UPDATE: We’ve chosen and submitted six questions from among those suggested here and via email. We hope to have the opportunity to do this again, so please continue to leave suggestions should you have any. I’ve asked Dave Almacy, the White House spokesman who agreed to answer your questions, when we can expect to receive the answers and I’ll pass that along as soon as he lets me know. We’ll announce the questions and answers in a separate post.
Note: this item has been retitled and extensively revised. To see the original version, click here.
If you’ve ever watched a White House press briefing, you’ve probably felt the sensation of drowning in tepid gruel. It can be an extremely frustrating experience and it led me to try, in the wake of the Guckert/Gannon scandal, to place my own unfettered correspondent in the briefing room. In early 2005, I managed to pester the White House press office into providing BTC News contributor — now BTC News White House correspondent — Eric Brewer with semi-regular access to the White House press briefings held by then-press secretary Scott McClellan.
Eric has done a great job under difficult circumstances (you can read his dispatches from the press room here) with both McClellan and Tony Snow, but he’s only one guy, he has a real job and he can’t be there every day. So I asked our press office contact, who is now an official spokesman, if he would field questions submitted by our readers. He agreed to do that on the record, and I’m here to ask you to ask the White House the questions institutional reporters should ask but don’t.
You can leave your questions in the comments on this post. We don’t censor comments so you’re of course free to say and ask anything you like, but keep in mind that we won’t be passing along any profanities.
Also keep in mind that the spokesman’s two-fold job is to place whatever information he provides in the most positive light, and to directly or indirectly avoid answering questions to which the answers might reflect poorly on the administration. The interlocutor’s job is to find a way around that. Our goal has always been to ask fact-based questions that are worded in a way that makes non-answers or non-denials significant, as when Eric invited Scott McClellan to repudiate the Downing Street Memos and Scott wouldn’t do it. Those are the kinds of solid questions we’ll be looking for from readers.
In some ways the process is reminiscent of Kremlin-watching in the glory days of the Cold War: you can often learn as much or more from what isn’t said as from what is, and there’s always hope for an occasional glitch in the fog machine. That last is unlikely since the Q&A in this instance will be via unspontaneous email, but the format also offers us all the opportunity to craft air-tight questions.
I’ve posted the call for questions elsewhere, and gotten feedback to the tune of “what’s the point? They won’t answer.” But the point is to get the questions on the record, whether they’re substantively answered or not, and to disseminate the responses or lack of them. It’s an opportunity for people who aren’t members of the journalistic tribe to put vital questions to the people who run the country. And because BTC News is a Google News source, you have the opportunity to ask questions that will be seen by people who would otherwise not be exposed to them.
We think that’s a worthy cause, and I hope you’ll participate to whatever extent you can. There are a lot of good questions floating around out there, and it’s time some of them got used.
This is a liberal blog, and the majority of our readers are liberals, but we’re open to questions from any point on the political arc so long as they’re substantive and articulate.
Give it a shot: the results might surprise us all.
NOTE: Please provide a first name and hometown, and your country if other than the US. If you would like to use your full name but don’t wish to post it here, you may send your questions to “bushquest@btcnews.com” without the quotation marks.
Sorry that last Paragraph should read
Does President Bush expect that he and all the other members of his administration who have had a part in the ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ will be able to freely travel through all US Allies after leaving direct US Government service, without having to invoke Diplomatic Immunity?
Though our recent free trade agreements arguably create more jobs, without safety, labor, and human rights protections, how do these free trade agreements promote global security in a way that makes us safer as a nation?
What would President Bush do with an advisor who told him “I’m not really sure what the difference between Sunni and Shia are. I think one’s in one location, another’s in another location, or maybe its differences in their religion or different families”. And then went on to say “It’s the difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunnis are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it’s the Sunnis who’re more radical than the Shia”.
Would such an advisor be considered credible and deserving of a senior role in the War on Terror in Iraq? And this is not a hypothetical. These are the answers given by Terry Everett vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence, and Representative Jo Ann Davis from Virginia charged with the House Subcomittee overseeing the C.I.A.’s performance in recruiting Islamic spies and analyzing information.
Is this an acceptable level of knowledge for a White House staffer on Iraq Intelligence, and if it isn’t, why does the President accept this sort of ignorance among senior members of his own party whom his staff works with every day?
On the topic of “Cut and Run”, the only words Mr. Bush can come up with… Why did Mr. Bush cut and run in the search for the “guys that knocked down these buildings” as Mr. Bush promised while standing at the site of ground zero?
The US has 7,822 miles of land borders and sea borders make up just about 13,000 miles (almost twice as much border) – which the Coast Guard patrols with 25 ships (7 of which are not designed for the open sea and one is an old fashion squarerigged sailing ship_ and 211 aircroaft. Radar on these ships and airplanes can only see ocean-going sailboats and motorboats when they are 2 miles away.
