1115.org

(1)
Tony Snow’s performance at yesterday’s White House press briefing was, even by his own standards, utterly unbelievable. I really can’t imagine he enjoys coming to work very much these days.

The first question he got about Walter Reed was:

The administration’s mantra for a long time has been “support the troops.” What is the reaction, then, when you read this series of stories in The Washington Post about troops coming home from Iraq, Afghanistan and being treated so poorly, apparently, based on this long investigation? What’s the President’s reaction?

Tony bristled: “First, it’s not a mantra. I would really choose words carefully.” And then he responded: “… the President, as you know, has visited the wounded many times at Walter Reed and we are concerned about it”. It took only about a minute of this compassionate conservatism for reporters to start asking: “where’s the outrage?”

That’s how it started. And it only got worse.

He tied himself into indescribable knots explaining how long the White House has been aware of the problem. For obvious reasons, he didn’t want to say they learnt of it only from WaPo, and he didn’t want to say they had known about it earlier. So he just kept saying both things. Alternately.

He certified that the President was outraged when he learnt about it. So outraged that he didn’t order any action to be taken.

Maybe the most astounding single question and answer was:

Q The White House doesn’t want to be on record with a more emphatic expression of amazement and upset about this?

MR. SNOW: No. David asked where the outrage — of course there’s outrage that men and women who have been fighting have not received the outpatient care — if you read the stories, there are many who are happy with it, some who are unhappy, and it’s important that we show our commitment to the people who have served. I don’t know what more you want me to do.

(Don’t look now, Tony but he already told you to begin with. That wasn’t a question, it was a damage control suggestion.)

There was also this:

Q Do you think the President is going to say something about this later?

MR. SNOW: No.

That was it. His complete answer. One can only presume that the President is too outraged even to speak about it. Maybe Tony too, actually.

Read the whole damn thing. No excerpts can really do justice to this example of Tony Snow at the height of his folly.

By the end, he actually had reporters telling him how he’s supposed to do his job:

Q It’s not just — you’re describing kind of a cold, detached bureaucratic process. We all know how this works. Something like this, this kind of story gets people’s attention. You are now –

MR. SNOW: Well –

Q Wait a minute. You’re now in the PR business, you know if something like this happens it’s at odds with the commitments you make; the Commander-in-Chief might well stand up at a meeting and say, darn it, let’s get to the bottom of this now and let’s get answers. And this happened over the weekend, and you’re saying you think the White House knew, but you’re not sure; you’re not sure when the President knew or if he said something to somebody. It just seems like you should have those answers.

(2)
By the way, the White House did clarify after the briefing when the President first learnt about the problems at Walter Reed:

The President first learned of the troubling allegations regarding Walter Reed from the stories this weekend in the Washington Post. He is deeply concerned and wants any problems identified and fixed.

Not outraged, mind you. But deeply concerned is still good. Now if only someone would identify the problems for him. If any. And then hopefully someone else can come along and volunteer to fix them. Or, at least think long and hard about fixing them.

Funny that the President learnt of it only this weekend:

But exactly two years to the day before their first story appeared in the Post, Salon’s Mark Benjamin wrote a searing exposé of the way the hospital treated wounded vets, especially those with psychological injuries. For months Benjamin tracked 14 soldiers suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder at Walter Reed and a pattern of inadequate treatment, even neglect, that may have resulted in several suicides and suicide attempts. His reporting on one sad angle to the story — that veterans treated as outpatients were being billed for their meals at the hospital — resulted in the Army’s reversing that policy.

In a follow-up article published in January 2006, Benjamin exposed a shocking pattern of how the hospital has failed to identify and treat traumatic brain injuries, leaving patients to linger with untold suffering.

That’s the funny thing about being President. Nobody ever tells you anything.

(3)
One aspect of what English majors call dramatic irony is when the audience is aware of facts that the characters are not, and knowing the facts imbues the characters’ lines with unintended humor.

With that helpful editorial aside, and knowing what we know from part 2, read on:

MR. SNOW: Again, I’m not aware that anybody has — look, when you have a problem like this, the imperative is to fix it. I’m not sure that you have to issue orders; there are people there who know if they’ve got a problem they need to fix it. So I don’t think that — I will try to find out for you, but I’m not aware that the President has cut any special orders. But I will try to get for you additional information.

Q I think what we’re –

MR. SNOW: I know what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to get a tick-tock on what did he learn and how did he respond and who did he call.

Q Yes, we’re trying to determine if someone here built a fire under someone over there to do something.

MR. SNOW: You know, that’s assuming that people there are callous about the fate of the people who are serving.

Q It isn’t –

MR. SNOW: No, I think it is. When you say “light a fire,” it’s as if, you know, you find out that there’s a problem and you don’t move quickly to try to correct it.