Who is the Q (questioner) in this Scottie McClellan interview?

[madfloridian]

I did not hear it, but I found this posted elsewhere. Was it one questioner or more? They had him stuttering.

MR. McCLELLAN: So you're not letting me have an honest, open debate here. I welcome the opportunity to do this -- but they know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted -- we welcome that. In fact, the President has met with some of those honest critics. He met with a number of them just last week. And partisan critics who claim we acted in Iraq because of oil, or that we acted because of Israel, or that we acted based on misleading the American people --

Q Who has made that charge? Which Democrat in Congress has said he did it for oil or for Israel?

MR. McCLELLAN: He didn't single out members of Congress. He singled out people that --

Q -- elected officials responsible --

MR. McCLELLAN: We can point to --

Q Who are you talking about? Are you talking about Harry Belafonte and Sheryl Crow? Is he really worried about those people?

MR. McCLELLAN: We can point to a number of people. I think the Chairman of the Democratic Party has made numerous statements that are --

Q Who else is part of --

Q Why did he go in then?

MR. McCLELLAN: The Chairman of the party has made numerous irresponsible comments. We have confronted these issues head on, and we will continue to take them on. You might want to back us down from challenging people, but when they make irresponsible comments, we're going to challenge them.

Q You just said one of the irresponsible comments was that he doesn't have a strategy for victory, that people have made that comment and that they've been briefed on it. They might just not agree with the strategy for victory, or whether it is a strategy for victory.

MR. McCLELLAN: But they're implying to the American people that we don't have a strategy in place. And this is after they were -- just after they were briefed by our commanders on the ground who put that strategy in place.

Q So that's irresponsible to imply that they just don't like the strategy?

MR. McCLELLAN: No. I said that "we don't have a strategy" -- there's a difference.

Q -- semantics --

MR. McCLELLAN: No. People have made that point, said that we don't have a strategy in place for winning in Iraq. That is irresponsible.

Q That's exactly my point, that they think it's not a strategy for winning.

MR. McCLELLAN: No. You know exactly what I'm talking about. I can go back and pull up comments that members of Congress -- certain Democratic leaders have made stating that we don't have a plan in place. And this is right after they were briefed by our commanders on the ground. So I reject that.

And I think -- I know sometimes in this room you want to focus on one portion of what the President said. We've taken on those who have made these comments directly. I'm not saying anything in the last couple of days; this speech was about much more than what the President was talking about. But because some are going out there trying to mischaracterize things and trying to imply things that just aren't true, we're going to make it clear to the American people that it's important to look at the facts. And that's what we're doing. We're confronting them with the facts. "

This is nothing but blather.

[Dave Reynolds]

1. Blather is what Scottie does best,

he is a grand master of blather.

[Richard Steele]

8. If blather was lather, Scottie could shave the whales.

Of course, it's not as if he has an option to
actually speak any truth,
since the facts have always been against every claim B*sh makes.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. This kind of thing would never come up IF they had actually been

successful with anything in Iraq. They haven't been, so now it's hard to actually face facts, I understand why they are calling everybody else "irresponsible", it's the kind of thing you do when you have utterly failed and are being called on it.

[SillyGoose]

3. Until very recently the strategy was 'Stay the Course'. I don't think

that qualifies as a strategy and neither did a lot of people. Too bad if Scottie and Junior don't like it. The American people are going to continue to question Junior and his policies...that's how things work around here.

[madfloridian]

4. More details on Scottie's blathering. Love the questioner.

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001808983

"NEW YORK In his latest statement on Iraq, President George W. Buch again charged that some of the critics of the war in Iraq were acting responsibly--and others, not. At his White House press briefing today, Press Secretary Scott McClellan fielded a number of questions trying to determine the difference, and possibly produce a few names on the irresponsible team.

After some prodding, McClellan finally identified the Democratic Party chairman, Howard Dean, as one of those on the president's bad side. "The Chairman of the party has made numerous irresponsible comments," McClellan said.

Here is one of the exchanges that transpired, in full.

*
Q Scott, I just want to come back to this point about irresponsibility, because there seems to be --

MR. McCLELLAN: We're not talking about you.

Q Not today, anyway. (Laughter.) But this goes back to your predecessor, Ari, saying at one point that people need to watch what they say. And this seems to be kind of a continuing theme from this White House. A lot of people might say that it's bad for troop morale and irresponsible to say that American troops would be greeted with candies and flowers, when that didn't happen, or that there were weapons of mass destruction when there weren't any. In other words, the President seems to want to define the terms of the debate about a war that he knows is controversial, in no small part because of representations he made to the country --

MR. McCLELLAN: I reject that completely, and that's just complete distortion of what he said.

Q What's a distortion?"

They don't say who the questioner is. This is really very irresponsible of Scottie, I think. But all the guy can do is blather.

[madfloridian]

5. Did anyone find out who the questioner was today?

Thanks.

[Sydnie]

6. David Gregory

I am listening to it now. It was today's press briefing.

A woman (I don't know who) then followed up and pressed him further.

[madfloridian]

7. Thanks so much. I sort of figured it might be him.

Sounds like the prez and Scottie were sort of threatening our Democrats...burns me up.

[Sydnie]

9. It sounded like

they were threatening anyone that didn't agree with them. The tone can't be expressed in the transcripts. Scottie was pissed off!

[tinfoilinfor2005]

11. David easily runs rings around Scottie because David is smarter

than Scottie and junior combined.

[shance]

10. We did go to war for oil and imperialism.

What other reason does the PNAC give?

The Bush Administration is who has already lied to Americans, so is Bush making an open threat to those of us who are telling the truth?