"I still happen to believe that Saddam Hussein was a threat, that he needed to be dealt with."

Tony Blair responding to Matt Lauer, who's quoting furiously from the Scott McClellan book.

"I Knew It Was a Terrible Mistake, but I Didn’t Mention It Until I Got a Book Contract."

The "most tedious" of 3 annoying types of political memoir, according to this NYT editorial. (The other 2 are: "'I Reveal the Honest Truth' a kiss-up-and-tell designed to settle scores (nod to honesty optional)" and "'I Was There at the Start,' designed to make the author appear to be the linchpin of history.") Like the NYT, I can't get past the rank venality of McClellan's project.

And does McClellan add anything to the discourse?

From the WaPo:

Instead, McClellan says, President Bush stayed in a "permanent campaign culture" and allowed his staff to use misleading and incomplete information to "sell" the Iraq war to the American people. While the president focused his public arguments on the possibility that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, McClellan said, his true goal in toppling Saddam Hussein was to boost democracy in the Middle East.

It seems to me that Bush didn't do enough to boost support for the war. He let criticism go unanswered and seemed to trust that the American people would understand why he was doing the right things, so I completely don't get the "permanent campaign culture" charge. As for the decision to concentrate on the WMD rationale over the democracy argument: It's been well known for a long time.

Are you ready to talk about Scott McClellan?

I'm not. Start without me.

(If you're buying his book, please buy it here.)

IN THE COMMENTS: John Stodder says:

Wasn't McClellan horrible at his job? That's what I remembered. He looked clueless half the time and the press had no respect for him.

Why would anybody care what he says?

I don't mean this in a partisan way. If you wanted to read a memoir of any president, why would you choose the one written by an incompetent clown.

It's not the disloyalty that bothers me. It's the press suddenly finding wisdom in a guy they previously disregarded as stupid and unreliable.

It's inevitable that critical Bush-era memoirs will come out, but written by smarter people. I'll read those.

"The Blogosphere Is Alive With the Sound of Colbert Chatter."

The NYT has an article titled "After Press Dinner, the Blogosphere Is Alive With the Sound of Colbert Chatter." Okay, great, I'm blogging this. Let's see. They refer to a Gawker survey (without linking to it!). Yeah, Gawker's a blog. They refer to letters posted at Editor & Publisher (again, without a link!). Then:

Others chided the so-called mainstream media, including The New York Times, which ignored Mr. Colbert's remarks while writing about the opening act, a self-deprecating bit Mr. Bush did with a Bush impersonator.

Some, though, saw nothing more sinister in the silence of news organizations than a decision to ignore a routine that, to them, just was not funny.

Others? Some? Who are these mysterious bloggers? The article does quote a piece Noam Scheiber wrote on the New Republic's blog (again, without a link!). So one blog is quoted. Then the article collects some quotes from Al Franken (who's performed at one of these correspondents dinners), Mary Matalin, and Scott McClellan -- not bloggers.

Why isn't this article alive with the quotes of bloggers? And some links, damn it! Cluelessly, the article is dotted with links for various names that appear in the article. These links all take you to pages within the NYT site. There are no links that take you to the blogosphere chatter that the story is about, only links to stale bios and old articles.

The NYT wants to be hip by talking about bloggers, but they are deathly afraid of links that send readers away from their site, and that desperation is horribly unhip.

***

NOTE: I was on on Open Source Radio last night blabbing about the Colbert affair with various pundits. Stream it here.

"You cannot say that it is unimportant and something you forgot."

Says Richard A. Sauber (lawyer for Time's Matthew Cooper), explaining the relationship between the new revelations (that Scooter Libby took part in authorized disclosures to controvert war critic Joe Wilson) and Libby's defense to perjury (that he forgot who said what about Wilson's wife Valerie Plame).

Meanwhile, Libby's lawyer, William Jeffress, says the special prosecutor's revelation "is a complete sidelight" to the charge against his client, that "It's got nothing to do with Wilson's wife."

Fitzgerald's filing was meant specifically to undermine Libby's claim that the issue of the CIA's employment of Plame was of "peripheral" interest to Libby at the time. He said in the filing that leaks regarding Plame were meant to embarrass Wilson by suggesting his wife had organized a CIA-sponsored trip by Wilson to probe Iraq's alleged purchase of nuclear material -- in short, to suggest his trip resulted from nepotism.

Fitzgerald argued, in essence, that the White House effort to rebut Wilson's criticism was so intense, and so preoccupying, that Libby could not have forgotten what he said about Plame. Fitzgerald also noted that Plame's employment was specifically raised as a relevant matter by Cheney, who had directed Libby to disclose information from the NIE.

Even if the two subjects have something to do with each other, the question is how much weight this evidence has. How do you prove someone is lying when they say they forgot? One way is to prove this is the sort of thing you could not have forgotten because of its connection with something else you were paying intensely close attention to.

