Young: Team Bush played media -- and Americans -- like fiddle

WACO, Texas — WACO, Texas — Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer were in a dither. The "Today" show had an exclusive.

Former Bush spokesman Scott McClellan would tell all about the "culture of deception" where he used to work and about the run-up to a war he now calls unnecessary.

But anyone who tuned in seeking to get a better understanding about the mind-set of the policy makers who plunged a nation into that war instead got a further glimpse into how we could be so distracted.

For 45 minutes, Matt and Meredith probed not the thought processes and decisions of George Bush, or Dick Cheney, or Condoleezza Rice. No, Meredith and Matt probed the thought processes of — Scott McClellan.

Why now, Scott? What do you think the president thinks of you? Will you two guys go fishing now? Why didn't you speak up then to the president?

Watching this, one could easily see how America would be led into a pre-emptive war based on lies. We have watchdogs like Meredith and Matt.

Or, like Paula Zahn. In 2006 with CNN, she got an exclusive with former CIA officer Ray McGovern, the man who stood up and asked Donald Rumsfeld "Why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary?"

But Zahn couldn't focus on the issue — those claims that led us to war. Instead she asked McGovern, "How much of an ax do you have to grind with the secretary?"

Never mind that McGovern once briefed George H.W. Bush daily on intelligence matters, or that he was among a group of intelligence professionals blasting pre-war claims.

Never mind that, because McGovern had all the standing he needed to ask that question of Rumsfeld. He's a citizen of this country.

The White House works for Ray McGovern.

It should gall you, as a citizen, to think that people who work for us — like Scott McClellan and the man he represented, are paid by you to lie to you, particularly when it comes to sending your sons and daughters to war.

"Culture of deception," is McClellan's term for it, along with the "permanent campaign" that put a political dirty trickster like Karl Rove at the president's ear at every turn. Oh, we paid his salary, too.

McClellan terms Rove a "ruthless, perhaps unscrupulous operator" — and absolutely irreplaceable.

Rove managed to elude criminal charges in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame when her husband called the administration's hand on its war claims. Indeed, Rove even managed to keep his job, though Bush said he'd fire anyone implicated.

But enough talk about Rove, McClellan and their motives. Let's talk about the man at whose desk the buck was supposed to stop.

"If he had been given a crystal ball in which he could have foreseen the costs of war — more than 4,000 troops killed, 30,000 injured and tens of thousand of innocent Iraqis dead — he would never have made the decision to invade," writes McClellan about his former boss.

Maybe, maybe not. George Bush today says it was all worth it.

One thing is certain. If Congress knew what it would come to understand — that the case for war was as thin as communion wafers — it never would have given Bush the go-ahead.

An added factor was that the administration was playing the media like a harpsichord, with flag pins all around.

"Why now, Scott?"

Not enough Americans or commentators or reporters asked, "Why now, Mr. President?" in March 2003 when he ordered tanks to roll and "shock and awe" to reign.

Go on and talk about Scott McClellan's mind-set. Call him "disgruntled," as the current Bush mouthpiece has done.

So doing, through a pliant media, you are being used once again by people you hired.

John Young writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald.