We went and sold -- oversold the case to the American people on the war and not only that, but the emphasis was more on the weapons of mass destruction than it was on really the driving motivation behind the decision to go to war, which was the president's desire to transform the Middle East through the spread of democracy.
McClellan discusses how the Bush administration emphasized weapons of mass destruction over the broader goal of promoting democracy in the Middle East.
Share
More from Scott McClellan
You have a lot of good people that come there for the right reasons, to make a difference, but they get caught up in this permanent campaign culture, where it's all about manipulating the narrative to their advantage.
I think it was smart to confront Saddam Hussein. But our options were either, Saddam comes clean or we go to war.
If the president is committed to embracing a high level of openness and honesty, then we can move Washington beyond this partisan warfare that has been so destructive.
We should have embraced a high level of openness and forthrightness, in addition to that, and then the expectations wouldn't have gotten so out of whack, and we wouldn't have been in the problem we were -- we came to later when the…