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The honorable thing was too late

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group Scott McClellan. Is he dishonest? Dishonorable? Disloyal? Is he telling the truth that the Bush administration conducted an organized propaganda campaign to lead the country to war? Did McClellan know it all along and, if so, why did he hang so long with those guys?

Kathleen Parker

is a columnist for the Washington Post

Writers Group

Scott McClellan. Is he dishonest? Dishonorable? Disloyal? Is he telling the truth that the Bush administration conducted an organized propaganda campaign to lead the country to war? Did McClellan know it all along and, if so, why did he hang so long with those guys?

At the White House, former colleagues wonder what happened to the Scott they thought they knew. What caused that sweet guy to betray his former boss and friends with a tell-all memoir -

What Happened

- already No. 1 on Amazon?

Suddenly, benign Scott McClellan is the serial killer next door, whose stunned neighbors recall him as "kinda quiet but always polite, a loner."

The honorable man knows what to do when he believes the president is lying about something as serious as the need for war. An honorable man quits his job rather than be complicit in fatal fraud. He stops the lie in its tracks and heads straight to the nation's newsrooms. Immediately. Not after he's left. But McClellan didn't do that. Instead, he warmed himself by the glow of the inner circle and stood before the nation as a bumbling, inept spokesman, saying nothing repeatedly - and badly.

Unfortunately for the short, unhappy political life of Scott McClellan, the boy who squealed all the way home may be stuck with the title after all. Because no matter how sweet the revenge, on the playground, the snitch is trusted by no one.