McClellan says he believed in Bush as war started

[May 29, 2008]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan defended his bombshell book about the Bush administration on Thursday, saying he didn't object to the selling of the war in Iraq at the time because he, like other Americans, gave the president the benefit of the doubt.

"My beliefs were different then. I believed the president when he talked about he grave and gathering danger from Iraq," McClellan, who was deputy press secretary during the lead-up to the war, told NBC's "Today" show.

McClellan said he has come to believe the war was a mistake but still doesn't think the president lied to oversell the threat from Iraq. "He came to convince himself of that," McClellan said of Bush.

McClellan said he isn't accusing administration officials of "deliberate or conscious" lies to the American people, but instead of becoming so wrapped up in trying to shape the story to their advantage that they ignored facts that didn't fit the views they were promoting.

McClellan said he expected the angry response from White House insiders that his book has generated. As the book -- "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" -vaulted to No. 1 on Amazon.com's best-seller list Wednesday, Republican critics dismissed him as a turncoat, a sellout and a disgruntled former employee.

McClellan said he wrote the book in hopes of changing the "permanent campaign culture" of Washington -- which he said he and Bush had hoped to change from the White House but instead "got caught up in."

"I'm disappointed that things didn't turn out the way we all hoped they would turn out," McClellan said. "We all had high hopes coming in."

McClellan's allegations about pro-war propaganda drew a quick rebuke from former White House counselor Dan Bartlett.

"I would not personally participate in a process in which we are misleading the American people, and that's the part that I think is hurting so many of his former colleagues," Bartlett said, also on speaking on "Today." "To think that he is making such a striking allegation against his former colleagues, to me, is beyond the pale."

Speaking earlier Thursday to reporters in Sweden, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rejected McClellan's allegations that the Bush administration misled the American public into going to war with Iraq.

Rice would not comment specifically on charges in the book, but said Bush was honest and forthright about the reasons for the war. She also said she remained convinced that toppling Saddam Hussein was right and necessary.

"The president was very clear about the reasons for going to war," she told reporters at a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in Stockholm where she is attending an international conference on Iraq.

[Associated Press; By CONNIE CASS]

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