In an interview with Diane Sawyer, the most amazing thing came out of President Bush’s mouth:
DIANE SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still ?
PRESIDENT BUSH: So what’s the difference?
DIANE SAWYER: Well ?
PRESIDENT BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger
is it just me, or did he not just say, more or less, the equivalent of “Well, it depends on what the definition of the word ‘is’ is.”?
lysana
Yep, I’d say he did just that. Always remember, if your ideology is pure, you can get away with murder.
musicmutt
Actually, the literal tranlation cutting through the journaleese pomposity and the political fizz fuzz is this:
DS: Does Sadam Housain have weapons of mass destruction?
Then, President bush is sidestepping in order to avoid those three little words that politicians cannot bring themselves to utter. Those three dreaded words:
“I don’t know.”
teddywolf
W basically said, if I’m parsing this correctly, that Saddam was dangerous merely because the guy could at some point maybe get his hands on some WMDs. This is a big change from “He has WMDs” of a year ago.
poltr1
Aha! Hold it right there! Pronoun trouble!
Yeah. Last year the line of rhetoric was “He’s got WMD’s”. Now Shrub is saying that “we don’t know if he had WMD’s.”
And now, according to today’s NPR Morning Edition, VP Cheney is miffed at journalists for trying to dig up dirt. Well, isn’t that what they do?
Someone please make sure the Revisionist Hit Squad isn’t altering the online archives.
keristor
“What’s the difference” between the flat statement that SH /had/ WMD and the “possibiity that he could acquire” them? Does he really not know? Actually, that last question doesn’t matter, whether he knows or not he is a menace — if he really doesn’t know the difference between a fact and a possibility then the endpoint is that he’ll declare war on everyone, and if he does know the differnce then it was a calculated act of aggression.
Get rid of him, fast. If you can manage to take Blair with Bush, all the better…