Helen Thomas, the Grand Dame of Washington reporters, gave President Obama his only really difficult questions today. Reproduced from memory they were: a) Is Pakistan harboring terrorists? and b) Is there any country at all in the Middle East that currently has atomic weapons? He skipped around the essence in his answer, and then cut her off when she tried to insist.
What were the traps? In the first question the trap is clear: she wanted him to accuse Pakistan explicitly of giving safety and comfort to the Taliban. He didn’t.
But the second question was much trickier. He couldn’t say he didn’t know about Israel's atomic-weapons program; that would have been a too obvious side-step and a clear lie. He couldn’t admit that Israel has them because somehow it is forbidden to say this. In fact, a brave Israeli, Mordechai Vanunu, is in jail for revealing Israel’s nuclear program. This, of course, weakens everyone’s argument for not allowing Iran to have one, too –although, as Obama did say, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East would be disastrous for everyone.
In the entire post-conference rehash on TV (mostly CNN), nobody brought up Ms. Thomas’ question. She clearly remains head and shoulders above all the rest of those reporters.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario