Word: fleischer
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...last week horrible banging and clanking sounds could be heard all around the White House: the message machine was throwing a rod or perhaps three. First, presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer blamed Bill Clinton for unintentionally spurring violence in the Middle East, saying "in an attempt to shoot the moon and get nothing, more violence resulted." That Fleischer, who normally mouths the daily message with well-practiced ease, was the one who caused the machine to seize up came as a surprise to top Administration officials. Within an hour, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House chief of staff Andrew Card...
White House press secretaries don't usually share their personal beliefs with the nation's media - at least not on company time. So last week's comments by Ari Fleischer suggesting President Clinton's failed push for a final peace deal at Camp David helped spark the intifada actually offer some insight into Bush administration thinking. Although Fleischer was later forced by administration higher-ups to retract his statement that "You can make the case that in an attempt to shoot the moon and get nothing, more violence resulted," the press secretary doesn't make this stuff...
...Oslo postponed "final status" talks on the most difficult questions between Israelis and Palestinians for six years of "confidence-building" that in the end built very little confidence. The critical point, though, which appears to elude Fleischer and the Bush team, is that it took the Oslo Accord to end the last intifada. It's simply ludicrous to imagine that Israelis and Palestinians were peacefully getting on with their lives until Bill Clinton got them all fired up with ideas about sharing Jerusalem. Before Oslo, Palestinians had spent five-years in a state of violent rebellion against the Israeli occupation...
...Fleischer's statement suggests that some in the Bush administration believe peace can be achieved in the West Bank and Gaza prior to, and separately from moves toward a political settlement. That's dangerous, because it ignores the reality that the violence is not separate from the political conflict between Israelis and Palestinians - it's an expression of that conflict. Arafat urges his followers to fight until they have won a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Sharon warned this week that no peace talks can occur until the Palestinians had been "badly beaten" and were ready to accept...
...price tag, Majority Leader Tom Daschle told reporters Thursday that the U.S. must add two more prisoners to its X-Ray pen - Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden - "or we will have failed." Trent Lott, through his spokesman, was very upset; Bush, through his, played it cooler, with Ari Fleischer drily informing reporters Thursday that "individuals are free to focus on any one person if they think that's the best way to conduct foreign policy. That's a different approach than the president...