The price is wrong, bitch.

So the Post today has an article about former White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan's recently released memoirs that lambaste Bush for manipulating the public to justify an unnecessary war in Iraq. I'm going to skip the "no shit, Sherlock" part of the blog (since this is kind of like a weather man telling me rain is wet) and go off on a tangent about people treating their so-called moral high ground as a stock that you sell when the price is highest.

So McLellan supposedly observes and mentally registers all of these perverse political machinations that the Bush administration underwent to justify the White House's war and cover their asses over the Valerie Plame debaucle. But he doesn't say or do shit about it while he is in the institution; he keeps his mouth shut (which, ironically, seems to be the best skill of a White House Press Secretary). He gets his cred, retires in a teary-eyed ceremony on the South Lawn, and becomes a civilian again. Then the tide turns and criticisms of the administration are no longer just left wing rhetoric but a widespread discontent that reaches across the aisles of the Capitol. And low and behold, look who has a memoir talking about how sly and manipulative the Bush administration really is.

I'm not saying McLellan could have singlehandedly whistleblown all of the bullshit that was going on. I understand that hindsight is 20/20, and that as Press Secretary you're in a delicate position to criticize. But if you just sit on these observations until the time is right to make a buck and look like a guy who wasn't part of the problem, you're pretty much a smelly sack of shit. If you didn't think this was important enough to act on at the time it was happening, why do you suddenly feel the need to write memoirs that exposes everything now? Because you've made the tough but correct decision of revealing the truth? Bullshit, because you can cash in on it.

As much as I respect the man, Alan Greenspan did the same thing this last year when he released The Age of Turbulence and handed Bush's ass to him on how his fiscal conservatism was anything but. Chairman of the Fed is widely known to be the most powerful man in the world; something tells me Greenspan could have made a stronger play than sitting on his wrinkled old hands until the time came to retire and he needed some juicy material for his new book. I think Colin Powell, to a lesser extent, did the same thing. And anybody who has read "Confessions of An Economic Hitman" (sidestepping for a second the argument about its veracity) will see the same thing; a guy who spent an entire successful career harming poor nations in the name of development who manages to keep at it until he's made enough cash, at which point he turns his "lifelong moral dilemma" into a bestseller and goes to sleep on a bed of cash.

So in conclusion.........man, fuck that.