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Press Briefing 03/17/06
— Sunday, March 19, 2006 — Q Scott, The New York Times this morning devoted half a page to news from New Mexico that after police Sergeant Billy Anders killed a white supremacist Aryan brotherhood ex-convict named Earl Flippen, who had just murdered his wife, but also murdered Anders' police partner, Deputy Robert Hedman, and was shooting at a three-year-old girl with his .357 Magnum. But Sergeant Anders has just been sent to prison for one year for shooting Flippen, who was handcuffed. And my question, will you join me in asking the President for executive clemency of this police officer? MR. McCLELLAN: Les, I'm just not familiar with that particular issue. I'll be glad to take a look into it, but there's probably -- it's probably not appropriate for us to be addressing it further. Q Well, all right. In the last two months, two former Iraqi officials have said Saddam moved weapons of mass destruction to Syria before the U.S. invasion. And now one of the documents released by the Pentagon yesterday, a letter by a member of Saddam's intelligence apparatus, ties him to al Qaeda and the Taliban before 9/11. All of this, and yet, the President does not talk about any of it with the American people. Question: With increasing information coming out of here on Iraq -- WMDs and Saddam's link to al Qaeda -- what does the Bush administration want the American people to believe about these two crucial issues? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, Les, first of all, the Director of National Intelligence has started putting out volumes of information and documents that were discovered in Iraq. And I think that that provides the public an opportunity to go and look, and they can make judgments for themselves in terms of some of the issues that you raise. But the one thing the President has talked about, as we approach the three-year anniversary of Operation -- the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom is that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power was the right thing to do. This was a regime that was a destabilizing force in a troubled region of the world. This was a regime that had invaded its neighbors, that had a history of using weapons of mass destruction, that had a long history of defying the international community and failing to come into compliance with the demands of the international community. And one thing that tyrants around the world know is that we mean what we say, and when we say there are going to be consequences for such behavior, it's important that we follow through on that. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution giving Saddam Hussein one last chance to come into compliance; he continued to defy the international community. He made the choice, and the world is better off with him removed from power. Q Just one more because -- MR. McCLELLAN: No, because you're making statements -- Q Just one more, just one more. MR. McCLELLAN: No more statements today. White House Press Corps | Press Briefing | Scott McClellan
Posted by WhiteHousePressCorps.org @ 2:12 AM
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