Today's Snow Job

Here's the transcript of today's Press Briefing by Tony Snow. Here are some of my favorite bits:

Q Can you give me the administration's reason why 72 hours and 60 days isn't enough, and you don't want to get a warrant to wiretap?
MR. SNOW: I'm not sure if I understand exactly --
Q You oppose getting any warrant for a wiretap.
MR. SNOW: No, we've been working -- what we're trying to do is we are working with Congress to find ways to reform FISA so that you're able not only to have a court proceeding that allows you to gain court warrants when necessary, to do so in a quick and timely basis.
Q But why -- you think a warrant is not necessary?
MR. SNOW: No, I'm just -- look, call me later. I'll talk to the lawyers, I'm getting over my head.



Q Let me ask you about this debate the President said is so important with regard to interrogation techniques, because he wants now for Congress to clarify what's permissible. The President said he did not authorize torture.
MR. SNOW: That is correct.
Q What did he authorize?
MR. SNOW: Can't tell you.
Q Why can't you say that, given that the President wants a national debate about what's permissible?
MR. SNOW: Because there are also classifications. I think if you listen to what the President said last week, you have a conversation that's permissible -- you have a conversation about what's permissible and a lot of that is classified, and for a very good reason. You do not want to tell the enemy what you do in terms of interrogation because they will adjust and you won't get information. Indeed, some of the al Qaeda training manuals went in great detail about ways to resist known interrogation methods that have been used in the past. So, yes, it's important to consult with Congress; no, it's not advisable to advertise it to the entire world.
Q One technique that's been widely reported on and widely debated is water-boarding. Does the President consider water-boarding to be torture?
MR. SNOW: Again, I'm not going to go beyond what the President has said, which is that we do not have torture, there have been orders not to torture, and that everything that has been done -- and I'm not going to say yes or no to water-boarding -- everything that has been done has been deemed by the Department of Justice, which has been the arbiter of such things, as consistent with U.S. law, international law, and our treaty obligations. In the wake of the Hamdan decision, we're going to make sure that that continues to be the case with each and every method used.


By the way, it's judges that decide the laws, not the dept of justice. -Howard


Q Just one more. Back to something from yesterday, you said that the President never said there was an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi. Are you saying he didn't suggest there was a relationship --
MR. SNOW: He said there was a relationship --
Q What does that mean?
MR. SNOW: What it means is -- again, had you been in Iraq before the war? You may have. And I had, too. And you understand --
Q Before the war? No, no --
MR. SNOW: Okay, well, let me tell you about the old days, when you went in before the war, strangers didn't just sort of wander into Baghdad when Saddam was there. They knew who was there. And Zarqawi was in Baghdad. And he, in fact -- as we've said, they organized the murder of a U.S. diplomat in Amman, Jordan. We also know that there were other members of al Qaeda operating within Iraq. But what we've taken pains to say is -- being a little colloquial about it -- but they didn't have a corner office, the Mukhabarat. They were not line-items in the Iraqi budget. They were people who were there, but they were also not officially part of the Iraqi government and there was no official or functional coordination, at least as far as we can tell. And this was what the CIA has told us, that there was no operational relationship -- no direct, demonstrable operational tie between the two --
Q They said there was no relationship.
MR. SNOW: They weren't -- a relationship means that they were there. We knew they were there.
Q So all of your comments about the relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi -- we just knew they were there. Did we know what they were up to? I mean, how far does that go?
MR. SNOW: I don't know. We'll have to look at the documents --
Q No, but that's important, Tony.
MR. SNOW: How so?
Q You don't know -- I mean, there was a lot of rhetoric coming out of the White House in the build-up to the war, and since, that there was this relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi, and thus linking them to al Qaeda.
MR. SNOW: No, the argument has been that Saddam Hussein was a supporter and sponsor of terror. And we talked more often about, for instance, the fact that people who went in and committed suicide bombings against Israelis were getting paid bounties, and that Saddam was working as best he could to try to support and foment terror.
Q -- no relationship with al Qaeda, no relationship with Zarqawi.
MR. SNOW: That's right, no operational relationship, as far as we can tell. But they were there. And Zarqawi was committing acts of terror while he was in Baghdad, but we don't -- look, if we had the goods, we'd share them, but we don't have the goods to demonstrate --
Q But Saddam Hussein didn't know about that?
MR. SNOW: I don't know. I don't know if he knew about it. What we have been unable to demonstrate or discover is whether they're sitting around in the map room, spreading out the map, saying, okay, you bomb there. We just don't have that kind of granularity in terms of the relationship, and therefore, we're not going to go -- we're going to -- not going to out-run the facts.