They shoot messengers, don't they?

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan's new book "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," has accused former boss George W. Bush of having "veered terribly off course" and "rushing" to an unnecessary war in Iraq, and blasted the White House staff over the disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina, among other things.

Let the shooting of the messenger begin.

"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew."

-- Current White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino.

"Scott never did that on any of these issues as best I can remember or as best as I know from any of my White House colleagues. For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional."

-- Former Homeland Security adviser and current CNN "pundit" Fran Townsend.

Fox News contributor and former White House adviser Karl Rove said on that network Tuesday that the excerpts from the book he's read sound more like they were written by a "left-wing logger" than his former colleague.

Messengers. They shoot them.

"They're saying some of the exact same things about McClellan they said about me."

-- Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief.

--WKW