SILLY?

TONY SNOW


Did you know that it is the constitutional duty of every American to give the president of the United States the benefit of the doubt in matters of national security, regardless of how said president has failed time and again in this area. At least, that's what White House Press Secretary Tony Snow is pushing today. (See video and a transcript over at Think Progress.)

On Tuesday, a reporter had the following exchange with Snow:

QUESTION: Looking back, is there anything that the president would have done differently? Does he believe he has made any mistakes in this region?
SNOW: Oh, my goodness.
QUESTION: It’s a fair question.
SNOW: No, it’s a silly question.

Snow later said...

What you do as president of the United States — and I have said this repeatedly from this podium, and you need to give presidents the benefit of the doubt when national security is involved — is the very best, in their judgment, of what they can do.

So, here we have a president that screwed up Afghanistan by not staying and finishing the job of destroying the Taliban and capturing/killing Osama bin Laden AND has turned Iraq into a terrorist recruitment center and has made the country outside of the vaunted green zone in Bahgdad into one of the most dangerous places on the face of the earth. Yet we're supposed to give Bush the benefit of the doubt when national security is involved. This is a president that throughout the 2004 presidential campaign regularly raised and lowered the terrorist warning levels in a successful effort to tweak his occasional sagging polling numbers, yet we're supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt when national security is involved.

Honestly, the only thing that is silly about this entire exchange is that the reporter actually expected Bush/Snow to actually admit that their failure of diplomacy has led us to where we are now in regards to North Korea. Silly reporter...