I Love It When Bush Gets Testy

I meant to point this out way back when Bush spoke with Matt Lauer on the Today show. I didn't see the appearance, but heard clips on talk radio, and the President was terrific --and seemed to me to be audibly annoyed with Lauer's line of questioning. That same week, he gave a presser in which he was "on" --and again it seemed to me that he had just about had it with the stupid games the press play --and the more he gave vent to his anger (without losing control of himself), the more articulate and forceful he seemed. Now read his joint statement and presser with President Karzai today and see if you don't think the same. It's worth reading the entire thing just because it's quite moving, by the way (read what Karzai says about visiting Walter Reed), but I'll just snip a few things to illustrate my point (first articulated here) that what snarls Bush's syntax is trying to be polite to fools.

First up, here's his response to a question about the NIE report which supposedly "proves" terrorism is on the rise since we attacked Iraq.

You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq, we would see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement requires us to ignore 20 years of experience. We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq, and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions. They kill in order to achieve their objectives.

You know, in the past, Osama bin Laden used Somalia as an excuse for people to join his jihadist movement. In the past, they used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a convenient way to try to recruit people to their jihadist movement. They've used all kinds of excuses. This government is going to do whatever it takes to protect this homeland. We're not going to let their excuses stop us from staying on the offense.

I happened to hear that part and he seemed to me to be roiling. Again, totally in control of himself, but cheezed off. He continues:

you know what's interesting about the NIE -- it was an intelligence report done last April. As I understand, the conclusions -- the evidence on the conclusions reached was stopped being gathered on February -- at the end of February. And here we are, coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.

And then some little chick reporter asks about the document and if declassifying it isn't itself political and he pounces:

Because I want you to read the documents so you don't speculate about what it says. You asked me a question based upon what you thought was in the document, or at least somebody told you was in the document. And so I think, Jennifer, you'll be able to ask a more profound question when you get to look at it yourself -- (laughter) -- as opposed to relying upon gossip and somebody who may or may not have seen the document trying to classify the war in Iraq one way or the other.

Oo, burn. And then just for fun Karzai starts in on the original questioner, too:

Ma'am ... terrorism was hurting us way before Iraq or September 11th. The President mentioned some examples of it. These extremist forces were killing people in Afghanistan and around for years, closing schools, burning mosques, killing children, uprooting vineyards, with vine trees, grapes hanging on them, forcing populations to poverty and misery.
They came to America on September 11th, but they were attacking you before September 11th in other parts of the world. We are a witness in Afghanistan to what they are and how they can hurt. You are a witness in New York. Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high? Who did that?And where are they now? And how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, other than going after them? Should we wait for them to come and kill us again?