One of McClellan's points was that the press let the Bush Administration pretty much get away with murder when it was building its case for the war. Now whether you agree with that or not, you have to admit it's a pretty ballsy thing to say for a man who now admits his job and his role was to do everything he could to mislead and misdirect the press.

I don't know what happened here, but if I were forced to speculate, here's what I think went down:

McClellan was another True Believer and self-serving careerist who was ready to do anything required of him to both serve his ideological mentors and advance his own fortunes, including things he knew were fundamentally wrong. A combination of "the end justifies the means" and "while I'm here I might as well cash in as best I can".

Then one day he wakes up to find himself cut out of the loop, used as a fall guy, lied to, and set up as a patsy, and his career is shot. He was screwed so someone else could cover his own ass. Left "twisting in the wind", to use the colorful Nixonian metaphor. So he decides to get even and make some cash while he's at it. Does he actually think he's lying? Probably not. He's not lying now, and he didn't see himself as lying before. He was just doing his job, which is English for "I vass chust followink orderrss." I suspect that it goes wiith the territory when you pick a career in Public Relations, especially in a politically sensitive position. The same can be said for the crowd he worked for. I'm sure they actually believed they were doing the right thing; even if they were determined not to let anyone know just what it was they were doing because they might not understand. And that, of course, was Scott's job, to make sure WE didn't understand what was going on.

I'm inclined to be gentle with him because I've been placed in similar conflict-of-interest situations myself. You slip into these moral bogs imperceptibly, and it becomes very difficult to extricate yourself when you finally realize what's happening to you.