During a wide-ranging presidential interview broadcast on the December 12 edition of NBC's Nightly News, anchor and managing editor Brian Williams asked almost no follow-up questions and rarely challenged President Bush's answers. Aside from Hurricane Katrina, Williams asked only one follow-up question of Bush -- on torture. On other topics, such as Iraq or the economy, Williams asked single questions and did not point out issues or inconsistencies in Bush's answers. On the topic of Katrina, a subject that moved Williams enough at the time that he wrote weblog entries describing his frustration with the government's lack of a response, he asked some follow-up questions, but failed to challenge any of Bush's problematic responses.

Here are the substantive questions and answers between Bush and Williams, with the rare Williams follow-up question. Media Matters for America has included suggestions for some follow-up questions that would seem to flow logically from Bush's answers.

WILLIAMS: A lot of people have seen, in this series of speeches you're giving on Iraq, a movement in your position. They call it an acknowledgment that perhaps the mission has not gone as it was originally planned, that the U.S. would be welcomed as liberators.

BUSH: I think we are welcomed, but it was not a peaceful welcome. There were some in society -- rejectionists and Saddamists and the terrorists that have moved in to stir them up -- that said, `We're going to prevent a democracy from emerging.' But I think a lot of people are glad -- I know a lot of people are glad we're there -- and they're glad we're helping them train their troops so they can take the fight.

Williams's follow-up: none

Possible follow-up: Williams could have asked about a December 12 ABC News/BBC/NHK (Japan)/Der Spiegel/Oxford Research poll, which, by contrast with Bush's assertion that “a lot of people are glad we're there,” found that two-thirds of Iraqis oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq:

There's other evidence of the United States' increasing unpopularity: Two-thirds now oppose the presence of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, 14 points higher than in February 2004. Nearly six in 10 disapprove of how the United States has operated in Iraq since the war, and most of them disapprove strongly. And nearly half of Iraqis would like to see U.S. forces leave soon.

WILLIAMS: Was the force in Iraq, looking back, too small for the job?

BUSH: I remember the debate at the time. I remember [Sen.] John McCain [R-AZ], for example, saying, “You needed more troops.” And -- but I -- I relied upon the judgment of General Tommy Franks. I felt then, and I feel now, that we had the troop levels that we needed. History will make that determination.

Williams's follow-up: none.

Possible follow-up: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has similarly asserted that he merely approved Gen. Franks' judgment. However, as Media Matters has documented, substantial evidence suggests that in developing the Iraq war plan, Rumsfeld rejected the advice of top military commanders, including Franks, who warned that more troops would be necessary to secure postwar Iraq. An October 17, 2004, Knight Ridder article reported that Rumsfeld's claim -- that he simply approved what battlefield commanders requested -- ignores his own role in keeping down the number of troops those commanders requested:

Bush, Rumsfeld and other top officials insist that their military commanders were given everything they requested, and Franks wrote in his book, “American Soldier,” that Rumsfeld supported his war plan. Technically, that's accurate. However, three top officials who served with Franks at the time said the plan was the product of a lengthy and sometimes heated negotiation between the Central Command and the Pentagon, in which Rumsfeld constantly pressed Franks and other senior officers to commit fewer troops to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

WILLIAMS: And how about the oil revenues?

BUSH: You mean on the Iraqi side?

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BUSH: Yes, they're not as great as we thought they'd be. Yet, they're substantial.

Williams's follow-up: none.

Possible follow-up: “What we thought they'd be”: Prior to and shortly after the invasion of Iraq, administration officials stated that projected oil revenues would enable Iraq to pay for its own reconstruction:

• Then-deputy defense secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz (House Appropriations Committee hearing, 3/27/03): “There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. ... On a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 billion and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years.”
• Then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (White House press briefing, 2/18/03): “Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. ... Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people . ... Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.”
• Rumsfeld (Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, 3/27/03): “When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community.”
• “Substantial”: according to the latest State Department December 7 weekly status report, (page 22) total oil revenues for Iraq since the invasion currently stand at $44.11 billion. By the end of September 2005, the United States had spent $186 billion on the war in Iraq.

WILLIAMS: Can we talk about torture for a moment? The United States right now is locked in talks, and they're going on in Washington. Why can't the United States be definitively against torture, the current definition they're talking about?

BUSH: Yeah, we will be. We are and we will be, at home and abroad. The American people expect us to do that which we can do within international law and our own declaration of supporting the premises of international law -- is what I really meant to say -- to protect -- protect us. I mean, if they know something, we need to know it. And we think we can find it without torturing people.

Williams's follow-up:

WILLIAMS: Can you meet [Sen.] John McCain [R-AZ] at his definition?

BUSH: Yes, I'm confident we can. On the other hand, we want to make sure that we're in a position to be able to interrogate without torture. These are people that still want to hurt us, Brian.

Possible follow-up: Williams might have further explained the difference between Bush's definition of torture and McCain's, namely that McCain has proposed banning “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” in addition to torture, which has a narrow legal definition. Bush's assertion that "[w]e are and we will be" definitively against torture “at home and abroad” means that the United States does not violate that very narrow legal definition. Williams failed to contrast this definition with a recent NBC News report [anchor at “NBC Nightly News”] on the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) suspected use of waterboarding, an interrogation method in which, according to a New York Times article, an individual is strapped to a board and made to believe he is drowning. By contrast, as ABC News reported [anchor at “Chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross”] on November 29, McCain has described waterboarding as “very exquisite torture” and said it should not be allowed.

WILLIAMS: Let's talk about the economy, a subject I know you're anxious to talk about.

BUSH: Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Are you frustrated that more of the good economic news isn't front and center these days?

BUSH: I think it's -- a little bit, but I also think it's important to understand why people don't see or don't feel the improved economy. We do have a strong economy. It's -- third-quarter growth was great. We've added 4.5 million new jobs since April of 2003. Homeownership is at an all-time high. Small businesses are flourishing. I mean, this economy is good, and it's strong.

Williams's follow-up: none.

Possible follow-up: In asking this question and then not following up, Williams ignored the possibility, supported by economic statistics other than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, that a reason a majority of Americans have a negative view of the economy is that average Americans' economic well-being may not be as sound as the president's selected statistics indicate. For example, mean household income in 2004 dollars decreased from $62,671 in 2000 to $60,528 in 2004. Similarly, median household income in 2004 dollars also decreased each year over that period, from $46,058 in 2000 to $44,389 in 2004. Another potential indicator from the 2004 U.S. Census Bureau's data that the average American isn't “better off” today than four years ago is the percentage of Americans living without health insurance. That figure increased from 14.2 percent in 2000 to 15.7 percent in 2004.

WILLIAMS: Were you watching the [Hurricane Katrina news] coverage? Were you seeing the same pictures that Americans were seeing?

BUSH: I was -- I was. I guess my reaction was “Where is the communications?” I mean, we had news people able to really be the fact -- witness on the ground when, in fact, it should have been government officials at all levels gathering the information, sending it back to headquarters so there could be an appropriate response.

Williams's follow-up:

WILLIAMS: After the tragedy, I heard someone ask rhetorically, “What if this had been Nantucket, Massachusetts, or Inner Harbor, Baltimore, or Chicago, or Houston?” Are you convinced the response would have been the same? Was there any social or class or race aspect to the response?

BUSH: I -- somebody -- I heard, you know, a couple of people say -- you now, said, “Bush didn't respond because of race” -- or “He is a racist” or alleged that. That is absolutely wrong, and I reject that. Frankly, that's the kind of thing that -- you can call me anything you want -- but do not call me a racist. Secondly, this storm hit all up and down. It hit New Orleans, but it hit down in Mississippi, too, and people should not forget the damage done in Mississippi.

WILLIAMS: Biloxi was hit terribly hard.

BUSH: Absolutely.

WILLIAMS: Waveland.

BUSH: And Pascagoula and Waveland. You know it. You saw it firsthand what it's like. And we had people from all walks of life affected by that storm. I remember saying that -- when I thanked those chopper drivers from the Coast Guard who performed brilliantly, they didn't lower those booms to pick up people saying, “What” -- you know, “What color skin do you have?” They said, “A fellow American is in jeopardy, and I'm going to do my best to -- to rescue that person.”

Possible follow-ups:

• Why, given that he saw what was happening on television, did Bush tell former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael Brown that he was doing a “heck of a job?”
• Williams might also have challenged Bush on his September 1 false claim “I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” As Media Matters has documented, Bush later tried to justify his false claim using news reports from the morning after the storm indicating that New Orleans had “dodged a bullet.” But Williams' own August 30 reporting on NBC's Today contradicted this explanation. At 7:05 a.m. EST, Williams reported that "[t]here has been a huge development overnight ... the historic French Quarter, dry last night and it is now filling with water. This is water from nearby Lake Pontchartrain; the levees failed overnight." Print reports make it clear that Bush's justification had little merit: at least 12 hours before Bush claimed to have heard the “dodged a bullet” news reports, The Times-Picayune in New Orleans reported that the levees had been breached, and on August 30, the Los Angeles Times reported that a levee break had occurred by late morning August 29, with water from the break “spill[ing] through the area, flooding the town's two main shelters and swamping the local National Guard armory, leaving even public safety officials homeless.”

WILLIAMS: It's been two months since your last visit to the [Gulf Coast] region. Was there any notion of -- of making it a domestic Marshall Plan of your administration, of saying, “Let's get together and rebuild this area?”

BUSH: Well, we're doing that. We've got $62 billion on the table. And, Brian, as you know, the devastation is so big it's going to take awhile to rebuild. I think it's very important for people to not focus on politics, but focus on how we work together to achieve what we all want, which is a Louisiana and a -- that's vibrant -- a New Orleans that's a shining -- shining light down there, and a Gulf Coast of Mississippi that's been rebuilt and is vibrant and thriving.

Williams' follow-up: none

Possible follow-ups: Williams might have asked about widespread criticism of FEMA and the administration's efforts to provide housing assistance to Katrina victims; or why FEMA had decided to stop paying for hotel rooms provided to Katrina evacuees while they wait for housing. A federal judge has since ordered FEMA to continue paying for evacuees' hotel rooms through February 7, 2006.

Williams asked no questions about senior White House advisor Karl Rove or the CIA leak investigation, even though, so far, it has resulted in the first indictment of a sitting White House staffer in over 100 years. Further, Williams could have pressed Bush on the contradictory statements he has made about the standard for firing Rove.