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President's Evasion Raises Truth Issues
Washington Post ^

Posted on 11/10/2006 4:17:21 AM PST by floridareader1

Did the president of the United States make a rare admission on national television that he had told an untruth?

Or had he merely engaged in a dodge of the sort that is common in politics?

Journalists by nature shy from pinning the "liar" label on any political leader, but President Bush's acknowledgments that he had not been forthcoming about his plans to dump Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have kicked up a fuss at the White House and sparked a debate about the limits of presidential evasion.

Six days before the election, Bush told three wire-service reporters in an interview that Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney were doing "fantastic" jobs.

"You see them staying with you until the end?" asked Terence Hunt of the Associated Press.

"I do," Bush replied.

"So you're expecting Rumsfeld, Secretary Rumsfeld, to stay on the rest of your time here?" asked Steve Holland of Reuters.

"Yes, I am," the president said.

On Wednesday, the day after the election, Bush at a news conference said that "that kind of question, a wise question by a seasoned reporter, is the kind of thing that causes one to either inject major military decisions at the end of a campaign, or not. And I have made the decision that I wasn't going to be talking about hypothetical troop levels or changes in command structure coming down the stretch."

The president added that he had not made a definitive decision because he had not held his "last" conversation with Rumsfeld and had not yet spoken to Robert Gates, his nominee to take over the Pentagon.

Was that on par with President Bill Clinton's hair-splitting defense in the Monica S. Lewinsky investigation that "it all depends on what the definition of is is"?

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aholesforthetruth; lookatmynavel
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To: hosepipe
A solid republican would never do that.

Pennsylvania's "I'm a better conservative than thou" Republicans here on this board did exactly that.

61 posted on 11/10/2006 5:16:35 AM PST by BeHoldAPaleHorse (I dare call it treason.)
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To: floridareader1
"Journalists by nature shy from pinning the "liar" label on any political leader,..."

BAWWWHAWWWW! Stopped reading right there.

62 posted on 11/10/2006 5:18:33 AM PST by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon)
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To: floridareader1
"He had already interview Gates for the DefSec position..."

Are you certain of that assertion? The statement President Bush made in the press conference contradicts it.

Quoting from the article (which is what I heard the President say in the press conference):

"The president added that he had not made a definitive decision because he had not held his "last" conversation with Rumsfeld and had not yet spoken to Robert Gates, his nominee to take over the Pentagon."

63 posted on 11/10/2006 5:19:23 AM PST by Unmarked Package
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To: Mister Da
"So why would Bush fire him the day AFTER the election, when firing him a month before the election would have helped Pub chances at the polls?"

I take President Bush at his word. He stated that he did not want to make a major change in DOD leadership, affecting our military in a time of war, that could be viewed as a decision made purely for political reasons before an election.

We all know that angle would have been exploited by the Democrats and slammed mercilessly by the Democrat Media for weeks. Republicans did the same against Bill Clinton for attacking Iraq to divert attention away from the Monica Lewinsky affair three days after his grand jury testimony. Of course, Clinton had the cover, not the scorn, of the huge Democrat Media cabal to help him run that ruse.

64 posted on 11/10/2006 5:47:03 AM PST by Unmarked Package
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To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
[ Pennsylvania's "I'm a better conservative than thou" Republicans here on this board did exactly that. ]

True.. What do you call a Rhode Island republican?...

On the other hand the word conservative means "more of the same"... i.e. same old, same old..

Republicans had better get radical or there will be more of the same..

65 posted on 11/10/2006 6:05:10 AM PST by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperboles)
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To: concerned about politics
Well...of course YOU just don't understand the complexity of it all. The nuance. The depth. The intellectualism or the wisdom behind todays new media. You DO understand, don't you? That's why YOU are not qualified to be a professional, talented, well educated, omnipotent (pompous ass) journalist

Actually, I understand exactly how they do it. The "journalist" just quotes someone else (unnamed sources if necessary) whenever they call the President a liar. That way the "journalist" can say, "It's not me saying that," with a straight face.

66 posted on 11/10/2006 6:37:26 AM PST by The_Victor (If all I want is a warm feeling, I should just wet my pants.)
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To: floridareader1
Yeah right, and Hillary has stated she won't run for president either.

Another loser media story.

67 posted on 11/10/2006 6:39:19 AM PST by unixfox (The 13th Amendment Abolished Slavery, The 16th Amendment Reinstated It !)
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To: concerned about politics

How 'bout that new cover of TIME -- "the Loe Ranger" -- it must have been preprinted.


68 posted on 11/10/2006 6:44:59 AM PST by incredulous joe ("If there were no God, there would be no atheists." - G.K. Chesterton)
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To: floridareader1

June 4th, 1944

Q: General Eisenhower do you know the exact date location of the projected invasion?

A: No, I have no idea, but it might happen someday.

What a liar!


69 posted on 11/10/2006 6:45:04 AM PST by glorgau
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To: glorgau

a false analogy. lol


70 posted on 11/10/2006 7:08:22 AM PST by floridareader1
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