« News you might've missed | Main | SH5 »

May 23, 2005

Scott McClellan, You're Fired!

If only it were that easy.

Think Progress lays out the basic situation for us:

Finally! Fifteen days after the Downing Street memo broke in a London Sunday Times story, eleven days after Representative John Conyers and 87 other congressmen wrote a letter to the White House asking for an explanation, and ten days after Knight Ridder wrote the first story on the British memo, some courageous reporter finally took the dive and asked the White House whether it disputed the veracity of the leaked memo.

President Bush's "honey do" Scott McClellan fielded the question.

His response: “Flat-out wrong.” Only he admits that he hasn't seen the memo in question and has only seen reports of what it contains. Which of course means that if we are to take McClellan's response at face value, the reporter asking the question probably knew more about the memo than the guy denying it's veracity.

See how that works? Of course this is a familiar pattern with the Bush Administraion.

Recall President Bush's reference to a "mushroom cloud" in his 2002 SOTU address to Congress. There was nothing close to uncontroversial evidence that Iraq was anywhere close to acquiring or manufactoring nuclear weapons. But that didn't stop Bush from making the oblique reference. Of course he never actually said that Iraq had nuclear weapons in that speech. He did make many other direct claims about Iraq which were false.

McClellan has a rather checkered history of telling outright lies on behalf of President Bush.

You know what they say, Scotty... "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... um... er... We can't get fooled again!" (Dubya's version.) You say you haven't seen the memo, but that it's "flat out wrong." Why should we believe you?

Posted by Kevin at May 23, 2005 05:00 PM