Following Garret Graff‘s monumental foray into the White House briefing room is scientist Eric Brewer, who contributes to a small blog called BTC News. Though he is the second blogger to breach White House wards, (thanks to the fancy footwork of BTC News founder Weldon Berger) Brewer became the first to ask press secretary Scott McClellan a question just last week.
Raising a somewhat self-professed shaky voice, Brewer asked this question: “Back to the report on the botched WMD intelligence, have the massive intelligence failures documented in the report caused the President to rethink his policy of preventive war?”
Though a good question of notable interest, “it’s also precisely the kind of question your typical full-time White House correspondent doesn’t ask anymore — because there’s simply no point. You’re not going to get an answer,” reports the Washington Post.
And true enough, McClellan’s “classic” response “could literally have been stitched together” from previous responses to a similar breed of questions. WashintonPost.com illustrated this point by presenting his answer in this Google News-studded format:
“You know, September 11th taught us a very important lesson, and that lesson was that we must confront threats before it is too late. If we had known of those attacks ahead of time, we would have moved heaven and earth to prevent them from happening. This President will not hesitate when it comes to protecting the American people. And in the post-September 11th world that we live in, the consequences of underestimating the threat we face is too high. It’s tens of — possibly tens of thousands of lives.”
The entire transcript can be found here.
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