Bob Dole on Scott McClellan
May 30th, 2008 at 09:25pm Mark Noonan
That’s gonna leave a mark:
In an extraordinary message obtained and authenticated by Politico, Dole uses his trademark biting wit to portray McClellan as a classic Washington opportunist.
“There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues,” Dole wrote in a message sent yesterday morning. “No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits and, spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.”
Michael Marshall, Dole’s spokesman and colleague at the Alston Bird law firm, confirms the message came from the former senator and presidential candidate. “Yes, it is authentic,” Marshall wrote in an e-mail.
“In my nearly 36 years of public service I’ve known of a few like you,” Dole writes, recounting his years representing Kansas in the House and Senate. “No doubt you will ‘clean up’ as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, ‘Biting The Hand That Fed Me.’ Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years”
Dole assures McClellan that he won’t read the book — “because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high-profile job.”
“That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively,” Dole concludes. “You’re a hot ticket now, but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?”
He signs the email simply: “BOB DOLE”
McClellan is just another in a long, sad line of former insiders who have turned on their boss after leaving their employ - but he’s not the worst of this species, that would be those who become “sources” for anonymous denunciations. It would be nice if the people who ran our government were all men and women rather than being, as they all too often are, self-absorbed weasels. You want to know why President Bush is as unpopular as he is? Because he did what he thought was right, treated everyone decently and will take no revenge on any of those who betrayed him - for being an honorable man in a den of cretins, President Bush has earned scorn, and while those who slander him come out smelling like a rose, President Bush will carry an unearned public reputation for dishonesty to his grave…only a century from now, when all the actors of this play are long dead, will the full truth be able to come out. At that time, woe unto the memory of those who acted dishonorably.
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Corruption, President Bush
36 Comments
1. Casper | May 30th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Mark,
You are truly the Nicolas Chauvin of the Bush administration.
2. Ashtray | May 30th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Bbbbbwwwhhaaaahhhaaaaahhhaaa
Snork…snicker.
Yeesh.
3. neocon | May 30th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
You ok ashtray? Did you get the bong water?
4. Mortimer | May 30th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Time for all the Bushbots to rally together and savage another Bush critic. Wow, so the spokesman for Viagra carries now lot a lot of weight.
5. winnowhead | May 30th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I wasn’t expecting you to even mention McClellan. But as soon as I read about Dole’s email, I knew it would just be a matter of time.
Among the many revelations the the book, now that we have inside confirmation that Bush personally declassified Valerie Plame’s CIA status before leaking it to the press, is quoting Dole going to be your standard response?
6. Dean | May 30th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
And even if McClellan is an opportunist, that doesn’t mean he isn’t telling the truth.
History is not going to treat George Bush kindly. Oh, he’ll get to be the elder statesman: even paranoid Nixon garnered some grudging respect in his dotage, and Bush will be no different. But 100 years out, he will be remembered as one of the very worst.
The American people will be paying for George Bush’s colossal blunders for years to come.
7. majoriot | May 31st, 2008 at 12:20 am
Oh, what a pleasant chuckle.
When Scotty was lying for the Bush invasion/occupation, he was a sweetheart.
Now he’s just another reminder of Bush’s actual weakness of mind and heart and lack of accountability. In the end, this guy has a conscience. I can see where that would bother people he worked for.
8. Jeremiah | May 31st, 2008 at 12:40 am
In the end, this guy has a conscience.
More like…In the end, this guy lost his conscience.
Mr. McClellan got hooked up with somebody who duped him. And duped him bad.
Liberal density and irrationality pose an ever greater threat to humanity.
9. Cavalor Epthith, Esquire, D.S.V.J. | May 31st, 2008 at 2:05 am
8. Jeremiah | May 31st, 2008 at 12:40 am
You mean Jeremiah, like the Bush permanent campaign team duped most of America that looks, and worships like you into flag waving for a pointless war that has wasted the blood and treasure of the United States of America for the purpose of “coercing” a sovereign nation into democracy? Young man you have an IV drip of Kool-Aid™ in both arms. My word though even the executives of the MSM in their ivory towers were afraid of the “Angry white man” after 9/11. Someone had to pay it might as well be Saddam Hussein and Iraq. But the million or so Souls in America like you who are so indulged in an “I am so special in the eyes of the Creator” fantasy that allows you to be blind to what this current administration has done to a president, to a man who meant well at the start and I feel was lead astray by politics, that was a bipartisan figurehead in Texas as governor, are just a foggy blip on the radar screen of politics on the global scale. And in terms of Universal importance? Well let me say that as grains on all the beaches of all the Known Worlds no one can tell one grain from another either all are special and beloved or none are.
