Debate "highlight"
"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden."- President Bush, on why he will take up reading newspapers once he has more time on his hands this January
Here are the pertinent parts of Bush's response to questions on why he "rarely mention[s] Osama bin Laden" and if he thinks "the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found," from a press conference on March 13, 2002:
[T]he idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. ... I just don't spend that much time on [bin Laden], to be honest with you. ... [W]e haven't heard much from him. ... I truly am not that concerned about him. ... I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. ... But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, ... we shoved him out more and more on the margins. ... [I]f we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. [Emphasis added.]Questions for Bush: is it a contradiction to say you "don't spend that much time on [bin Laden]" and "using every asset" available to get him? What about saying you're "on the hunt" as compared to the weak-kneed "we shoved him on the margins" and "if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it."?
As Chris Suellentrop and a number of others have pointed out, this blunder is potentially huge (by comparison to Cheney's "we never met" nonsense in the veep debate) because unlike Cheney's gaffe (yes, I said gaffe) this is an issue of direct substance. The president had talked about going after the people who attacked us on 9/11 and it united the nation; by the following March, after failing to show direct results in that effort, he was shifting the burden off of the specifics so as to take the heat off; and now he's waving off the rhetoric of the past because it's politically inconvenient.
posted by Mark at 4:21 PM
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