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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
President Bush went on TV Tuesday to reassure voters about the war in Iraq. Instead, he came off as a schoolboy who hadn't done his homework.
Apr 14, 2004 | Four times during his prime-time press conference Tuesday, George W. Bush was asked whether he has made any mistakes in his presidency, whether there was anything -- his decision to invade Iraq on what turned out to be false pretenses, his failure to take decisive action in response to a memo that warned of terrorist attacks in the United States -- for which he might apologize.
Three times, Bush gave rambling responses that addressed everything but the questions presented. The fourth time, the president took a deep breath, blew it out, looked at the ground, looked at the ceiling, stalled for time, then said: "You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet."
It apparently never did. While Bush has found time to visit his ranch in Crawford 33 times in the last three and a half years, he has given only 12 solo press conferences. Tuesday night, it was easy to see why. The president -- who won't testify before the 9/11 commission unless he can do it in private and only if his vice president can come with him -- presided over a press conference that left him looking like a high school kid surprised by a pop quiz on a book he didn't read.
Bush had words to say -- "tough week," "historic opportunity," "free Iraq" -- and he said them so often that he began to sound like one of those tape-loop parody songs that make the rounds on the Web. What he didn't have was answers.
To whom will the United States hand over Iraqi sovereignty on June 30? "We'll find that out soon." Why haven't U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces been effective in quelling the uprisings? "We'll need to find out why." Was the information contained in the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief accurate? "I presume the 9/11 commission will find out." What about those weapons of mass destruction? "Of course I want to know why we haven't found a weapon yet," the president said. Later, he said of the WMD: "I look forward to hearing the truth as to exactly where they are."
Bush had a script Tuesday night -- he began the press conference with a 17-minute opening statement that sounded more like an Oval Office speech -- and he didn't let questions about Iraq or Sept. 11 throw him off of it. In his opening statement and later in his responses to questions, Bush repeatedly cast the war in Iraq as an integral part of the war on terror. Although there has never been any credible evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks of Sept. 11, Bush said that the insurgents now fighting U.S. troops in Iraq -- he called them "terrorists" -- share an "ideology of murder" with the attackers who hijacked jetliners and smashed them into the Twin Towers.
And Bush articulated, again and again, the neocon dream that a free Iraq will promote both stability and democratic reform throughout the Middle East. At one point -- while responding to charges that Iraq had become Bush's Vietnam -- the president took his Wolfowitzian Iraq fantasies even a step further: "I fully understand the consequence of what we're doing," he said. "We're changing the world, and the world will be better off and America will be more secure as a result of the actions we're taking."