The problem is not that what you profess is weak or even anathema to me, my kind or country to which I am loyal; the problem is you would use that message of love and twist it into hate because of truths you do not wish to acknowledge. Warnings were given that you would come and those who will write the truth even as their houses burn around them are ready to do good work even as you lay the path for your own demise.
10. Jeremiah | May 31st, 2008 at 2:40 am
Well let me say that as grains on all the beaches of all the Known Worlds no one can tell one grain from another either all are special and beloved or none are.
LOL! LOL!
Yeah! Tell that to those people in the Middle East who desire not only your material possession but the life blood which flows throughout your veins.
You reckon they would understand?
Yes, in my God’s eyes…..we are all equal, but through man’s disobedience (sin), we must fight to protect all that is good and Holy in life.
I wish Liberals believed that we are ‘all equal’ but it’s just simply not the case.
The problem with Liberals is that they see evil as equally permissible as good…and this is where we must draw the line. And anyone who does not allow evil to be permissible is said to have “stepped out of the Constitution”
I ain’t never heared o’ such!
But God’s people aren’t drawing the line….they’re taking the liberal way of thinking….if it feels good do it, “Oh ok, just walk down the street and murder your neighbor, Oh ok, abort your child, Oh ok, marry your dog your cat, your cow etc, etc, etc.”
To protect the U.S. from a barbarous enemy???
NOOOOOO! CAN’T DO THAT!
A time of persecution is coming, friend, and I’m afraid it’s not too far off. It is a dreadful worry, but I don’t see any other way we can avoid….I know the way, but I don’t believe America is going to wake up.
Liberals have used the internet and our schools to brainwash people and played tricks with their minds totally till they don’t know what way is up or down, forward or backwards.
It’s a pity.
11. Mark Noonan | May 31st, 2008 at 3:20 am
winnow,
This is the second thread about McClellan…
And, as for Bush declassifying Plame - that is an interesting accusation, given that her status wasn’t classified. Is that another earth shattering revelation in McClellan’s book, or does it come from somewhere else?
The liberal hooks are:
1. No WMDs were found - but the problem with this is that they were; not nearly in the quantities expected, but as Saddam was required to have absolutely none and absolutely no capability of ever having them again…
2. Joe Wilson exposed Bush’s “sixteen words” lie - except it was Joe Wilson who lied.
3. Bush exposed Plame to get revenge for Wilson telling the truth - except Plame wasn’t covert, and Wilson wasn’t telling the truth.
You see, your basic view of Bush is based on three lies about Bush - all the other lies you believe about him run off one or all of these three lies. Once you get back to the beginning and realise that the “sixteen words” were true, you’re whole view of the matter will change…and, hopefully, you’ll have learned a lesson
12. Cavalor Epthith, Esquire, D.S.V.J. | May 31st, 2008 at 4:02 am
11. Mark Noonan | May 31st, 2008 at 3:20 am
Plame was not covert? I do not understand how in the face of all the evidence that you have heard from Ms Plame herself in Congressional testimony, the director of the CIA’s own words read into the Congressional record, countless interviews in the print and digital and televised media where she smiles into the camera and says freely and honestly that she was a covert operative for the Central Intelligence Agency. From whence comes your certainty that this woman is lying risking her freedom in the process? Why hasn’t Bush had the FBI arrest her for impersonating a covert operative of the CIA? If you politics you have taken leave of your senses!
As a journalist I think the trail to Bush via Rove and down to Armitage via Cheney will be easy to connect after they have left office next year and that revelation will vindicate Mr Wilson.
As far as WMD are concerned all our sources in both Amman and Damascus as well as Tel Aviv tell us that the total of all the spent biological materials [neutralized by exposure to UV] potential dual use materials AND the residue of those famous shells that were found, all of it would fit in an 85 gallon drum and weighs less than 500 pounds. Now you would be willing to weigh evidence from right wing blogs vice data gathered by Mossad?
