US:THE WHITE House has described as "sad" and "puzzling" a scathing memoir by former press secretary Scott McClellan, who accuses president George Bush's administration of using propaganda and deception to sell the Iraq war.
Mr McClellan, a Bush loyalist since the president's time as governor of Texas, writes in What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception that the administration made a decision "to turn away from candour and honesty" in the run-up to the war. "History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided - that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder," he writes.
"No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact.
"What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary." Mr McClellan, who resigned in 2006 in the wake of a scandal over the White House leaking of a CIA operative's identity, admits that some of his own statements as press secretary were "badly misguided" but he insists that he believed them at the time.
"When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the president and unable to comment," he writes. "But I promised reporters and the public that I would someday tell the whole story of what I knew."
The book claims that Mr Bush was determined from the start of his presidency that, unlike his father, he would win a second term in office.
"And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologising, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising.
Especially not where Iraq was concerned," Mr McClellan writes.
The former press secretary is eviscerating in his criticism of senior White House aides, notably secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, whom he blames for encouraging the president's misguided policies while keeping her own reputation intact. He has harsh words for the media too, however, accusing the White House press corps of failing to hold the administration to account. "If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq," he writes
"The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise . . . In this case, the 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino sought yesterday to dismiss the book, the most critical account of the administration to date from a member of Mr Bush's inner circle, as the product of personal grievance. "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," she said in a statement.
"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. The book, as reported by the press, has been described to the president. I do not expect a comment from him on it - he has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers." The book, which will be published next week, comes as Barack Obama is stepping up his campaign to link the presumptive Republican nominee with Mr Bush, who is currently more unpopular than any president since polling began.
Campaigning in Las Vegas, Mr Obama teased Mr McCain about his decision to ban the media from a fundraiser Mr Bush held for him in Arizona this week. "No cameras. No reporters. And we all know why," Mr Obama said.
"Senator McCain doesn't want to be seen, hat-in-hand, with the president whose failed policies he promises to continue for another four years."