Finally, a press conference

Because last night’s White House press conference didn’t break any new ground, I was tempted not to comment much on it this morning. But a few things did jump out at me that I thought I’d rant about.

First, I’m glad the president actually held the press conference and did so in prime time. Just last week I was complaining about the paucity of Bush media briefings and the importance of these events. The Washington Post reported that this was his eighth stand-alone White House press conference and first since early November. Of course, if he wants to start to catch up to other presidents from the television era, he’s going to have to hurry. (At this point in their respective presidencies, the number of press conferences per president is as follows: Clinton 30, H.W. Bush 58, Reagan 16, Carter 45, Ford 37, Nixon 16, and Johnson 52.)

Second, Bush still doesn’t appear to have settled on an approach to the North Korean crisis. The press conference’s second question asked whether the administration was “resigned to North Korea becoming a nuclear power.” Bush’s first response was, “This is a regional issue.” Well, actually it’s not a “regional issue” at all, it’s an international crisis that the United States is the middle of. Kim Jung Il is working diligently to add to his nuclear arsenal, he already has missiles that are believed to be capable of reaching the U.S., he’s on the verge of starting a processing plant that can produce a nuclear missile a month, and he’s taking increasingly provocative military actions against our country. I’m glad the White House supports a “multilateral” approach to the crisis, but until Bush decides to engage in direct discussions with North Korea, this is only going to get worse.

Naturally, the overwhelming majority of the 18 questions Bush received dealt with Iraq. Bush laid out his case in largely the same way he has for months, by emphasizing the need for Iraqi disarmament and enforcing U.N. resolutions insisting on that disarmament. Last night, it seemed Bush was making a concerted effort to convince viewers that Saddam Hussein is dangerous and represents a genuine threat to the U.S. By reviewing the transcript closely, I found 21 instances in which Bush referenced Saddam Hussein as a “threat.” Among the sound bites, “Saddam Hussein is a threat to our nation…. There are a lot of countries who fully understand the threat of Saddam Hussein…. I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people…. He’s a threat to people in his neighborhood. He’s also a threat to the Iraqi people,” and so on. Despite the repetition, Bush never actually said why Iraq is a threat. It’s not self-evident. Most seem to believe that Hussein’s military forces have not fully recovered from the last Gulf War, he hasn’t threatened any of his neighbors in 11 years, and he wasn’t involved with the 9/11 attacks. I agree Iraq hasn’t “unconditionally” disarmed, and I also believed Colin Powell when he explained how Hussein was pulling a scam on the UNMOVIC inspectors currently in Iraq, but I still don’t quite understand the imminence of the Iraqi “threat.”

Lastly, and on a similar note, I was hoping Bush would at least touch on why the war needs to be waged right now. It seems lately that many of the war’s skeptics have boiled down their arguments to “why now?” Many of us can accept most of the premises upon which Bush is basing the war (disarmament, U.N. resolutions, lies and deceptions about biological and chemical weapons), but that still doesn’t quite get at why we need to launch an attack immediately. Saddam is clearly contained, at least for now, and with U.N. inspectors on the ground, Iraq is in a box it can’t crawl out of. I fully understand these conditions cannot last indefinitely, but if war was truly a “last resort,” then why is Bush rushing to war now?

There was even a question alluding to this point almost directly and the answer was vague and unspecific. “I think the threat is real,” Bush said, explaining why war is probably at hand. “And so do a lot of other people in my government. And since I believe the threat is real, and since my most important job is to protect the security of the American people, that’s precisely what we’ll do.” That’s great, except it doesn’t answer the question.