Morning Brief: Former Bush spokesman lashes out

Wed, 05/28/2008 - 6:38am

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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has a book out and it is "suprisingly scathing" about President George W. Bush, his administration, and especially the conduct of the Iraq war.

Decision '08

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Americas

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Asia

The head of Taiwain's ruling KMT party met with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the start of a historic six-day visit to mainland China.

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Europe

The European Space Agency is toying with the idea of manned space missions.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a cap on fuel taxes.

Middle East and Africa

Iran's former nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, has become its speaker of parliament. Although he is a rival of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his opening speech was met with cries of a familiar refrain: "Death to America."

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Lebanon's parliament agreed to retain Fouad Siniora as prime minister, though Hezbollah will now have a veto in his cabinet.

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Nepal will officially abolish its monarchy and become a republic.

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Indonesia will withdraw from OPEC.

Amnesty International releases its annual human rights report.

Yesterday on Passport

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Scott McClellan

by grandpaw7 on Wed, 05/28/2008 - 1:40pm

Bush fanatics are attacking McClellan for not having spoken sooner. I agree that would have been better and made him more of a hero. But that in no way denigrates the substance of McClellan's criticism; it is only saying that he should have spoken earlier. Sometimes a person's conscience does not kick in as quickly as we would like. A lot of folks who thought that Bush hung the moon have since changed their minds about him.

Bush fanatics also say that McClellan did it for the money. Surely, the idea of making money was involved in McClellan's thoughts; after all, he is an American and a capitalist. That is a significant part of the picture for just about every book written. But first of all, he had to have a story to tell.