Media madness over McClellan statement

David Limbaugh:

Though things have begun to turn around in Iraq and Bush's perseverance is in route to vindication, don't expect any mea culpas from the Bush bashers. Predictably, we're just witnessing new tactics in their seven years war to destroy him.

They thought they'd hit the jackpot with the excerpts from the new book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. McClellan claims, "I had unknowingly passed along false information (about Scooter Libby and Karl Rove's role in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case). 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."

From Chris Matthews to Keith Olbermann to David Shuster, mainstream-media talking heads thought they'd uncovered another smoking gun in the president's hand. The print big boys took their cue.

The Los Angeles Times apparently saw this as an opening to resurrect an older story first appearing in The New York Times on April 1, 2007, detailing how ex-Bush aide Matthew Dowd had "lost faith in Bush."

...

As usual, this is just more hot air with no substance. As for the mainstream-media spin that McClellan claimed Bush deceived him on Plame, Peter Osnos, head honcho of McClellan's publisher, Public Affairs Books, flatly says that McClellan "did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him." Osnos said Bush told McClellan what "he thought to be the case." And, McClellan believes that "the president didn't know it was not true."

Don't expect any retractions from the mainstream media since their original story will continue to serve their purpose of painting Bush, Cheney and Rove as despicable demons.

...

The British left wing media completely ignored the clarification and went with spin that suggested Bush lied about the Plame matter. The whole episode is just nonsense on stilts. As everyone should know by now, Richard Armitage leaked Plame's connection to the Wilson trip and no one believes he did so at the White House request. Why can't liberals remember this part of the story. They have always tried to twist the Armitage leak into a political vendetta against Rove and Libby.

Plame, by the way, was an "operative" in the part of the CIA that was responsible for much of the misinformation about Saddam's WMD. It was a brilliant cover up of that screw up to turn events on their head and put the White House on the defensive about something that someone else did, but there is no reason why liberals need to keep pushing that big lie, except liberal dirty politics.