13. Danish Artist | May 31st, 2008 at 6:36 am
Plame again?
I’ll ask again. Since revealing Plame as a CIA agent who was covert is a crime, who was convicted for that crime?
No one can seem to answer this simple question.
If Plame was covert, revealing her as such is a crime.
Who was convicted for revealing her???
As far a McClellan goes, his truths in most cases were not sourced by personally witnessed events. There were many instances he was not party to meetings and conferences, but somehow “outed” the contents of those meetings.
McClellan is simply giving what the anti-Bush crowd wants and is laughing all the way to the bank.
14. Pain | May 31st, 2008 at 6:59 am
13. Danish Artist | May 31st, 2008 at 6:36 am
Did you skip a seminar?
Bush declassified Plame’s identity allowing for the leak of her name by Armitage. The crime here is not the leak because the President can declassify such documents even identities at his own discretion by EO within certain operational parameters. Libby was convicted of perjury the same crime that Bill Clinton committed as he tried to cover up the involvment of others in the matter. It is purely partisan political “gotcha.”
15. Marty13 | May 31st, 2008 at 9:47 am
I guess if my primary source of income was shouting out the fact that I suffered from erectile disfunction….I’d be kinda cranky too. Seriously, I’m not feeling Bob’s outrage here. He’s never been a pal of W ……..This just ain’t his fight. What gives?
16. neocon | May 31st, 2008 at 9:48 am
Valerie Plame was one of the most worthless pieces of flesh in the CIA and exposing her for the fraud she is was much deserved. She was not covert, she was not competent, and she maliciously compromised a fact finding mission by suggesting the assignment of her Greatful Dead wannabe husband.
The fact that Richard Armitage is golfing today is clear evidence of the faux outrage of the liberals. But they do play the drama queen role very well.
17. Marty13 | May 31st, 2008 at 10:17 am
neo,
I don’t know Plame’s CIA career highlights and would like to keep it that way. But even your myopic viewpoint must concede, she’s definitely not hard on the eyes.
Regarding her “Grateful Dead wannabe husband,” when he was acting ambassador to Iraq in the run-up to the first Gulf War, he definitely displayed some rocks.
If you recall, he totally yanked on Hussein’s ’stache by giving refuge to more than 100 US citizens at the embassy and in the homes of US diplomats. This when Saddam was threatening to execute anyone who harbored foreigners.
He then addressed journalists wearing a hangman’s noose instead of a necktie.
Com’on now, that took some sack. Even Herbert Walker commented.
18. winnowhead | May 31st, 2008 at 10:38 am
For crying out loud Mark, take your blinders off. We’ve known that Wilson’s CIA status was classified for years now. We’ve also known that someone in the administration declassified that information so it could be leaked to the press to discredit Wilson.
Now we have McClellan claim Bush personally declassified it:
19. Anon | May 31st, 2008 at 10:45 am
Nobody listens to Dole anymore.
He can crawl back into his pineapple can.
20. Fish Fry | May 31st, 2008 at 11:13 am
Bob, comments like this won’t help Lizzy. Instead of complaining, Dole should be asking, “Mr. President, did you in fact, as Scotty has laid out, purposely set this nation on a course to force democracy on a sovereign nation, thinking you could do it on the cheap?”
Lizzy will have some explaining to do. Does she think truth matters? In her NC Senate race with Hagen she has dropped from a January 13% point lead to just 3% point lead today and the gap continues to close.
21. Mark Noonan | May 31st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Winnow,
Errmm…would you like me to delete your comment so you can re-write it into a coherent statement?
You conflate the NIE with Plame’s CIA status, confuse Plame with Wilson - and you rely entirely upon the uncorroborated testimony of McClellan who’s honesty is highly questionable in this area as he didn’t resign at the time and lauded the President and staff when he left the White House.
22. Mark Noonan | May 31st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Cavalor,
There is zero evidence that Plame was covert. You provide some, and I’ll donate $10.00 to Obama.
23. John Austin TX Personal trainers | May 31st, 2008 at 2:25 pm
When Scott was press secretary I always thought he was weak and in way over his head. Now he is getting beat up by an octogenarian while they fawn over him on the Today Show. Just when you thought he could not get more ignominious.
There is little downside for Bob “Third-person” Dole. He can only go up. He might be a designated attack dog for the upcoming election.
