Aside from being a classic TV exchange, period, Ari Fleischer's appearance on Hardball below is a case study in how to maintain your cool, stay on message, and refuse to be thrown off-kilter by an incredulous, hostile questioner:
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P.S. I'm not sure which part of the exchange I enjoyed more, Fleischer's periodic barbs back at Matthews (eliciting laughter from someone off camera) or Matthews's Al Gore-like sighs in the background while listening to his guest.
Posted by Eric Earling at March 11, 2009 05:28 PM | Email ThisI love it when Ari goes into lying mode: Getting rid of Saddam made the world safer....NOT. Has Ari even paid attention to Afghanistan? to the havoc wreaked in Iraq? To the nuclear ambitions of Iran that bush slept through (yeah, they talked a lot but did they actually do anything to stop Iran...NO).
Why has the security of the world collapsed since the unnecessary war in Iraq where we lied to the rest of the world and alienated our own allies? Maybe the election of Hamas, the Iranian hard-liners and nuclear ambitions, the victory in Afghanistan turned into total and utter failure and on and on...all show that getting rid of Saddam worked...but any objective observer would have to say that what Ari said was one big lie.
As facts above (@8) said so eloquently, when you scream mushroom cloud and are wrong...will anyone listen to you cry wolf for Iran? Is it any wonder the rest of the world no longer trusts us after the lying Bush and his lying press secretary?
Posted by: correctnotright on March 11, 2009 09:11 PMHairy
Posted by: Hairy Buddah on March 11, 2009 09:31 PMor if his spokespeople like Scott McClellan just weren't up to the job.
Hairy
Posted by: Hairy Buddah on March 11, 2009 09:34 PMWho can tell me what's wrong with that statement?
Posted by: Timothy on March 11, 2009 09:37 PMRIP Russert.
Posted by: Andy on March 11, 2009 09:55 PMCABLE NEWS RACE
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The talking points are clear, focus on something ... anything but Obama's spending.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 11, 2009 10:48 PMNah.
There is a stimulus bill of $787 billion, an appropriations bill of $410 billion, a housing bailout bill of $275 billion, and the Prophet Obama's colossal budget, promising $3.55 trillion of expenditures (including a $634 billion "down payment" on health care reform).
Under the Prophet, federal expenditures will soar to 27.7 percent of GDP. That is the highest rate of expenditure since 1945. The deficit will hit $1.7 trillion this year and, after a brief decline, rise above $700 billion. His budget contemplates a recovery, but in 2010, spending still will be in the range of 24.1 percent of GDP. Moreover, he will raise taxes and cut the military back.
1. Ignore the fact that 9/11 happened on their watch (Ari, you had been in office for 8 months when 9/11 occurred)
2. Ignore the existence of the infamous "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" briefing document that was put in Bush's hands weeks before 9/11.
3. State that Bush kept us safe from terrorist attacks after 9/11, despite the still-unsolved anthrax attacks.
4. Be a jerk when brought to task for your obvious, repeated and grossly negligent failures.
These people should be publicly shamed whenever possible.
The Bush legacy...
Allowed the biggest terror attack on USA soil.
Allowed followup terror attack on USA soil.
Manufactured reasons to start war.
Crashed economy.
Way. To. Go.
Posted by: Hairball1 on March 12, 2009 03:36 AMThe threat of Saddam was greatly exagerated prior to the war in Iraq, and the "spin" is continuing to conflate two unrelated events. To wit, just look at the completely unfound response of Daniel @22.
Ari was gearing up to say what he said on the way out of that interview. It's in his cognitive interest to quell the nagging doubts, to continue to conflate Saddam and 9/11. Nobody wants to own up to over-cooking evidence and manufacturing an unnecessary and ill-fated war. He needs to believe that what they did was noble and right, and keeping 9/11 and Saddam close is their version of doing just that.
In the end, Ari Fleischer was advocating in the strongest terms possible for pre-emption. Pre-emption is a morally bankrupt foriegn policy, and will not lead to a safer United States. The removal of Saddam has not made the United States safer.
I'll grant that Chris Matthews could have handled the interview better, and that he likely made an error in attributing the word "dishonest" to Fleischer instead of the word "wrong." But, the absurdity of the positions Fleischer was taking was breathtaking, and I suspect the degree of that caught Matthews offguard.
Good luck with that legacy building, Mr. Fleischer. It looks now and will increasingly be shown to be vacuous.
Posted by: Timothy on March 12, 2009 05:02 AMYou must mean the impeached (for lying) former president Clinton and other Democrats then:
"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton in 1998
Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998
"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998
"Over the years, Iraq has worked to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. During 1991 - 1994, despite Iraq's denials, U.N. inspectors discovered and dismantled a large network of nuclear facilities that Iraq was using to develop nuclear weapons. Various reports indicate that Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. There is no reason to think otherwise. Beyond nuclear weapons, Iraq has actively pursued biological and chemical weapons.U.N. inspectors have said that Iraq's claims about biological weapons is neither credible nor verifiable. In 1986, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, and later, against its own Kurdish population. While weapons inspections have been successful in the past, there have been no inspections since the end of 1998. There can be no doubt that Iraq has continued to pursue its goal of obtaining weapons of mass destruction." -- Patty Murray, October 9, 2002
There's plenty more, but you get the idea.
Years after leaving his post, Ari Fleischer is still giving novices that fancy themselves as a "reporter", a verbal beatdown with the facts as they are, and not as they're perceived.
