During today’s White House press briefing, a reporter noted that earlier in the day, President Bush “warned of the danger that Al Qaeda could gain access to Iraq’s oil resources.” Commenting on Bush’s claim, the reporter said: “I don’t understand how a fragmented, clandestine, non-Iraqi terrorist organization could produce and sell Iraqi oil.”
The reporter then asked Press Secretary Dana Perino: “So the Iraqis would let a foreign terrorist organization take over their oil?” Annoyed, Perino dodged the question, saying that reporter was “missing the point” and that he should go back and read Bush’s speech because “what you’re suggesting is not what the president said.”
Watch it:
more:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/19/perino-oil/President Bush Discusses Global War on Terror If we were to allow our enemies to prevail in Iraq, the violence that is now declining would accelerate -- and Iraq would descend into chaos. Al Qaeda would regain its lost sanctuaries and establish new ones -- fomenting violence and terror that could spread beyond Iraq's borders, with serious consequences for the world's economy.
Out of such chaos in Iraq, the terrorist movement could emerge emboldened -- with new recruits, new resources, and an even greater determination to dominate the region and harm America.
An emboldened al Qaeda with access to Iraq's oil resources could pursue its ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction to attack America and other free nations. Iran would be emboldened as well -- with a renewed determination to develop nuclear weapons and impose its brand of hegemony across the Middle East. Our enemies would see an America -- an American failure in Iraq as evidence of weakness and a lack of resolve.
To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September the 11th and make it more likely that America would suffer another attack like the one we experienced that day -- a day in which 19 armed men with box cutters killed nearly 3,000 people in our -- on our soil; a day after which in the following of that attack more than one million Americans lost work, lost their jobs. The terrorists intend even greater harm to our country. And we have no greater responsibility than to defeat our enemies across the world so that they cannot carry out such an attack.
more:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/03/20080319-2.html
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