Praise the Leader
George Bush has been criticized for only speaking at staged events where he does not ever have to address challenging or adversarial questions. In response to that criticism, the White House has recently been permitting citizens to ask questions of The President after his speeches. None of these questions are the slightest bit filtered or staged in any way whatsoever.
As a result, Bush has finally been forced to confront the intense opposition which so many of his policies have engendered among American citizens. Here, for instance, are some of the highly challenging questions and statements which he had to fend off yesterday during the Q-and-A session after his speech in Louisville, Kentucky:
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Q: I'd like to ask, recently in the media, you've been catching a lot of flak about that National Security Agency thing.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes
Q: There's people in our states and there's people that are in D.C. that will take and jeopardize what I feel is our national security and our troops' safety today for partisan advantage, for political advantage. They're starting an investigation in the Justice Department about the -- looking into this, where these leaks came from. Is the Justice Department going to follow through and, if necessary, go after the media to take and get the answers and to shut these leaks up?
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Q: Mr. President, we hear a common expert opinion all the time that the terrorists are going to attack us -- it's not a question of whether, it's a question of when. And, yes, that might happen. But the facts are that since 9/11 we haven't had any, so thank you. (Applause.)
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Q: As a small business owner, like a lot of people in this room, we look at the dramatic cost increases that have been passed along, and that we all really struggle with how do we provide our employees with health insurance that's comprehensive? And we all view you as a very pragmatic problem solver, and we'd like you to take this one on, sir.
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Q: How can people help on the war on terror?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, that's the hardest question I've had all day. (Laughter.)
So, the one question Bush was asked about the NSA eavesdropping was one demanding that he hurry up and throw the reporters who reported it into prison. And oh, about those unlimited powers which Bush can exercise because we are at "war" with the terrorists – no need to worry at all. It’ll just be a few more decades and then we can return to our normal system of Government where the President actually has to obey the law:
Q. In your State of the Union after September 11th, you defined this war as a war on terror. In history, our parents' generation had V.E. Day and V.J. Day. And in our time, we've seen the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. If you define this as a war on terror, will there ever be a V.T. Day? And, if not, what do you need to do to prepare us to be able to go the duration?
THE PRESIDENT: . . . And so, you're right, I did say it's a war, the first war of the 21st century, but I've been emphasizing it's a different kind of war. So I don't envision a signing ceremony on the USS Missouri. As a matter of fact, this is a war in which the enemy is going to have to be defeated by a competing system in the long run. . . . So, in other words, it's not going to be that kind of -- it's not the kind of war that you talked about earlier, and so the peace won't be the kind of peace that we're used to.
---guest blogged by Glenn Greenwald
