Scott McClellan: “If the president is committed to embracing a high level of openness and honesty, then we can move Washington beyond this…”

If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war…

He too had been deceived and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth, including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney, allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat…

I think it was smart to confront Saddam Hussein. But our options were either, Saddam comes clean or we go to war.

We should have embraced a high legal of openness and forthrightness in addition to that and then the expectations wouldn't have gotten so out of whack.