Ex-spokesman says Bush used propaganda on Iraq

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan charges in an explosive new book that President George W. Bush used propaganda to sell the Iraq war, prompting angry rebukes from current and former Bush aides.

"In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage," wrote McClellan, the first Bush insider to write a book criticizing his former boss and fellow Texan.

It was a dramatic break from the close-knit Bush inner circle by the mild-mannered, 40-year-old McClellan and it drew instant condemnations on Wednesday from former White House colleagues who wondered why he stayed in the job.

"If he thinks he's going to ingratiate himself to his critics, he's sorely mistaken, and unfortunately, the only friends he had, he just lost," said Dan Bartlett, who served as White House counselor.

McClellan, in "What Happened -- Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," presents himself as a one-time true Bush believer who mistakenly fell in line behind "the campaign to sell the war" in Iraq.

McClellan, who had argued strenuously from the White House podium on why the war was justified, wrote that Bush and his top aides conducted a "political propaganda campaign" that misled Americans and that Bush led the crisis in a way that "almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

"What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary," he said.

McClellan called Bush "a man of personal charm, wit, and enormous political skill," and "plenty smart enough to be president," while sprinkling criticism of him throughout the 341-page book.

His operating style, said McClellan, was to remain "continually in campaign mode, never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially where Iraq was concerned."

'DISGRUNTLED'

McClellan was replaced as White House press secretary in 2006 by Tony Snow, and Snow gave way to Dana Perino about a year ago.

Many in the White House were stunned by the book. Perino blasted McClellan.

"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad -- this is not the Scott we knew," she wrote in an e-mail to reporters.

Later, she told reporters that Bush was puzzled and disappointed. "He doesn't recognize this as the Scott McClellan he hired and confided in and worked with so many years," she said.

The Iraq war was fought over charges that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction based on intelligence that later proved to be faulty. Bush began building the case for war in 2002 after the upheaval caused by the September 11, 2001, attacks.