of the people and moral decency for that matter and promote their own self serving agendas. We as a people are powerless to stop the evil.
People pretty well signed their rights away in fear as all Bush needs to say is he is committing crime in the name of "National Security " and he is exercising "Executive Privilege" and the nation cowers and looks the other way.
Our forefathers must be turning in their graves.

Answer 6

well since I'm not real familiar with Scott McClellan, I'd have at least give him the benefit of the doubt.
Bush and Cheney should have been impeached when they violated the Supreme Court decision of United States vs Nixon, and declared executive privilege on things that did not even pertain to national security.

Answer 7

I would say George W. Bush, he has been dishonest with the American People since being selected as President by the Supreme Court.

Answer 8

Is clear who is lying. The Bush administration.

Answer 9

past time. should have been started when the whole wiretapping thingy came to light. or authorizing torture; not what this country is about. suspension of habeus corpus? that's at least a misdemeanor.

Answer 10

As Press Secretary, McClellan always struck me as far too plodding and stupid to lie effectively. Unless he has a really sharp ghostwriter, I can't see him pulling it off now, either. Believing that the President is a skilled liar is another story, however; after all, he DID get elected.

Sort of.

Answer 11

So Bush lies a lot, but don't forget that he's a good Christian (well maybe).