Scott McClellan Quotes

My wife and I look for ways to always support the troops, including sending care packages regularly to them.

I believe in working together to solve the problems we've got. And we need to get rid of the venom in the political atmosphere in D.C. It's a poisonous atmosphere.

If it takes talking about unpleasant truths to change Washington, then so be it.

My criticisms are extremely mild in comparison to the tone of some of the questions fired in my direction.

I think it reflects the reality on the ground, that this was an important milestone that's been achieved by the Iraqi people, and it's a significant development. It's a real hopeful moment for democracy in Iraq.

Critics have stepped up their attacks on the President for authorizing the National Security Agency to listen to international communications of known al Qaeda members or affiliated terrorists during a time of war. The American people expect their leaders to stay a step ahead of the enemy, and the National Security Agency authorization is a critical tool in the War on Terror that saves lives and protects civil liberties at the same time.

I remember my mom saying to me that what your friends do is one thing, but what you do could be on the front page of the paper.

I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be.

Because what a temporary worker program would do is help relieve pressure on the border. It will allow our law enforcement officials and Border Patrol agents to focus on those who are coming here for the wrong reasons, the criminals and the drug dealers and the terrorists.

As a Texas loyalist who followed Bush to Washington with great hope and personal affection and as a proud member of his administration, I was all too ready to give him and his highly experienced foreign policy advisers the benefit of the doubt on Iraq. Unfortunately, subsequent events have showed that our willingness to trust the judgment of Bush and his team was misplaced.

Well, uh, all people - all, I think all human begins, uh, have good attributes, and they also have their flaws.

A free and prosperous Iraq will be a major blow to the terrorists and their desire to establish a safe haven in Iraq where they can plan and plot attacks.

Isn't it my right to talk and say what I want to?

I'm glad to share my views.

I still like and admire George W. Bush. I consider him a fundamentally decent person, and I do not believe he or his White House deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people.

I'm done with my job. It was my job to be the advocate and spokesman for the President of the United States.

I have had a career in public service.

Roughly 1 in 6 Americans have Irish blood. I'd say it's probably safe to assume that the average Irish-American who only comes out on St. Patrick's Day has no idea of the sort of economic powerhouse Ireland has become.

I'm someone who believes in centrist governing philosophy.

I was raised on the values of speaking up and making a positive difference in a very political family that believed in the importance of public service.

The Orange Revolution was a powerful example of democracy around the world. The people of Ukraine are continuing to shape their own future.

Well I think that you have to be open and honest in order to learn from your mistakes and be able to correct them in the future to understand what would happen to take things off course. And if we don't address these issues openly and honestly then we don't learn.

As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room.

We have to deal with reality. The reality is, we have a number a very high number of illegal immigrants in this country. They're meeting an important economic need. And we are a nation of laws, and we're a nation of immigrants. And if we're going to address the real threats, then we need to have a temporary worker program to allow our Border Patrol agents to focus on the criminals and the thugs and the terrorists and the traffickers and smugglers that are trying to come into this country illegally.

Saddam Hussein is being treated the exact opposite of the way his regime treated those he imprisoned and tortured simply for expressing their opinions. And so I reject that.

It is regrettable that Senator Kennedy has chosen Veteran's Day to continue leveling baseless and false attacks that send the wrong signal to our troops and our enemy during a time of war. It is also regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush then he ever did about Saddam Hussein. If America were to follow Senator Kennedy's foreign policy, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, he would be oppressing and occupying Kuwait.

When I was knowingly misled but only learned that much later, that's really when I started to become disillusioned at the White House.

The president said, 'You've got to vote your conscience.

The Iraq war was not necessary.

I think that there's a tendency in this town to try to selectively pick snapshots when the broader reality is that we have a record of results and that we're getting things done for the American people.

When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the President and unable to comment. But I promised reporters and the public that I would someday tell the whole story of what I knew.

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.

As I have heard Bush say, only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness, in part because the epochal upheavals of war provide the opportunity for transformative change of the kind Bush hoped to achieve. In Iraq, Bush saw his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness.

Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake.