Perino: "No Terrorism on Bush's Watch"

Via Media Matters, here's former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino claiming on Sean Hannity's Fox News show yesterday that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."

Sean Hannity: I still wonder, does [President Obama] really understand national security and that we really do have a war on terror, which they have been hesitant to use? Even the term.

Dana Perino: Well, I, I— There is one thing that I would say about Fort Hood that I feel very strongly about, which is—and I don't say this to be political—I think it matters a lot what we call it. And we had a terrorist attack on our country, and we should call it what it is, because we need to face up to it, so that we can prevent it from happening again.

Hannity: I agree with you. And you know why won't they say what you just so simply said?

Perino: It's prob— They wanna do all of their investigations; I don't know all of their thinking that goes into it, but— You know, we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term. I hope they're not looking at this politically; I do think that we owe it to the American people to call it what it is.

Hannity: If you, if you say "Allahu Akbar" before the, before the shooting, and you reached out to Al-Qaeda twenty times, it's a pretty good indication you're a terrorist, terrorist sympathizer.

Stuart Varney: What is it—you're not a terrorist unless you've got an Al-Qaeda button right on there?! [Hannity laughs] I mean, good heavens, what's going on?

Even giving Perino's statement the most charitable interpretation—that we didn't have another terrorist attack after 9/11 (which was the standard Bush administration line)—it's still bullshit.

And in case the Obama administration hasn't delivered enough fail yet this month to make your head spin off its axis: "Dana M. Perino, Mr. Bush's fourth and final press secretary, was nominated Thursday by President Obama to serve on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent agency responsible for overseeing the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other non-military broadcasts sponsored by the federal government." [Via Andy.]

The board is required to be nonpartisan ("by law, it must consist of no more than four members of the same political party"), but I cannot imagine there was not a single Republican more suited for a media oversight position than the last person in charge of packaging Bush administration lies for the media.

Hell, even the McClellatron and his time-release conscience would have been better.