QUESTION: Mr. President, you have repeatedly said that we have shared with our allies all of the current, up-to-date intelligence information that proves the imminence of the threat we face from Saddam Hussein.
If all of these normal allies have access to the same intelligence information, why are they so reluctant?
BUSH: "We, of course, are consulting with our allies at the United Nations. Saddam has had 12 years to disarm. Saddam is a threat to our nation."
"My job is to protect the American people. So therefore I think the threat is real."
Did anyone see an answer there?
QUESTION: In the past several weeks your policy on Iraq has generated opposition from France, Russia, China, Germany, Turkey, the Arab League and many other countries, opened a rift at NATO and at the U.N. and drawn millions of ordinary citizens around the world into the streets into anti-war protests.
May I ask what went wrong?
BUSH: "France and Germany express their opinions. We disagree over how to deal with Saddam. Having said that, they're still our friends, and we'll deal with them as friends."
Did anyone see an answer there?
QUESTION:Can any military operation be considered a success if the United States does not capture Saddam, as you once said, "Dead or alive?"
BUSH: "We care about the suffering of the Iraqi people. The life of the Iraqi citizen's going to dramatically improve."
So far, he hasn't even come close to answering one question.
QUESTION: Is success contingent upon capturing or killing Saddam Hussein?
BUSH: "We will be changing the regime of Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people."
Did anyone see an answer there?
QUESTION: ...there are a lot of people in this country -- who who listen to you say that you have the evidence, but who feel they haven't seen it, and who still wonder why blood has to be shed if he hasn't attacked us.
BUSH: "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. He's used these weapons before. I mean, we're not speculating about the nature of the man. We know the nature of the man."
In my lifetime no president has ever had the press lay down for him like this never-elected thug.
QUESTION: ...the Security Council faces a vote next week on a resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq. Will you call for a vote on that resolution, even if you aren't sure you have the votes?
BUSH: "Yes, we'll call for a vote."
Idiot!
This was the one question he should've slipped. Now his hands are tied, or, tied as much as Powell's were when he promised to release the Al Qaeda evidence the Sunday after 9-11-01, then broke his promise.
There are two possibilities:
1. The fix is in and he knows the other big nations will vote with him.
2. The idiot just showed his cards and we're still raising each other at the poker table.
This is the fault of the White House-run press.
They ask him questions, he mumbles the same four lines he's memorized since December and the reporters say, "Thank you, Mr President," as though they got an answer.
Why didn't somebody ask, "If Saddam is such a monster, why did Cheney repair his oil fields?"
Why didn't somebody ask, "Mr. President, can you assure us here, tonight, that after Iraq is taken, you and your wealthy friends won't make hundreds of millions of dollars from this bloody campaign?"
When the subject was Clinton's sex life, it was our business.
With hundreds of thousands of lives bet on future profits for the B.F.E.E., it's none of our business and if you think otherwise, you probably need to be tortured by the religio-psychopath called Ashcroft.
I wish America had a free press.
