"No Silver Bullets:" Scotty Pulls Out All the Cliches For His Last Whitehouse Press Briefing

Here's that same question that popped up a while back that recieves the same cliched rejoinder from Scotty:

Q Scott, I asked this a couple of days ago, and you said you hadn't looked at it this way. Congress has agreed to spend billions of dollars more to help the Iraqis get back on their feet. Why is there no agreement in place where Iraqis could be sending millions of barrels of oil for free to pay for this and ease our consumption and dependency on foreign oil?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, there are short-term steps that we can take to address high gas prices. We are taking those steps. The President is moving forward on making sure that there's no price-gouging. We are delaying some of the deposits to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We are also looking at ways that we can provide waivers for some of the fuel standards that are in place. And so there are a number of short-term measures that we can take.

But there's no silver bullet solution. What we are trying to do is break our dependence on foreign oil, not increase it. Now, in terms of Iraq specifically, the oil production is getting back up, and that's important. And we'll continue to support the Iraqi leadership as they move forward on reconstructing their country, and that will help in that area, as well, and to providing security -- and providing security to those areas.

We know that the terrorists want to target critical infrastructure and target oil and gas pipelines in the country. They've done that before. But we'll continue to work to make sure that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces are able to provide for their own defense going forward, and I think you'll see the oil continue to come back up as we move forward on our plan for victory there.