How are US Ocean Borders being secured against terrorists entering undiscovered along our coastlines? Why hasn’t the President alerted the nation to this unguarded danger?
When the President took office he promised to uphold and defend the Constitution. Can the President recite any of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution and explain to the people what they really mean? Which of these 10 amendments, or of the other amendments in the Constitution, is still in effect according to the President?
Since President Bush has such a close relationship with God and consults with Him frequently–He even told Dubya He wanted George to be President–has anybody at a press conference asked Bush whether he thinks God gave him good advice on Iraq?
If the Russians and Chinese refuse to permit sanctions on Iran and Iran becomes the most powerful political entity in Shiite Iraq, what are our options as their nuclear program advances? In what ways do you believe our invasion of Iraq has strengthened Iran?
According to the Unitary Executive Theory that the President ascribes to, the President is authorized to detain even US citizens, in the interest of national security, and hold them indefinitely, deny them access to evidence, and subject them to varying degrees of enhanced questioning.
My question is whether, after the President’s term expires and he is once again a private citizen, the next president would be justified in using the same unitary executive powers to detain Mr. Bush, if the President considered him and the millions who follow him to be hostile to the constitution and openly acting against it?
If not, what means do you think would be appropriate for citizen Bush to challenge the judgment of the next president?
Mr President,
Why do you feel it is part of your job as President of the United States to raise money for Republican canidates? Are we paying you $300,000+ a year to influence elections? That doesn’t sound very democratic, does it?
Mr. President,
In the event of a Democratic takeover of Congress in the mid-term elections, will you immediately pardon all administration personnel, wait until indictments are handed down, or make it your last official act in office.
Are you and Karl really afraid of Nancy Pelosi? If so, does that make you “girly men?”
The President recently stated that the oft-repeated (by him) phrase “stay the course” is not a fair characterization of his administration’s policy towards Iraq. Would the President care to explain why the phrase “cut and run” is a fair characterization of (all) Democratic policy?
A question concerning reliable voting results.
As we all know, Mr. President, you experienced firsthand the chaotic aftermath of an election that yielded uncertain, and some might say, suspicious results. In the six years since then, very little has been done to insure that election results will be completely and accurately verifiable to the American public. It is undeniable that an accurate and un-impeachable tabulation of the vote is a cornerstone to a healthy democracy.
As you may be aware, there is growing concern in America that our election results have become unreliable, untraceable and quite vulnerable to outside manipulation. Calls for reform are often countered by those who say that effective nationwide remedies would prove too costly.
We are currently spending $2 Billion a week in Iraq, ostensibly, in your own words, to bring democracy to the Iraqi people. You took great pride in bringing free elections to Iraq.
My question is this: Would you support a referendum to create a US election reform non-partisan panel and to fund a program which would enable all fifty states to purchase standardized voting equipment which would provide transparent and accurate “paper trails” for re-counts and verification ?
Helios | Oct 24 2006 – 8:17am |
Lancet released a report on October 11 estimating that 300,000 to 900,000 Iraqis had died from violence after the US-UK invasion in 2003. George Bush’s response to this report was “No, I don’t call it a credible report.”
What was his basis or his staff’s basis for discounting the methodology of the report?
Can the Press secretary elaborate on why the POTUS is so confident of republican victory in the upcoming election?
When are you going to stop killing people to relieve your erectile disfunction?
In the lead up to the iraq war, it was discovered that a memo had been forged and passed to us intelligence which was intended to cause the us to erroneously believe that iraq had sought to buy uranium from niger.
Whoever forged this memo was obviously trying to provoke the united states into taking action against iraq based upon false data.
Does the united states know who forged this memo, and if not, what actions is it taking to discover this. What should the punishment be for the forgers of this memo?
Why hasn’t the president asked for more sacrifices from the American people (other than privacy). During the world wars, people rationed food, saved gas, and bought war bonds to finance it. Wouldn’t it be better to pay as you go.
One question I’d like to ask is did Bush see the 1st plane hit the WTC or not on TV?
A couple of times Bush said he saw this, but as far as we know, the only footage (Naudet firemen film) that shows the 1st hit wasn’t avaiable until late on 9/11. So what did Bush see?
Also, why is Bush such a #!@ asshole?
What is the president’s current justification for starting an unprovoked war without being certain that he was right and that the United States would win?
How does the president justify lying about it?
On October 27, 2004, President Bush referenced an “ongoing” military investigation into invading soldiers’ failure to secure 380 tons of IAEA-sealed high-grade plastic explosive at the al-Qa’qaa weapons depot. Those weapons were looted sometime after April 18, 2003, after the 101st Airborne had moved on from the facility.
