No Mistake: There's No Plan At All

Today's press gaggle bears out the amount of dancing and lack of planning for Bush's June 30th plan. It's so screwed up, Scott McClellan doesn't even understand it.

Q Scott, I don't understand the letter that Bush is -- or somebody is sending to the U.N. What's it going to spell out?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, it's --

Q Why do you need this letter?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's part of -- it will spell out more about the relationship between the multinational force and the interim Iraqi government that will be in place. Like I said, we have a lot of experience in working in close cooperation with others on things of this nature -- on security situations. Like I pointed out, we do this on a daily basis in Afghanistan. We work in close cooperation with the government in Afghanistan.

Q Who's going to write it? Who puts it together, the coalition, or the U.S.? Who writes it?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that that's going to be worked on. You have to first get the interim government in place, I think, before you can work out some of those -- some of those relationships. But we're going to -- we'll work in close partnership with the interim government.

Q This letter won't go anywhere until after June 30th, then?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that -- like I said, the interim -- no, no, I wouldn't put that time frame on it. The interim government, we expect, will be announced soon by Mr. Brahimi. And then those issues will be discussed more -- then those issues will be discussed more with the interim government at that point. And that relationship will be worked out in further detail.

Q Isn't it meant to be sort of an exchange of letters that follows the U.N. Security Council --

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sure that -- look, all that's going to be worked out with the interim government. We've got to -- the interim government needs to be put in place first. So let's let --

Q So you don't know when the letter will be written or when it will submitted?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- let's let that happen first. Well, the first step is to get the interim government in place, get those people named and Mr. Brahimi is working on that. And as we pointed out yesterday when we put forward the draft resolution, we would come back -- we would work on passing that resolution once that interim government is named.