from this morning... Q Why do you say you've made it clear on Geneva Conventions when it's -- obviously, they've been violated ever since we went into Iraq? MR. McCLELLAN: Are you talking about the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib? Q And Guantanamo and everywhere else. MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know what specifically you're referring to, everywhere else. Q I'm saying that you people have never said definitively that you are obeying the Geneva Conventions. MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, no, we made it very clear when it comes to Iraq that the Geneva Convention did apply. Q Consistent with, you say, but -- MR. McCLELLAN: No, not in Iraq. In Iraq we made it very clear the Geneva Convention applies. Q Can I ask about Vice President Cheney, because yesterday he repeated what is a very controversial claim. He said that Saddam Hussein had long-established ties with al Qaeda. Does the President believe that Saddam Hussein had long-established ties with al Qaeda? MR. McCLELLAN: We certainly talked about the ties with terrorism between the -- between the regime that was removed from power, and we talked about those ties prior to the decision to remove that regime from power. So that was well-documented. Secretary Powell went before the United Nations and talked about some of those ties to terrorism, as well. And Zarqawi is certainly a senior al Qaeda associate who was in Iraq prior to the decision to go in and remove the regime from power. Q There's also al Qaeda in the United States. That does not mean the United States is cooperating with those members of al Qaeda. Just by the presence of someone does not mean there's a cooperation. MR. McCLELLAN: But, remember, we're talking about an oppressive regime that was in power in Iraq that exercised control over that country. And go back and look at what we documented, Norah. We documented all this, and I think that's what the Vice President was referring to. Q So today you're saying the President does agree there were long -- MR. McCLELLAN: We stand by what we've said previously, in terms of the regime's ties to terrorism, yes. And I think that's what the Vice President was referring to. Q The President said there were no ties in the run up to the war. MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, that's a mischaracterization. There were clear ties to terrorism between the regime -- Q He said there were no ties with al Qaeda. MR. McCLELLAN: -- certainly supporting suicide bombers in the Middle East. Q Are you repudiating what the President said? MR. McCLELLAN: No, I think you're talking about September 11th. Q Has the President been asked to answer questions before the CIA leak investigation? MR. McCLELLAN: I don't have any update at this point. But those are the types of questions that you need to direct to the prosecutors who are overseeing that investigation. And I'll see if there's any further update beyond what we said previously. Q Why can't you tell us? I mean, he's the President of the United States. You aren't going to tell us if he's been questioned in a criminal investigation> MR. McCLELLAN: I just said I don't have any update from where he -- what he previously responded to, Terry. Q Right, but we'd like it from you, please. MR. McCLELLAN: And I'll see what else I can find out. But remember what we've made clear from the very beginning. There's an ongoing investigation right now. We want to do everything we can to help that investigation conclude successfully and get to the bottom of this. And in that spirit, that's why we've referred questions like that to the investigators, because if they feel it will help move their case forward, I'm sure that they will discuss that information with you. But I will -- but I'll go back and just check from our end to see what else I can find out. Q It's an historic event. Not many Presidents -- MR. McCLELLAN: Understood. No, understood, but I have to balance that with the ongoing investigation that's underway. Q Has he retained his lawyer yet, regarding this? MR. McCLELLAN: That's what I said. I don't have any update from what he previous said. Let me look into things. Go ahead. Q Scott, Richard Clarke says that in the wake of his book, NSC lawyers were used to do opposition research against him, that they contacted his former colleagues to -- quote -- "dig up dirt" on him. Is that accurate? And is it an inappropriate -- MR. McCLELLAN: Arash, I think we've been through this issue and I don't think there's anything to add to what we've previously said.