What is the status of that investigation, almost precisely two years on?
Follow-up about the investigation: If the Iraq invasion was motivated by the need to prevent proliferation of massively destructive weapons, how serious a failure in the chain of command would have been required to cause an error of this magnitude?
If no one in the chain of command has been held accountable for such a serious undermining of the invasion’s ostensibly primary strategic objective, how can we avoid concluding that other objectives were in fact much more important than WMD?
64. I agree that a more probing question on The Lancet study is important.
I would rephrase the question something like, ‘President Bush said of the methodology of the recent Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study, which reported it’s likely some 655,000 more Iraqis were killed than otherwise would have perished in the Iraq War, was quote “pretty well discredited”.
The methodology used was cluster sampling.
The CDC website contains 242 mentions of cluster sampling, a 9-part tutorial on cluster sampling and it’s uses, and uses a sample cluster sampling study as an example of how to study mass casualties in a harsh environment. CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding has herself published studies that used cluster sampling as the study methodology.
So when the President says the methodology is ‘pretty well discredited’ – on what basis is he making that statement? If the President stands by the statement, will he push to end all cluster sampling studies in the US government?
1. You have stated that you consider abortion to be murder, and on other occasions, that you favor exceptions in cases of rape or insist. How do you justify the murder of innocent babies based merely on their ill luck at conception?
2. Before the Fitzgerald investigation, you repeatedly stated that you wanted to know who had leaked the identity of the CIA agent who turned out to be the lead investigator of WMDs in Iraq. We now know that I. Lewis Libby was one of those leakers; he admits having done so, while stating otherwise to the investigators, and is pressing a defense based on forgetfulness. Will you rule out pardoning Libby before his trial begins?
3. You have expressed your disbelief in the credibility of the Lancet’s estimate of 600,000 additional Iraqi dead as the result of the war. The cost of carrying out such a study amounts to less than one minute’s worth of the cost of the war itself. Are you willing to carry out a new study to confirm or supplant the Lancet’s?
Hometown: New York City.
4. Do you agree that the Constitution you swore to uphold makes it clear that you can’t initiate war against Iran without Congressional approval?
Hometown NYC.
i think it is important to stick to factual questions about the past, instead of hypothetical questions about the future.
1. You’ve said that the US military will remain in Iraq “as long as” you’re president. How can you be so sure that we won’t win the war and be able to withdraw later this year? Or in 2007? Or even in 2008? Isn’t that a long period of time to commit American troops without even the hope of winning in the next two-plus years? Are you afraid that everybody will recognize what you already know, which is that we’ve already lost, and the only thing that keeps everyone from realizing it is that if we stay there, we might still win, or at least, we can claim we might?
2. You’ve said that “the terrorists” want to see you and the GOP defeated in elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. Assuming we don’t win the war on terrorism before the 2008 election – and as many Republicans have said, we’ll be fighting it for a long time – are you willing to suspend the 2008 election to make sure that they don’t misinterpret the symbolism of your leaving office after your second term expires? (you’ve heard of the twenty-second amendment, right? do you plan to comply with it?) How long will you need to stay in office to prevent them from getting the wrong message from your departure from the presidency, even if it means violating the Constitution, or would you rather have the twenty-second amendment changed, either legally or by a signing statement?
2A. What would you do if the courts didn’t agree with your unilateral extension of your term?
3. Why do so many of your supporters worship you with the adoration of a misguided cult following a false god? As a self-described Christian, does this bother you at all, that you’ve become a golden idol of sorts? There are people who pray to you. Not *for* you, *to* you. What kind of Christian can be comfortable with that?
4. Matt Yglesias once suggested that the effects of so many of your administration’s policies have been to strengthen the hand of Iran that you might be an Iranian mole (Jeff Foxworthy is in talks to do a spinoff series, “You might be an Iranian mole if…”), but there are other countries with interests that are antagonistic to ours (countries that under other circumstances we might call “enemies”) that you’ve also empowered, from China to North Korea to Sudan to Russia. How many of these countries are you actually actively working for, how many do you passively aid, and what do you get out of it?
Question for President Bush from Joshua in Ann
Arbor.
Are you prepared to renounce and abandon America’s Permanent Bases in Iraq if that would
satisfy the insurgents enough to reduce the
insurgency? Are you prepared to permit a Free,
Democratic, and Sovereign Iraq to re-Nationalize
the oil fields, and are you prepared to permit
a Free, Democratic, and Sovereign Iraq to cancel
the Production Sharing Agreements which the
current Iraq Interim Government reached with
American oil companies?
Much has been made of the fact that you have not asked Americans to sacrifice in a time of war. Now that you have given the oil fields of the Middle East to the Russians and the Chinese, do you expect Americans will have to sacrifice?