24. FmrMarine | May 31st, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Mark
BUT-BUT she HAD to be…….
She wore a scarf and sunglasses to hide her idenity, when she and ole lying joe posed for the cover of time magazine.
What a freeking joke…She drove her car to WORK every day to Langley and parked it in the CIA lot, along with her bumper sticker allowing her to get on the base.
Ill bet the libs here believed Clark Kents disguise also. LOL!
25. Tractatus | May 31st, 2008 at 2:36 pm
There is zero evidence that Plame was covert.
Plame was covert agent at time of name leak:
“An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame’s employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was “covert” when her name became public in July 2003.”
You can make your donation right here, Noonan. Unless, that is, you’re a lying coward who would try to weasel out of backing up his BS. So which is it? (I’m betting it’s the latter option. And I can’t wait to be proven right.)
26. Mark Noonan | May 31st, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Tract,
You think I’m not aware of that?
You can’t be “undercover” if you ever, ever, ever use your real identity in the course of your official activities. This is why Fitz didn’t seek an actual indictment on “outing” Plame because there was no “outing”. No, Tract, you’ll have to come up with acual evidence that Plame was covert at the time ARIMITAGE released her name to the press….and then I expect you to insist on the prosecution of the culprit…ARMITAGE.
27. Tractatus | May 31st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
(I’m betting it’s the latter option. And I can’t wait to be proven right.)
It’s like clockwork, I tell ya. I can predict you guys perfectly. Not that it’s hard, mind you–you’re just that simple.
To recap:
You asked for evidence that Plame was covert when she was outed.
I provided an article about the CIA–you know, the people who determine the covert status of their own agents–saying that, yes, Plame was covert when she was outed.
Your response: “You’ll have to come up with acual [sic] evidence that Plame was covert at the time ARIMITAGE released her name to the press.”
Because somehow, the CIA saying that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA agent isn’t proof that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA agent.
You are such a coward, Noonan. It’d be sad if it weren’t so funny. Perhaps you should ask the Wizard of Oz for some courage.
28. FmrMarine | May 31st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
tact/Mark
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/05/fitzgerald_and_plames_covert_s.html
29. FmrMarine | May 31st, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Tact;
This is way to funny……
“The correct term for Plame, if she were she a true covert agent, would be ‘unknown.’ She would not be recognized as undercover even by her own intelligence community at large, with the exception of a very select few supervisors and perhaps a very few of her peers.
Fitzgerald’s characterization of her being not ‘widely known’ as a CIA officer outside of Langley is irrelevant.
The janitor, the gate guard, and her co—workers knew she was a CIA officer, and therefore she in all likelihood was not an “unknown” covert operative. Unknown operatives don’t generally drive through the front gate every day to go to HQ, and the person’s status is not common knowledge in the building. And most of all, covert operatives don’t normally attend Senate Democratic Policy strategy meetings with their husbands. “
30. Tractatus | May 31st, 2008 at 3:21 pm
You should stick to being angry at gays and blacks, FmrMarine. Matters of thinking clearly aren’t up your alley.
31. FmrMarine | May 31st, 2008 at 4:23 pm
trat;
blah blah blah more leftist tripe.
Go hide in your little hole.
Nothing to say, so attack the person - typical marxist playbook rule.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/soros_publisher_shaped_mcclell.html
32. Cavalor Epthith, Esquire, D.S.V.J. | May 31st, 2008 at 4:46 pm
22. Mark Noonan | May 31st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I will even let you in on a few Valerie Plame secrets in thanks for your donation which I would prefer you donate to the pro-life charity of your choice. At the height of her career as a covert agent she was so immersed in the German language that she still sings to her children in German. She weighs 125 pounds and can bench press 200 pounds one time and 150 pounds ten times.
Okay enough fun here is the link. Lines 40 through 43 should clear things up, as should lines 69-73, 86-91, 109-117, 123-128 and especially lines 136-166.
33. Cavalor Epthith, Esquire, D.S.V.J. | May 31st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
26. Mark Noonan | May 31st, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I do hope you take no offence at this little rant for none is intended but I feel I can say these things in a civil manner for the purpose of having them heard. As a journalist in my country free speech is taken very seriously.
