What the President Should have Said

In answer to this "have you stopped copulating with horses " question from White Horse Rectum David Gregory,


"GREGORY: Mr. President, after the -- mistakes that have been made in this war, when you do as you did yesterday, when you raised two-year-old intelligence talking about the threat posed by Al-Qaeda, it's met with increasing skepticism. The majority in the public, growing number of Republicans appear not to trust you any longer to be able to carry out this policy successfully. Can you explain why you believe you're still a credible messenger on the war?"

...the President replied with this:

THE PRESIDENT: I'm credible because I read the intelligence, David, and make it abundantly clear, in plain terms that if we let up, we'll be attacked. And I firmly believe that . You know, look, this has been a long, difficult experience for the American people. I can assure you, Al-Qaeda, who would like to attack us again, have got plenty of patience and persistence. And the question is, will we? Yeah, I talked about intelligence yesterday. I wanted to make sure the intelligence I laid out was credible, so we took our time. Somebody said, "Well, he's trying to politicize the thing." If I was trying to politicize it, I'd have dropped it out before the 2006 elections. I believe I have an obligation to tell the truth to the American people as to the nature of the enemy. And it's unpleasant for some. I fully recognize that after 9/11, the calm here at home, relatively speaking, you know, caused some to say, "Well, maybe we're not at war." I know that's a comfortable position to be in. But that's not the truth.
They are a direct threat to the United States. And I'm going to keep talking about it. It's my job as the president is to tell people the threats we face and what we're doing about it, and what we've done about it is we've strengthened our homeland defenses; we've got new techniques that we use that enable us to better than determine their motives and their plans and plots. We're working with nations around the world to deal with these radicals and extremists. But they're dangerous. And I can't put it any more plainly, they're dangerous. And I can't put it any more plainly to the American people and to them, we will stay on the offense. It's better to fight 'em there than here. And this concept about, "Well, maybe, you know, let us kind of just leave them alone and maybe they'll be all right," is naïve. These people attacked us before we were in Iraq. They viciously attacked us before we were in Iraqi. And they've been attacking ever since. They are a threat to your children, David. And whoever's in that Oval Office better understand it and take measures necessary to protect the American people."

I wish he had also said this about the intelligence:

President: "Well David, I'm not going to release any intelligence information to the public that might still be useful to the enemy. So of course it will seem dated. If you want the hot stuff, you should go to the New York Times or ABC News."