Mr. President,
Who rolls up your sleeves?
My question to the President:
“Why do they call it ‘extraordinary rendition’?”
(lightly stolen from a DemocracyNow! interview)
How do you sleep at night?
Why did the President lie about not ever saying that “stay the course” was a policy in Iraq?
When the President recently said to George Stephanopoulos, “Well, listen, we’ve never been stay the course”, who did he mean by “we” and what did he mean by “never”?
Remember people, this is for a White House spokesperson, not the President, and it is not live, as far as I can tell. So the “gotchya” questions (“Do you know the difference between a Sunni and Shiite?”) aren’t worthwhile. Instead, let’s rip off an old Josh Marshall post:
No Child Left Behind. Social Security Privitization. Medicare D. The Iraq War. Tax Cuts. Privitization of Government Tasks and Deregulation.
Can you please name one major proposal of the President’s that is more popular now then when it was enacted? (Maybe with the exception of the Ahghanistan War?)
Dan, Boston, MA
How do the president and his staff keep his memory clear on what he has and hasn’t said–on what is and isn’t policy?
It seems to me that if he weren’t very careful and very well informed, he might make statements that are premature, confusing, or untrue. How would you characterize the president’s performance?
Hey BTC:
Caught the first few minutes of this: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6374613
If you’re not quite satisfied with your list of questions yet, I thought there might be something in there you could tailor for the President.
Where is President Bush campaigning today and for whom?
Is there a precedent for the President and Vice President essentially stopping all White House business except for fundraising on behalf of Republican candidates for six weeks prior to an election?
Ethan’s question: “When the President recently said to George Stephanopoulos, “Well, listen, we’ve never been stay the course”, who did he mean by “we” and what did he mean by “never”?”
Proposed addition: What did he meen by “been”?
I’m with Joshua 77. Would he trade trade oil for peace?
Mr. President: If Satan forcibly impregnated Ann Coulter, and she was bearing the antichrist, would late-term abortion be okay in that case?
Dearest President,
I have two questions: -
1.How do you sleep each night, do you get nightmares?
2.As a Born Again, do you think you will go to heaven?
Cheers
Mr. Press Secretary,
Is there anything that the Constitution and the laws prevent the President from doing? In other words, is there any power that the President does not have? If so, what is it?
If not, explain why the President is not the same as a king.
In particular, does the President have the power to order an assassination on American soil?
If there are in fact legal limits on the President’s power, and he does something that is outside of his legal power, what should happen then? If not impeachment, then explain why you supported the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
Follow-up to Ed’s question (at 87)– Who is running the country while you are out campaigning? If you are the war president, shouldn’t you be setting strategy for the military instead of campaigning for Joe Lieberman?
If the economy is so good, why are we still borrowing over $1 Billion a day?
Does the president repudiate the racist TV ad run by the RNC in the Tennessee senate race?
Please ask this question of the White House denizens:
Junya (substitute the title of “President Bush”, but only if you really, really have to) says that the US does not and has not “tortured” detainees/enemy combatants.
Why then does he need (and the WH insisted upon) “retroactive immunity” in the Torture Bill he just signed?
Only folks who commit crimes need “retroactive immunity”. You know, criminals.
Is Junya now saying that he and the other denizens of his administration are criminals?
“Given the administration’s well-documented record of lies, why should we believe you this time?”
Good followup to ANY BS answer. Particularly if you’re carrying the documentation of the lies with you.
1) When are you going to sit down with the leaders of Iran and Syria to broker a cease-fire to the current civil war in Iraq?
2) What sort of contingency plans does the US have if Iraq is partitioned and a series of regional wars, involving Turkey against Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria against the Shiite South, Iraqi Sunni Islamicists against Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and internal Sadrists against the Iranian-backed Badr brigades, break out? What would “victory” look like in light of such a situation?
3) Again today you made mention of scandals and corruptions, and tried to deflect it onto both parties. Even if we accept your premise, would you please explain the discrepancies in the White House’s account of the 400+ contacts involving the White House and convicted felon Jack Abramoff? Why did you not tell the American people the truth about how frequently you had had contact with this known criminal? Are you planning to fire anyone who was known to have engaged in ethically or criminally-suspect behavior involving Abramoff? Wouldn’t doing so be a sign that you really intended to bring “dignity” back to the White House, as you promised back in 1999 and 2000?
I wanted to ask this question for years (3 and half to be exact):
If bush thought Saddam had WMD – why did he give him a 48 hour warning? To Give him a head start?
How does this administration define ‘victory’ in Iraq? If the definition has anything to do with a stable, democratic, sovereign Iraq, does this administration commit to pull all US troops, bases, military presence out of Iraq when ‘victory’ is achieved?