clap clap blog: we have moved


Tuesday, July 15, 2003
"To my good friend the neo-con rapper, isn't this something you could rap?"

Questioner: But in his statement he says that not once, but, in his words, several times, the White House was alerted to concerns about the quality of the intelligence. He meets with the President every day, he's meeting with him now. Did that subject never come up in any of these meetings?

Fleischer: The fact that it's fragmentary is what means that it should not have been -- risen to the Presidential level. There's all kinds of information that is available that may -- may not be true. And I've always talked about intelligence being mosaic. Some parts of the mosaic are very clear. Those parts that are the most clear are absolutely concrete is what should rise up to the Presidential level. There's many other pieces of intelligence in the mosaic that certainly may be true, they may be fragmentary, but they should not necessarily rise to the President's level. We're the ones who acknowledge that.


It would be cruel to say that questioning Ari Fleischer is like trying to figure out what a retarded seven-year-old wants for lunch, so I won't say that.