Posted by: Rick D. on March 12, 2009 05:43 AMFor your 'justice' fix, you'll have to settle for Madoff pleading guilty this a.m. as we speak.
Posted by: Simon on March 12, 2009 07:45 AMIf Clinton or anyone on the left had proposed the Bush doctrine (shoot now, ask questions later) the Right would be outraged. If you are so wedded to winning this argument that you can't see the problems of the Bush doctrine or acknowledge the damage done, then you need to spend some time in reflection.
Posted by: Timothy on March 12, 2009 08:22 AMThe FBI is serving a search warrant at the office of D.C.'s Chief Technology Officer, WTOP has learned.
"We are there as part of a continuing ongoing criminal investigation," FBI Washington Field Office spokesperson Katherine Schweit tells WTOP.
Schweit would not comment on the details of the investigation.
There are at least a dozen FBI agents - including evidence technicians - at the office, located at 1 Judiciary Square on 4th Street in Northwest, WTOP's Mark Segraves reports.
Most of the employees have been told to go home. Other employees have been segregated into a waiting room.
A spokesman for D.C.'s U.S. Attorney tells WTOP he cannot discuss the investigation, as it is currently sealed.
On March 5, President Barack Obama named D.C. Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra as the federal government's chief information officer.
He was great for about six years and I liked his interviews. About the time his former buddy McCain got ousted from the primaries in lieu of Bush, I began to see the change.
It seemed that the change occurred because his elitist cocktail Democrat buddies began to corner him at parties and asked him if he were a Republican. Matthews was a D and a former aide to the Tipper (as in O'Neill not Gore). So, he started changing.
It was downhill from there.
Posted by: swatter on March 12, 2009 09:11 AMThis constant drum beat of whining on the left is a disingenous attempt to blur the facts as they were/are at the time. No matter how much bobbleheads like 'sniff' Matthews and the MSNBC clowns would like to alter this reality, they can't and it doesn't. inre the video: Ari might as well have been playing "whack-a-mole" with Matthews' giant noggin.
Posted by: Rick D. on March 12, 2009 09:20 AMNot even Team Obama can forestall unpleasant reality. And among those America now faces is Mr. Obama adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, eclipsing the $2.9 trillion added during the Bush presidency's entire eight years.
Another reality is that Mr. Obama's fiscal house is built on gimmicks. For example, it assumes the cost of the surge in Iraq will extend for a decade. This brazenly dishonest trick was done to create phony savings down the line.
Mr. Obama's budget downplays some programs' true cost. For example, his vaunted new college access program is funded for five years and then disappears (on paper); the children's health insurance program drops (on paper) from $12.4 billion in 2013 to $700 million the next year. Neither will happen; the costs of both will be much higher and so will the deficits.
Mr. Obama's budget also assumes the economy declines 41% less this year and grows 52% more next year and 38% more the year after than is estimated by the Blue Chip consensus (a collection of estimates by leading economists traditionally used by federal budget crunchers). If Mr. Obama used the consensus forecasts for growth rather than his own rosy scenarios, his budget would be $758 billion more in the red over the next five years.
Then there's discretionary domestic spending, which grows over the next two years by $238 billion, the fastest increase ever recorded. Mr. Obama pledges it will then be cut in real terms for the next nine years. That's simply not credible.
Then there's his omnibus spending bill $410,000,000,000.00 to fund the government for the next six months, laden with 8,500 earmarks and tens of billions in additional spending above the current budget. What happened to pledges for earmark reform and making "meaningful cuts?"
Yes sweetcheeks, those are known as FACTS.
Re 34: ADD to that Bronx Prosecutors Investigating Obama Appointee
Hope!
Change!
Obama couldn't be doing more to destroy business confidence if that's what he had intentionally set out to do, and frankly, it's hard not to get the impression that this is indeed the case. Certainly Obama has done nothing to suggest otherwise.
Bottom line: Obama wants to go on a massive government spending spree. But he's working as hard as he can to destroy the means that will make the spending spree possible. He earns an F for economic policy.
NOTE: At the bottom of the article is a widget where YOU can grade the toddler. So far, his "Average Overall Grade" is an impressive [/sarcasm] D
Amazing. All that truth stuff....."
translated:
"If we cherry pick the stats to exclude enough people, I can *ALMOST* say my guys beat your guys."
Posted by: Hannitywannabe on March 12, 2009 06:07 PMIn any event, again, congratulations on ALMOST "winning" when you exclude that demo. *golfclap*
Citation, please? After all, you're the one claiming others are making numbers up. So put up yourself.
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 12, 2009 10:20 PMNice try, you Marxist... The deficit was $421 billion PER YOUR OWN ARTICLE. Hoisted on your own petard, as they say!
This multi-trillion dollar deficit is SOLELY the blame of you Slavers and your Obamassiah. Try as you might, you can't get out from under it.
HOPE AND CHANGE!
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 12, 2009 10:53 PMNow there you liberals go again, calling Republicans Nazis. Ask Israel who supports them better, Obama or the GOP?
While we're doing the name calling, why don't you Marxists just leave the country, (the EU would love to have you); and we can have our country back!
Posted by: scott on March 13, 2009 12:57 PMAdmit it - you made a claim, were called on it, and your "citation" refuted your own claim. You've been shown to be a fraud YET AGAIN.
Factless, you and the rest of your Slaver Party ilk really never change, do you...
HOPE AND CHANGE!
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 13, 2009 05:29 PM