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Whopper of the Week: Karl RoveWhen Dubya said "Jump," Sharon said, "Eh? Come again?"

By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, May 9, 2002, at 6:02 PM ET

"Q: One more question on the Middle East. Now the president, it seemed to me, went into the Middle East reluctantly. It's a very tough job, without a doubt. But then you had a situation where Prime Minister Sharon initially ignored his request to move out. Did that cost the president?

A: Well, I don't agree with you. I think he began moving rather quickly. …"

—Exchange between interviewer Juan Williams and White House senior adviser Karl Rove on NPR's Morning Edition, May 7.

"[W]e agree that Israel should halt incursions in the Palestinian-controlled areas and begin to withdraw without delay from those cities it has recently occupied."

—President Bush, commenting on a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair in Crawford, Texas, April 6.

"During a visit to an Israeli command base in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, scene of the fiercest fighting of the 13-day-old campaign, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected demands from the United Nations, European governments and the Bush administration that he withdraw his forces from Palestinian cities and refugee camps without delay. …

"'We should continue to fight until the mission is completed,' Sharon said. 'We can't leave a single cell of terrorism, whether in Jenin, in Nablus or in Ramallah,' he added, referring to other West Bank cities. 'We are still in the middle of the battle. We have to complete it. Otherwise, we will have to enter again.' Sharon also referred directly to increasingly insistent demands from President Bush and Powell for a withdrawal: 'I hope our great friend the United States understands that this is a war of survival for us. ... It's our right to defend our citizens, and there should be no pressure put on us not to do that.'"

—Keith B. Richburg and Molly Moore, "Israel Rejects Demands To Withdraw Troops," Washington Post, April 10.

(Thanks to reader Daryl McCullough.)

Got a whopper? Send it to . To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:
May 3, 2002: Gen. Richard Myers
April 25, 2002: Donald Rumsfeld
April 18, 2002: George W. Bush
April 11, 2002: The Rev. Robert J. Banks, archdiocese of Boston
April 5, 2002: George W. Bush
Mar. 29, 2002: Major League Baseball
Mar. 21, 2002: Billy Graham
Mar. 14, 2002: INS commissioner James W. Ziglar
Mar. 8, 2002: Robert Zoellick and the U.S. steel industry
Feb. 28, 2002: Al Sharpton
Feb. 22, 2002: Olympic skating judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne
Feb. 14, 2002: Kenneth Lay
Feb. 8, 2002: Enron spokeswoman Peggy Mahoney
Jan. 31, 2002: Monsanto
Jan. 24, 2002: Linda Chavez
Jan. 17, 2002: George W. Bush
Jan. 10, 2002: Simon & Schuster
Jan. 4, 2002: The Associated Press

(Click here to access the Whopper Archive for 2001.)

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