He Just Blew It

Update: transcript. Be sure to check out the question from Ed Henry at CNN.

Update update, Tuesday: WIIIAI offers a pretty darned good executive summary.

Obama, in his first prime-time press conference, called upon Helen Thomas, God love her, saying, "This is my inaugural moment." But when Helen asked him a two-part question about Pakistan having safe havens for terrorists, and "Do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?" he talked about Pakistan and then, on the second part of the question, said, "I don't want to speculate." And then he went on to say that he was determined no arms race should get going in the Middle East and he is talking with Russia about mutually decreasing arms so we'd be a good example. Then when Helen, who was sitting in the front row, tried to follow up and get him to actually answer the second part of the question, he brushed her off and called on the next reporter. Very disappointing. Up until then, I was feeling okay about his answers, with a notable exception of his squirming around about the question regarding the ban on showing coffins of returning dead soldiers and timetable to pull out of Afghanistan.

The truth cannot be spoken.

Reagan's assistant treasurer, Paul Craig Roberts, has an article titled "In America, Speaking the Truth Is a Career-ending Event" in which he suggests Obama can't investigate Bush for war crimes because he himself is now also a war criminal.

The Bush regime was a lawless regime. This makes it difficult for the Obama regime to be a lawful one. A torture inquiry would lead naturally into a war crimes inquiry. General Taguba said that the Bush regime committed war crimes. President Obama was a war criminal by his third day in office when he ordered illegal cross-border drone attacks on Pakistan that murdered 20 people, including 3 children. The bombing and strafing of homes and villages in Afghanistan by US forces and America’s NATO puppets are also war crimes. Obama cannot enforce the law, because he himself has already violated it.

[...]

Obama would have to take risks that opportunistic politicians never take in order for the US to become a nation of law instead of a nation in which the agendas of special interests override the law.

Truth cannot be spoken in America.

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Truth is never spoken by government. As Jonathan Turley said recently, Washington "is where principles go to die."

  Paul Craig Roberts