Ah, the liberal media…

Today on Meet the Press Tim Russert interviewed Dubya. The first question was a good one and Bush completely didn’t answer it. What did Russert do? He went on the the next question. The whole interview looked and sounded like Russert had a list of questions in front of him and he was unwilling to deviate from that list. What ever happened to pushing for an answer when the person being interviewed dodges the question? [link is to the full transcript]

Russert: On Friday, you announced a committee, commission to look into intelligence failures regarding the Iraq war and our entire intelligence community. You have been reluctant to do that for some time. Why?

President Bush: Well, first let me kind of step back and talk about intelligence in general, if I might. Intelligence is a vital part of fighting and winning the war against the terrorists. It is because the war against terrorists is a war against individuals who hide in caves in remote parts of the world, individuals who have these kind of shadowy networks, individuals who deal with rogue nations. So, we need a good intelligence system. We need really good intelligence.

So, the commission I set up is to obviously analyze what went right or what went wrong with the Iraqi intelligence. It was kind of lessons learned. But it’s really set up to make sure the intelligence services provide as good a product as possible for future presidents as well. This is just a part of analyzing where we are on the war against terror.

There is a lot of investigations going on about the intelligence service, particularly in the Congress, and that’s good as well. The Congress has got the capacity to look at the intelligence gathering without giving away state secrets, and I look forward to all the investigations and looks.

Again, I repeat to you, the capacity to have good intelligence means that a president can make good calls about fighting this war on terror.