Washington  - Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan criticizes his former boss in a new book to be released Monday.

After defending President George W Bush's policies during the early years of the Iraq war, McClellan is now attacking his former employers, saying that the Bush administration became too focused on selling the need to go to war in Iraq, and truth became a casualty.

The president "and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war," McClellan writes, in book excerpts reported by CNN.

He says that Bush was "terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security." (dpa)