Interrupt President Bush one too many times and he won't let you talk to his wife. The White House canceled Radio and Television Ireland's scheduled interview of First Lady Laura Bush during her short stay here for the U.S.-European Union summit, the president's spokesman Scott McClellan said Saturday. He didn't say why, but the reason for the decision was clear: The White House didn't like the news organization's interview with the president at the White House last Thursday. During the interview, Bush became exasperated with his questioner, who seemed intent on controlling the discussion. In one exchange, Bush made the point that Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqis. "Indeed, Mr. President, but you didn't find the weapons of mass destruction," the interviewer shot back. "Let me finish," Bush said. "Let me finish, please. Please. You ask the questions and I'll answer them, if you don't mind. Three more times he scolded the interviewer: _ "Let me finish, please. Please. Let me finish, and then you can follow up, if you don't mind." _ "Let me finish." _ "Please. Please. Please, for a minute, OK. It'll be better if you let me finish my answers, and then you can follow up, if you don't mind." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=1&u=/ap/20040626/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_privacy
First Ripple of a Political Tidal Wave? By E. J. Dionne Jr. Tuesday, June 29, 2004; Page A23 SEATTLE -- Rep. Jay Inslee knows about political tidal waves, because one of them almost sank his political career. Inslee, who now represents a suburban Seattle district, was tossed out of Congress from another district in the 1994 Republican sweep. "When you see a tidal wave go over your head about 35 feet high," Inslee says, "you notice it." But he came back to the House in 1998, and now what he's seeing "is the same tidal wave moving in the opposite direction. . . . There's a passion out there." And the passion, Inslee says, is running against George W. Bush. True, party loyalists often see what they want to see. A passionate minority can still remain a minority and lose an election. But having spent much of the past three weeks on the road, visiting eight cities in the Northeast, the Midwest, the South and the West Coast, I sense the same passion Inslee does on the anti-Bush side. Even if the plural of anecdote is not data, the anecdotes are about citizens who avoided politics for years but are now devoting time to John Kerry's campaign out of hostility to Bush. Individuals who never before made a campaign contribution are opening their checkbooks to Kerry and the Democrats. (This is more than anecdotal; it's reflected in Kerry's record fundraising.) And, perhaps most significant, moderate and moderately conservative Republicans are showing little enthusiasm for Bush, reflecting their worries about his Iraq policy and their qualms over large deficits. "I've never seen a time with so many Republicans expressing consternation about their party and a willingness to support the other party," said Rep. Brian Baird, a Democrat whose district, in Washington's southwest corner, went for Bush four years ago. Baird, a psychologist who has worked with statistics, is also skeptical of making too much of anecdotes. But he is running across plenty of them on the anti-Bush side. "If you contrast this campaign to the campaign of four years ago, you saw George Bush stickers everywhere and very few Al Gore stickers," he said. "Now, it's at least 50-50" between Bush and Kerry. Baird speaks of a man in a health club wearing a John Kerry T-shirt who told him: "What you have to understand is that I am a lifelong Republican." And the congressman chuckles over a car he spotted that "had an American flag, an 'I'm the NRA' bumper sticker and a John Kerry bumper sticker." Inslee's metaphor of the 1994 Republican sweep piloted by former House speaker Newt Gingrich is intriguing because the Republican wave was not obvious in the polls at this moment in the campaign 10 years ago. A survey in mid-June 1994 by Republican pollster Richard Wirthlin, for example, found the Democrats with a three-point lead in the House races. Yet many Republicans correctly argued that intense voter dissatisfaction with Congress, Bill Clinton and the status quo was moving the country decisively in the GOP's direction. Republicans then sensed that the energy on the Republican side could swamp Democrats by producing a turnout heavily tilted toward Republican candidates -- exactly what happened. Democrats feel a comparable energy could work for them this year. Finally, new conservative media, particularly Rush Limbaugh and his imitators along the AM radio dial, came into their own in 1994. A decade later, the new media growth is in a chorus of left-of-center Web sites and, of course, Michael Moore, whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" became the highest-grossing documentary of all time over the weekend. Moore bids to become the Democrats' answer to Limbaugh. Some pundit's handbook no doubt warns prognosticators to attach caveats to all predictions. So, yes, how this election turns out will depend a great deal on how the situation in Iraq looks to voters on Election Day, and how many middle-class and blue-collar voters feel the economic recovery in their own lives by then. But there is one last bit of evidence suggesting that Inslee and Baird are on to something. In late August 2002, at the beginning of the buildup to the Iraq war, a Pew Research Center poll found that only 37 percent of Americans felt Bush had laid out a case for military action; 52 percent felt he had not. In other words, millions of middle-of-the-road Americans had doubts about the war before it started. Many of those doubters eventually went along with the president but now question the war and the way the administration handled it. If Inslee is right about his tidal wave, the doubters will give it its power. postchat@aol.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13500-2004Jun28.html
