U.S. President George W. Bush misled the public opinion about the war in Iraq, said the former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan in his new book.

According to McClellan’s memoir due out next week, Bush wasn’t exactly "open and forthright on Iraq" and he used “propaganda” to sell the Iraq war to the American public opinion. He added that during that period the Washington press corps was too easy on the administration and the president "veered terribly off course."

Bush rushed to war without proper planning and with no preparation for the aftermath of the invasion, said McClellan in his book which will be published on Sunday.

McClellan wrote all the charges against Bush in his 341-page book "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" (Public Affairs, $27.95). He said that under Bush, the White House acted in a “permanent campaign approach.”

In his book, McClellan also wrote that White House adviser Karl Rove along with I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, misled him about his role in the CIA case.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is described as being deft at deflecting blame, while Vice President Cheney is called the “magic man” whose role was to steer policy behind the scene and leave no traces.

McClellan, a longtime Bush loyalist, also blames the Bush administration for the terrible performance after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. According to the former White House Press Secretary, the White House "spent most of the first week in a state of denial."

McClellan, one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, blamed Karl Rove for the photo of President Bush watching the disaster from Air Force One while flying over New Orleans.

"One of the worst disasters in our nation's history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush's presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush's second term," Politico.com quoted the book as saying.

McClellan, who worked at the White House from July 2003 to April 2006, said that he still admires President Bush. He added that the president was ill-served by his top advisers. The Austin native began working for the current U.S. President in early 1999 as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush.

McClellan also worked as traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and then chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush’s first term.