For the millionth time I have called for the arrested of Richard Armitage. If you get Armitage you get Cheney if you get Cheney you get the man who declassified her covert status, The President of the United States George W Bush. The only problem with that executive order to declassify her status was nobody told Valerie Plame Wilson or her direct handler at Langley. And this, gentlemen, is the criminal element in all this; that intelligence gathering on Iran was compromised to try to cause bodily harm to Valerie Plame Wilson and to cause anguish to Ambassador Wilson. It is just another item in a laundry list of political hatchet jobs using the real American heroes as pawns, Shinseki, Lynch, Tillman, Plame, Fallon all sacrificed for the misguided desire to face down a tactic and call it warfare by invading a nation that had nothing to do with the “war on terror” save for being mostly Muslim and in the Middle East.
This is not about conspiracy theories this is about political stubbornness because your pride is wrapped up Mark Noonan in this being the right war at the right time against a religion that you see as violent and inferior. Plain and simple if Bush has committed a crime he will walk away from the White House a free man and live out the rest of his days and it will be left for historians to judge his merits or demerits over the centuries. One thing they will point to for sure is the nature of how insanely loyal men like you were to the Bush cause to the neoconservative cause and to the cause of promoting Religion’s influence in the government of the greatest secular democracy in the history of Terra. History Mark Noonan will not be very kind to those who would swap secular liberty for religious moral codes no matter what your worldview commands you to believe you cannot serve two masters. Either you are an American of deep and abiding personal faith as tens of millions are and cloak your self in the Constitution and civil rights or you are a Constantinian Christian who loathes secular freedom and thus seeks to punish all who do not wish America to a nation of draconian Biblical rules first and foremost and a democracy when convenient for the Theocrats in charge. And with the bulk of American Christians being Protestants how long under an American Theocracy do you think it would take for them to turn on YOU?
34. Mark Noonan | May 31st, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Cavalor,
Henry Waxman stating the bald faced lie that Plame was covert doesn’t maker her so.
You’ll never be able to get ’round the fact that Fitz didn’t indict the man he KNEW released Plame’s name to the press, Armitage and this is sufficient proof of Plame’s non-covert status for any reasonable observer. You’re job is much, much harder - you have to DEMONSTRATE that at the time Plame’s name came into the public square that she was a covert agent for the CIA.
To begin with, you really should look up what “covert agent” actually is…she wasn’t “Jane Bond”, ya know? And no matter how much you on the left want to believe the “heroic US Ambassador speaking truth to power and his American hero super-spy wife” nonsense, it won’t ever become true.
35. Cavalor Epthith, Esquire, D.S.V.J. | June 1st, 2008 at 6:17 am
34. Mark Noonan | May 31st, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Therefore, in your worldview even that the CIA states she is covert and cannot and will not reveal what she has done or the nature of her missions beyond what they allow her to say in her book and at Congressional testimony all of these things and all of these people are lying. This despite the fact that AG Mukasey could pick up the phone and have Plame Waxman and General Hayden arrested for conspiracy and wire fraud [the testimony was broadcast] no one within the Bush administration has moved either.
In this worldview then I have a small problem then with another party that is central to the Scott McClellan soul baring book, one Karl Rove. If there is no problem with Ms Plame Wilson lying to Congress in your worldview, then why is Karl Rove refusing to testify before Conyers and the other members of his committee under oath as Valerie Plame Wilson did?
Now you begin to see what blind and willful partisanship as the end game rewards you with Mr. Noonan. You are always painted into one of these corners that one cannot emerge from with getting paint on one’s hooves. Nixon was face with this and had to resign from office after his Vice president, Spiro Agnew, in shame had to do the same. What you have here is nothing more than the Nixon White House with more effective plumbers. Clinton had the Congress on his side and the threat of using the nuclear option against the members of the GOP in both the House and the Senate if he were found guilty in a trial. That bloodbath of exposures of who was truly corrupt, criminal or adulterous would have reduced the GOP to a quivering bowl of jelly but aside from Livingston who “outed” himself as a Human Being no one else paid; no one including Newt Gingrich.
Blind subservience is a dangerous condiment, Mark Noonan. Consider this, Waxman you say lied about Plame and you can easily accept this because of his political affiliation but Bush could not lie, about anything in your worldview because you support the worldview of his party. Is that even the slightest bit rational?
36. Republican Killer | June 1st, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Deleted - off topic.