Quite aside from the prosecution of Scooter Libby are the charges that President Bush was hypocritical for declassifying information to support the war when he has been critical of the unauthorized leaking of information:

[T]he report that the president was himself approving a leak may do serious political damage, said [historian Rick] Shenkman, who has a blog on presidential politics. "It does give the public such a powerful example of hypocrisy that I think it might linger for a while," he said.

Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, disputed the charge of a double standard on leaks. "There is a difference between declassifying information in the national interest and the unauthorized disclosure" of national security information, Mr. McClellan said Friday. Of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, part of which Mr. Libby shared with Judith Miller, then a Times reporter, Mr. McClellan said, "There was nothing in there that would compromise national security."

Mr. McClellan's tone contrasted sharply with that of administration officials after the N.S.A. story broke in December. Mr. Bush told a news conference at the time: "My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Others picked up the theme, including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director. On Feb. 2, Mr. Goss told a Senate committee, "It is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."

I hope people will be able to keep these stories straight, but they are complicated and likely to merge, which is, of course, what Bush's critics want.

"Mystified that the vice president has not come out in public to express his feelings."

That's the WaPo's description of Robert H. Michel, a former House Republican leader who is a "longtime friend" of Dick Cheney's. But is it mystifying? It's not as though Cheney has committed some wrong in his public capacity that affects the public and implies the need for an apology directed at us.

"I guess he's so measured with what he does say personally, but boy, I'd think on something of this nature, you'd let your feelings [be] known," Michel said.

In general, Michel said, Cheney has "enclosed" his personal feelings so tightly to avoid showing them in public. "I guess that discipline upon himself is probably the thing that holds him back." Cheney, he added, is virtually immune to public criticism and image problems: "I don't think he really cares."

Doesn't care that he shot a man in the face? No, Michel didn't say that. He said Cheney doesn't care if people criticize him. The suggestion is only that there's a political need to go on TV and emote so that people see you're not a machine. TV demands emotion. Tell us how you feel, reporters demand of people in pain, who often enough snap back "How do you think I feel?" Cheney accidentally shot an old man. How do you think he feels? Why do you need him to go on television and say what you already know? Because it would be so weird and awkward for gruff old Dick to do that?

That disregard for public approval, though, can become a problem for the White House, according to veteran presidential aides from both parties. "When the vice president is immune to politics and tone-deaf to politics, as Vice President Cheney has shown himself to be at various stages along the way, then his perspective on this kind of situation isn't as sharp," said Ronald A. Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore.

Well, we're not so immune and tone-deaf that we're going to care what Gore's chief of staff has to say on the subject! How many "veteran presidential aides from both parties" did you talk to anyway?

Despite a string of political embarrassments linked to Cheney, including not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff in the CIA leak case and now the shooting, he remains a powerful force inside the White House.

A testament to his power is the deference Bush showed Cheney in the handling of last weekend's shooting episode. White House aides said Bush has not pressured Cheney to disclose more details about the shooting or to apologize.

One person close to both men said that Bush is the only person in the White House who could persuade Cheney to change strategy and that even high-level White House aides are reluctant to take on the vice president's office. That left White House press secretary Scott McClellan to be battered by reporters on national television.

"This is one of the challenges of having a high-profile, very powerful vice president inside the White House," said Klain, who added: "The disadvantage is when something negative happens involving the vice president, it is much harder for the White House staff to step in and exert control."

More from Klain! I love the effort to drag Bush into this for not "pressuring" Dick Cheney, to connect this story to the Iraq war, and to make it sound ominous that Cheney is "a powerful force inside the White House."

What about the terrorist attacks that don't happen?

It's hard to claim credit for the absence of an event. WaPo reports:

President Bush said today the United States and its allies have disrupted at least 10 serious plots by the al Qaeda network in the past four years, as he sought to rally the nation against international terrorists and warned foreign governments against supporting them....

He added, "We've stopped at least five more al Qaeda efforts to case targets in the United States or infiltrate operatives into our country."...

Bush did not elaborate.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan later identified two of the three schemes to carry out attacks in the United States as previously alleged plots involving Jose Padilla, a Puerto Rican convert to Islam who was suspected of planning to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb," and Lyman Farris, a naturalized U.S. citizen and truck driver from Ohio who was allegedly recruited to destroy New York's Brooklyn Bridge, blow up airliners on the ground and derail passenger trains. Both men were arrested after being identified by captured al Qaeda commanders, and neither plot got beyond a reconnaissance stage.

McClellan said other plots Bush referred to are "still classified."

ADDED: To be clear, I certainly think credit is deserved for stopping attacks. My point is that people don't notice and don't give you credit. Everything just seems uneventful.