White House Briefing April 1, 2002

Ari & I

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Published on Monday April 1, 2002

	7/14/03: Ari, in the 2002 election campaign, the Republican Party took in $7.2 million from convicted criminals. Is the President okay with his party taking millions of dollars from convicted criminals?...
	6/10/03: Ari, is the President concerned about a culture of cheating, lying and criminality taking hold in the country? And if he is, what does he plan to do about it?...
	6/9/03: Ari, you said in April that the war was about weapons of mass destruction. The war resulted in thousands of innocent civilian deaths, according to the Los Angeles Times. Do you personally feel any remorse given the public case that is being made that this war was based on that false pretext?...
	5/27/03: Ari, there is a new documentary film by an Irish journalist, Jamie Doran. He alleges U.S. military involvement in a massacre of 3,000 Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan...
	5/19/03: Ari, one of your predecessors, Jerald terHorst, resigned as President Ford's press secretary, he said, as a matter of conscience - because he couldn't defend President Ford's pardon of President Nixon. I was wondering, is there anything President Bush has done as President, that made you think, even for a moment, that you would resign as a matter of conscience?...
	5/14/03: Ari, you said on April 10th, about weapons of mass destruction, "That is what this war was about." On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that the group directing U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof...
	5/8/03: Ari, the President was in Santa Clara, California last week. And he appeared at United Defense, a major defense contractor controlled by the Carlyle Group. The President's father is a paid advisor to the Carlyle Group...
	4/22/03: Ari, MSNBC reported this week that Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal rivals that of France and Britain. Given that arsenal, does the President support Syria's call to make the Middle East a region free of weapons of mass destruction?...
	4/15/03: Ari, a 21-year-old British peace activist, Thomas Hurndall, was shot by an Israeli sharp shooter and killed on Friday. That brings to four the foreign peace makers who -- peace activists who have been shot or killed or wounded in the last couple weeks. I'm wondering if the President is concerned that the Israelis are targeting peace activists?...
	4/14/03: Ari, Lawrence Eagleburger, the Secretary of State under George Bush Sr, told the BBC yesterday: "If George Bush Jr. decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran - after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes"...
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Ari & I
White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer

Monday, April 1, 2002 12:00 PM

by Russell Mokhiber

Mokhiber: On this question of "terrorism is terrorism is terrorism." Lev Grinberg is a Professor at Ben Gurion University in Israel. He has written an article in Tikkun Magazine called "Israel's State Terrorism."

He asks the following question: "What is the difference between state terrorism and individual terrorists acts?" You argue that when a Palestinian straps a bomb around his waist and blows it up in a cafeteria, killing innocents -- that's terrorism. He wants to know -- what about the Israeli targeted killing of 100 Palestinians, or the 120 Palestinian paramedics who have been killed, or the 1,200 Palestinians who have been killed in the last couple of years?

Why doesn't the administration call that terrorism? And why do they insist that is self-defense?

Ari Fleischer: The administration is always concerned with and committed to finding ways to create a peaceful environment in the Middle East for the difficult issues there to be resolved. What threatens that is acts of terrorism that target innocent civilians where the whole purpose of the campaign is to find and kill innocents. And that makes it different in application. There are times when, in military operations, innocent lives are lost, and the President decries that. The President will always look for ways, continuing throughout the violence, to find ways to bring the parties together. And I'll leave it at that.

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-Thanks to Russell Mokhiber

White House reporter Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter - www.corporatecrimereporter.com. He co-authors the weekly Focus on the Corporation column with Robert Weissman which Common Dreams publishes. He can be reached at: russell@nationalpress.com