If you haven’t already seen it, be sure to check out Joe Klein’s column in this week’s Time. Klein made the comparison that needed to be made — Scott McClellan to Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf.
Remember al-Sahhaf? He was the unintentionally hilarious Iraqi Information Minister who would tell international journalists how well things were going for Iraq in the war, despite obvious facts to the contrary. At one point, al-Sahhaf announced, “I triple guarantee you; there are no American soldiers in Baghdad,” as U.S. planes flew over his head and buildings blew up behind him.
Unfortunately, Klein noted that the White House press secretary is starting to resemble the notorious Iraqi Information Minister.
Flying to Minnesota on Air Force One last week…. I asked McClellan about the intelligence community’s dire assessment, sent to the President in a July National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), that we seem to be losing the war in Iraq.
“The role of the CIA is to look at different scenarios,” McClellan said. But all three CIA scenarios were awful, I pointed out. The best case was “tenuous stability,” a continuation of the sapping insurgency we’re seeing now.
McClellan began to read from talking points. The “pessimists and naysayers” had been wrong, he said, about the Iraqi people’s ability to establish a transitional government, a national council and a transitional law.
It’s not quite “There are no American infidels in Baghdad,” but it’s getting there. As Klein put it, “…McClellan is beginning to sound like Baghdad Bob, the infamous spokesman for Saddam who announced hallucinatory Iraqi victories as the American troops closed in on Baghdad.”