The Free View-- weblog of a presidential candidate: Helen Thomas jams Ari Fleischer on War, and Democracy Hypocrisy

January 20, 2003

Helen Thomas jams Ari Fleischer on War, and Democracy Hypocrisy

I wrote some insights on the following exchange, but I just lost them due to a Google searchbar mishap. Lame. It was nothing spectacular, but it's no fun to put effort into something and have it go to waste.

I'm not going to try and work up a new batch of insight. It's kinda not needed for this anyway, and the item is old news by now. I'll just give you the background, and maybe a little comment afterward.

The background is the morning press briefing at the White House on January 6th of this year. It went swimmingly all the way up to the first question, about 60 seconds in.

Enter Helen Thomas, one of the most experienced White House journalists in U.S. history. She's behind the "Q"s below. The emphasis is mine.

Q At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the President deplored the taking of innocent lives. Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world? And I have a follow-up.

MR. FLEISCHER: I refer specifically to a horrible terrorist attack on Tel Aviv that killed scores and wounded hundreds. And the President, as he said in his statement yesterday, deplores in the strongest terms the taking of those lives and the wounding of those people, innocents in Israel.

Q My follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies and friends --

Q They're not attacking you.

MR. FLEISCHER: -- from a country --

Q Have they laid the glove on you or on the United States, the Iraqis, in 11 years?

MR. FLEISCHER: I guess you have forgotten about the Americans who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein's aggression then.

Q Is this revenge, 11 years of revenge?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think you know very well that the President's position is that he wants to avert war, and that the President has asked the United Nations to go into Iraq to help with the purpose of averting war.

Q Would the President attack innocent Iraqi lives?

MR. FLEISCHER: The President wants to make certain that he can defend our country, defend our interests, defend the region, and make certain that American lives are not lost.

Q And he thinks they are a threat to us?

MR. FLEISCHER: There is no question that the President thinks that Iraq is a threat to the United States.

Q The Iraqi people?

MR. FLEISCHER: The Iraqi people are represented by their government. If there was regime change, the Iraqi --

Q So they will be vulnerable?

MR. FLEISCHER: Actually, the President has made it very clear that he has not dispute with the people of Iraq. That's why the American policy remains a policy of regime change. There is no question the people of Iraq --

Q That's a decision for them to make, isn't it? It's their country.

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, if you think that the people of Iraq are in a position to dictate who their dictator is, I don't think that has been what history has shown.

Q I think many countries don't have -- people don't have the decision -- including us.

That's the end of the exchange. The next item is an unrelated question from a different reporter. You can see it in context here.

I don't know if that last statement of Helen's was meant to just refer to Election 2000, or if it was intended to be a bigger statement about the patheticness of our claim to "representative democracy" given the lack of choice presented by the "bipartisan" front.

Either way, it's great to see someone is still willing to speak up and ask the hard questions. Even if the answers are evasive or absent altogether.

Posted by Lance Brown at January 20, 2003 08:44 PM | TrackBack

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