WH Press Shop Goes Into Rapid Response Business
In conjunction with Pres. Bush's renewed push to defend his Iraq policy and, in turn, blame the Dems for their lack of support, the WH press shop has been "setting the record straight" all week. Starting on 11/13 and continuing everyday so far this week (see the 11/14 and 11/15 releases), the WH press staff has churned out a series of releases headlined, "Setting the record straight." These releases go on to dispute various Dem or media attacks on Iraq. While it's not new that the WH pushes back on attacks, it is new when they use the official WH press shop to do it. In this admin, the role of public rapid response had been handed off to the folks at the RNC. And while the RNC is still churning out plenty of anti-Dem copy on Iraq, the addition of the WH press shop in this official capacity certainly is an interesting development. Read into what you want.
Has any one noticed that in the "Setting the Record Straight: The New York Times" the White House Press Shop, in their attempt to refute the "Hussein wasn't pursuing a nuke program" arguement, cites the Duelfer Report in its defense, which interestingly enough says:
"Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability which was essentially destroyed in 1991"
Citing the fact that their own people say Iraq's WMD capability was detroyed in 1991 undermines their argument significantly.
the Durbin/Reid/Schumer shops need to run with this.
I do find this particularly distubing and have posted on this trend on my blog. I do suspect we'll see this come to an end quickly as this pushback gets harder with Republican dissent in the Senate.