Word: fleischer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...week, just as Jeb is kicking off his re-election bid, President Bush is expected to announce even tighter sanctions against Cuba, including a crackdown on nearly 100,000 Americans who illegally go to Cuba each year. Any U.S. tourism and trade with Cuba, insists White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, "benefits only the repressive regime in Cuba." But Flake's amendment to allow U.S. travel to Cuba and a similar Senate measure are expected to pass this summer, both with ample G.O.P. backing...
...would be a hard-hearted newsman who didn't feel just the slightest twinge of sympathy for White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer Wednesday night as he took the withering first wave of Washington's latest 9/11-related feeding frenzy. The one with the chilling subtext so gleefully summed up by the New York Post Thursday morning...
...Responding to the subtext, that the administration could have prevented 9/11, kept Fleischer and Condoleeza Rice busy for the rest of the week. The explanation is the inherently obvious one: They surprised us, plain and simple, with a planes-as-missiles tactical leap. "There's been a long-standing awareness in the intelligence community, shared with the president, about the potential for bin Laden to have hijacking in the traditional sense," Fleischer said. Bush, he added, put out a secret alert based on the information the administration had, which wasn't much. Added Rice Thursday: "The government did everything that...
...tell us before?" complaint, voiced with equal brow-furrowing by top Senate Democrat Tom Daschle and top Republican spy-watcher Richard Shelby. There was the hunt for some serious White House negligence, headed up by House Minority Leader Dick "full investigation" Gephardt. And there was a third response, something Fleischer probably wished the White House reporters had been thinking all along: There is nothing scandalous about this...
...Self-scrutiny is good government. So is a little restraint, and to hint that the administration wasn't trying to prevent what became the 9/11 tragedy is unfair. And so, for standing there from the very start - for that being in fact his job description - Ari Fleischer gets our sympathy vote for TIME.com's Person of the Week...