Y I H+8 Scott McClellan

Alas, irony. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino calling former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan “sad” is like McClellan calling Perino a “Bush administration whore.” They’re both right, but look who’s talking.

No, Scott didn’t really call Dana a Bush administration whore—not in public, anyway. Dana really did call Scott sad though, and she really is a Bush administration whore.

Dana should have taken it easy on Scott. He’s just the latest in a long line of former Bush liegemen who wrote books so they can make enough money to buy their way out of hell. Dana’s time will come. After her press secretary gig is over and people start calling her out for fibbing about the surge, she’ll get to dwelling on the fate of her immortal soul and boy, will her tune ever change.

Who’d have thought that when we looked back at the succession of Bush press secretaries, Scott McClellan would look like a hapless victim in comparison to his successors? After Scott came Tony Snow, the right wing’s prettiest ever master of silver tongued deviltry, and then Boopsie. We went from nice guy to nice hair to nice rack.

It sounds like nice guy’s new book says some not so nice things about everybody. Scotty reportedly says the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a “sophisticated political propaganda campaign."

Shock. Awe. Make a log entry.

Scotty also supposedly says in the book that the press he manipulated let itself be manipulated too easily. Again: alas, irony. Again: look who’s talking.

I suppose that to be fair to Scotty I should buy his book before I blast him for what his ghostwriter put in it, but I’m not about to buy the little ick-pray’s book. Scotty will have to finance his redemption without me, and it hardly looks like he needs my backing anyway. As of June 2 he had the number one selling book at Amazon.com, and Amazon won’t even have it in stock until June 21. The way things are going, more mouth breathers will buy Scotty’s book than voted for his mouth-breathing ex-boss twice.

I suppose the sins Scotty committed for the Bush administration were venial compared to say, Doug Feith’s, but we’re talking about some serious relative morality here. Every swinging neocon inside or outside of the Bush administration deserves the kind of justice that involves blindfolds and cigarettes. The fact that Scotty’s about to be rolling in dough and not rolling in the hay with a convicted serial killer named Tiny is far, far more fairness than he merits.

Scotty is not, of course, worth genuine hatred. Hating someone, I learned in Catholic grade school, involves fervently hoping that the person burns in perdition for all eternity. Those kinds of decisions are above our pay grade, so why get het up about who in the administration does or doesn’t continue to work for Dick Cheney in the afterlife?

High emotion wasted on these folks distracts us from the real issue we need wrap our arms around. Most of the neocons won’t go to hell: not because they can think tank their way past Saint Peter, but because they won’t die. They’ll just fade into the background until the sun goes down again, and believe you me, when the bad moon rises, they’ll be back. Heck, some of them are walking among us even now, blending in with decent society just like the Stepford Wives or the pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the aliens from the God awful sci-fi flick with Rowdy Roddy Piper called They Live.

Disavow yourself of the notion that Newt Gingrich has retired to play the role of kindly elder statesman who just wants share his vast experience and help out his fellow Americans in any way he can. The guy’s Vlad Tepes. Just because he didn’t manage to grab all the GOP marbles when Fred Thompson dozed off doesn’t mean we’re safe from him. Take your eye off Newt for a second and he’ll be stalking playgrounds and handing out free Kool Aid to our kids.

The real problem with the likes of Scott McClellan and Doug Feith walking away from the Bush shipwreck not just Scot free but filthy rich sends an unmistakable signal to every potential young Republican in the country: You can be one of the unlimited power rangers and pull whatever illegal, unconstitutional shenanigans you want. All you have to do afterwards is say three Hail Maries, two Our Fathers, have some schmuck write a book for you and boom, the keys to the kingdom are yours on a silver platter.

Don’t imagine that Scooter Libby serves as any kind of deterrent. Scooter’s not swapping spit with a motorcycle enthusiast. Scooter’s doing rich white man’s time, and when he’s done doing it he’ll never have to do an honest day’s work again. The generous folks who paid for Scooter’s defense attorneys will make sure he draws a handsome honorarium as a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. To defray the expense of hiring him on to do nothing, the AEI can make Scooter share an office with John Bolton. They won’t get in each other’s way because neither of them will ever be there. They’ll be on the road, pounding the right wing lunatic lecture circuit, staying in good hotels and charging the single malt and B-girls to the running tab Bill Kristol keeps that Rupert Murdoch picks up for him.

No, Scooter’s not a bad example to the next generation of neocons; he’s a martyr, and if you have to make sacrifices like Scooter did when you grow up, darn the bad luck (heh).

Scooter and Scotty wannabes don’t have to look far for suitable mentors. Neocons have effectively infiltrated America’s institutions of higher learning. Newt has been a college guest lecturer for years. Doug Feith teaches at Columbia University. John Yoo, godfather of the plenary (absolute) executive powers theory, is a professor of law at University of California, Berkley. Bill Kristol is on the faculty at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Mackubin Thomas Owens, co-author of the neocon manifesto Rebuilding America's Defenses, is an associate dean of academics at the U.S. Naval War College. Condoleeza Rice wants to go back to Stanford and teach political science, and Standford will probably lose funding if they don’t let her. Yes, Condi is, was and always will be useless as boobs on a billy goat, but in two years the freshmen at Standard won’t know that.

The neocons have taken their cue from the terrorists and the bugs from Starship Troopers; they’re reproducing faster than anyone can kill them off. We can expect the undead to lurk in the halls of power for the imaginable future, fellow citizens, and I for one have dire concerns that we won’t have enough Van Helsings to handle the caseload.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books) is on sale now.