Most of the folks in the White House believe they are very special somebodies. Some, as they leave or get booted, decide to try and salvage their reputations or make some lucre off their experiences. Those left behind continue to believe they’re a higher breed of rodent, possibly even human, while their kiss-and-tell colleagues are nothing more than dirty rats for ratting them out.

Others are SHOCKED they broke bread with one who actually considers them to be less than honorable, as they’ve become so completely inebriated on the Kool-Aid that they live in a delusional la-la land. And noticeably absent from the back and forth sniping are most of the principals - the decisionmakers like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and Tenet - who leave that sort of stuff to their lessers, since they actually ARE somebodies. Their Enablers-in-chief, their legal team, also largely remain silent because they understand their Miranda rights and that silence can spare a few convictions.

The only two exceptions thus far have been White House Counselor Dan Bartlett, who’s probably the designated denyer of the propaganda charge, since some propaganda is actually illegal. And Karl Rove, who quickly refuted the lingering taint of the takedown of Valerie Plame’s WMD-seeking network by denying his meeting with Cooter Libby had any thing to do with getting their stories straight. Although, as we recall, Rove barely escaped getting his nuts in that vise after initially lying through his teeth to the Special Prosecutor.

Rove understands that he’s a rat, too, and is content remaining a live one outside of a cage.

But what of Scotty?

he erroneously believed what President Bush was saying about the war but now is answering to a higher loyalty: “a loyalty to the truth.”

“The White House would prefer that I not talk openly about my experiences,” he said in a lengthy, at times combative interview with anchor Meredith Vieira. “These words didn’t come to me easy. … I’m disappointed that things didn’t turn out the way we all hoped they would.”

He added: “I have a higher loyalty than my loyalty necessary to my past work. That’s a loyalty to the truth.”

A White House official replied: “No one at the White House ever told McClellan not to talk about his experiences.”

Yeah, they’re so committed to the truth that they chose to speak without revealing their identity. And the compliant puppydog media continues to enable that.

McClellan said he “believed” what Bush was saying about the war — and the president did, too. “I trusted the president’s foreign policy team and I believed the president when he talked about the grave and gathering danger from Iraq,” McClellan said. “I believe he believed it was a grave danger, too. He convinced himself of that. When the administration was talking about Iraq, it was talked about as a problem that needed to be addressed. After Sept. 11, it was talked about as a grave danger. You get caught up in the White House bubble, you get caught up in the affection for the man you’re serving and defer.”

Asked if he’ll ever talk to the president again, McClellan said: “I don’t know. I certainly don’t expect it any time soon. I know this is a tough book for some people to accept.”

But McClellan gamely tries to remain in his favor by ascribing the best intentions to the president. He also claims to be hardest on himself. Yet he still has apologized to nobody, which is typical of a fleeing rat whose fame and fortune rests on the appointment Bush provided him.

He doesn’t go as easy on Cheney and Rice. But he ultimately gives everyone a pass:

McClellan says the book’s “larger message” is the problems with the “permanent campaign culture.” He said that’s the opposite of what he expected when he came to Washington after serving then-Gov. Bush in Texas.

“I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington and change it,” McClellan recalled. “He talked about being a uniter, not a divider. … And then we got to Washington and I think we got caught up in playing the Washington game the way it’s played today.”

“These are good and well-intentioned people,” McClellan added.

Asked bluntly if Bush had let him down, McClellan said: “I grew increasingly disillusioned.”

Good and well-intentioned people who plotted the removal of Saddam years before they reached the White House and started actively discussing the war on Iraq months before 9-11. Good and well-intentioned people who refused to accept the warnings of the intelligence community about Chalabi’s untrustworthiness, about the lack of evidence of ties between Al Qaida and Hussein and about the forged yellowcake uranium documents. Good and well-intentioned people who savaged a diplomat who was a lifesaving hero in the first Gulf War and destroyed his wife’s career while ruining an entire spy network. Good and well-intentioned people who savaged all war opponents including valuable US allies, trashed the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, set up a global gulag, spied on Grannies for Peace and likely all the rest of us, in violation of the law. Good and well-intentioned people who still seek immunity for the telecoms who conspired to permit the illegal wiretapping. Good and well-intentioned people who profited personally from the no-bid contract awards, or doled out contracts to some of their biggest campaign fundraisers or contributors.

Good and well-intentioned people who have yet to attend a single funeral or issue apologies for the hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, or the tortured, or the murdered or the millions of families displaced.

Redemption without apology is what they want, including Scotty.

But they’ll settle for laws that shield them from prosecution and presidential pardons next December, if they’re even needed. Such is the world of rats and the skunks they rode in on.