What happened

In what might be the biggest day since Jason Leopold's announcement that Karl Rove had been indicted, Rawstory tingled the liberal nation with a tantalizing smoking gun today:

"There was one problem. It was not true," he writes. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself."

So says Scott McClellan, former White House press secretary in an upcoming new book called "What Happened".

Since we've only been treated to one snippet from the book it's pretty safe to say it's the most Bush-bashingest of them all. Just like the pre-publication brouhaha in front of Alan Greenspan's book, whereupon our beloved elder statesman of fiscal policy claimed the Iraq war was all about oil (which he later clarified as the actual book came out) it appears the same thing is happening here.

The publisher throws out an incendiary quote and watches the fair and balanced liberal media and their blog sucker fish jump on it, whereupon massive free publicity is distributed to all. And OK, even outposts like this one carry it (although without said publicity). Can an appearance on 60 Minutes be far behind? Larry King? Oprah? The View?

Heck, for all we know this is the real McCoy for the left. Let's whip things up by pointing out all the 'rats' who've recently jumped overboard, including Fran Townsend, Tony Snow and even trusted old friend Karen Hughes. Maybe those frog marches were not just dancing sugar plum fairies (can we say that?) after all.

More likely it's the same old crud, different day. The Bushitler brand has done absolute wonders for book sales and internet hit counts worldwide so why stop now? As to actual judgment of content, well, perhaps waiting for the book might be, in the parlance of an elder statesman by the name of Bush, prudent.