{"id":9275,"date":"2006-12-07T14:33:57","date_gmt":"2006-12-07T19:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9275.html"},"modified":"2006-12-07T14:33:57","modified_gmt":"2006-12-07T19:33:57","slug":"its-bad-in-iraq-does-that-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-bad-in-iraq-does-that-help\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It’s bad in Iraq. Does that help?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

There were a few interesting moments in today’s joint Bush-Blair press conference<\/a>, but there was one exchange that stood out.<\/p>\n

Q: Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group described the situation in Iraq as “grave and deteriorating.” You said that the increase in attacks is “unsettling.” That won’t convince many people that you’re still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq, and question your sincerity about changing course.<\/p>\n

PRESIDENT BUSH: It’s bad in Iraq. (extremely long pause) Does that help? (Laughter.)<\/p>\n

Q: Why did it take others to say it before you’ve been willing to acknowledge for the world —<\/p>\n

PRESIDENT BUSH: In all due respect, I’ve been saying it a lot. I understand how tough it is. And I’ve been telling the American people how tough it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I pay pretty close attention to what the president has to say, and I’m hard pressed to think of any<\/i> times Bush has acknowledged that “it’s bad in Iraq” publicly, better yet hearing this “a lot.”<\/p>\n

For that matter, Nico noted<\/a> that as recently as late October, Bush said we’re “absolutely<\/a>” winning the war in Iraq, which came only a week after Dick Cheney inexplicably said the “general overall situation” in Iraq was going “remarkably well<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

With this in mind, I thought I’d help answer the president’s question — no, it doesn’t help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There were a few interesting moments in today’s joint Bush-Blair press conference, but there was one exchange that stood out. Q: Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group described the situation in Iraq as “grave and deteriorating.” You said that the increase in attacks is “unsettling.” That won’t convince many people that you’re still in denial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}