It's finally happened. Scott McClellan has
blamed the Bush policy of 'regime change' on the Clinton Administration.
Q Could we go back to the press availability with Prime Minister Blair last week? In response to a question, the President said, about the Downing Street memo, "My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully." And then later on he says, "And so we worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully."
"How to do this" -- that refers to regime change or just to weapons inspections?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, regime change was the policy of the previous administration -- remember, that goes back to the previous administration.
More Below
So my take on this is that when all the Bush people say that Saddam was an evil person that needed to go, they're really saying, "It's Clinton's fault that he didn't get rid of Saddam in 1998, which obligated us to go to war when we came into office."
But the reporter wouldn't have any of Scotty's evasiveness. Here is the full exchange.
Q Could we go back to the press availability with Prime Minister Blair last week? In response to a question, the President said, about the Downing Street memo, "My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully." And then later on he says, "And so we worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully."
"How to do this" -- that refers to regime change or just to weapons inspections?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, regime change was the policy of the previous administration -- remember, that goes back to the previous administration.
Q But the policy of previous administration was --
MR. McCLELLAN: I addressed the threat posed by Iraq.
Q Right, which was not to do it using military force at that time. The decision by this administration was to use military force. So when talking about this --
MR. McCLELLAN: Not at that time.
Q But when talking about this, and this response, is the President referring to regime change or referring to inspections of weapons --
MR. McCLELLAN: The threat posed by the regime in Iraq.
Q So regime change.
At least one reporter assumes that a dodge of two choices means the correct answer is the worse of the two.
The next question was a relative softball about Cafta.
Of course, they don't talk about the new documents released, but at least they're still questioning his answer at the press conference.