All these revelations from the new Scott McClellan book! From conspiratorial asides between Scooter and Karl to the assertion that the press went easy on the war effort - which has subsequently led to one reporter outing her bosses for exactly that - this is probably the barn-burner of the litterae apologia coming out of former administration officials.

But its funny how the media’s aggressions against Scott McClellan - the administration’s frustrating little bitch-bot throughout Plamegate and the early parts of the Iraq War - are helping to paint the picture of McClellan as a hopeless boob. Take, for example, what should be a much bigger story about George Bush’s alleged cocaine use, mostly painted as Scottie’s clueless virginal silliness:

Scott McClellan: George W. Bush ‘couldn’t remember if he took cocaine’ : Telegraph Blogs

According to McClellan: “‘The media won’t let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,’ I heard Bush say. ‘You know, the truth is I honestly don’t remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don’t remember.’”"I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn’t make a lot of sense.”

Hmmm? How indeed? It seems like such an incredibly naive thing to say. But that’s mostly because the quote is incomplete. The above linked article includes more important details:

Scott McClellan : Telegraph Blogs

Bush, McClellan writes, “isn’t the kind of person to flat-out lie”. Therefore “I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It’s the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true. And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious — political convenience.”{{snippage}}

McClellan links the way Bush handled the cocaine rumours with selling the Iraq war and other controversial policies. “It would not be the last time Bush mishandled potential controversy. But the cases to come would involve the public trust, and the failure to deal with them early, directly and head-on would lead to far greater suspicion and far more destructive partisan warfare.”

Well, that’s a much different kind of statement, isn’t it? The phraseology may seem a bit naive, but the reality is that Scott is pointing out how Bush uses his supposedly fuzzy memory to evade serious inquiry about subjects he’d rather not discuss. Cocaine isn’t the type of substance people try just once and never go back to. Bush can’t pawn this off as something he did once at a party, but he’s trying to.

And while this blog will not needlessly engage in accusation directly without at least some equally direct evidence, I feel compelled to point out that my lifestyle as a musician, particularly after high school, definitely qualifies me as something of an expert on elicit drug use and its evidences. This will not be the last time that George W. Bush’s alleged cocaine use and the Iraq War will be linked in some way.

And in honor of Scottie, here’s a blast from the past, and to my knowledge, the only funny part of Eurotrip: