Paul Kiel February 26, 2007, 4:04 PM

As we noted earlier, this morning’s New York Times brought word that the administration (with Vice President Cheney as the messenger) was finally putting the screws to Pakistani Pervez Musharraf, using the Democratic Congress as leverage. If Musharraf didn’t start showing results against Al Qaeda, then the Dems might just go ahead and cut aid to Pakistan.

A “senior administration official” told the Times that now “the only thing that matters is results.”

But the administration is apparently unwilling to broadcast that tough message publicly, as was made apparent during Tony Snow’s press briefing today.

On his first question about the Times article, whether Musharraf was “keeping his commitments” of going after Al Qaeda, Snow cautioned that it’s “not something where [Musharraf] lays out goals and timetables.”

But when another journalist tried to nail Snow down, he went into a Q&A tailspin that seemed like it would never end, Snow repeatedly reformulating reporters’ questions into the questions that he would prefer to answer, and the reporter straightening the question out to its original form.

From the briefing transcript (not yet available online):

Q Does the President feel that President Musharraf has been aggressive enough in living up to the commitments that he made?

MR. SNOW: Again, I think — Jim, you act as if — a question like that seems to presume that everything is predictable; you do a certain amount of things, and you’ll get a predictable result. You’re dealing with an unpredictable enemy. President Musharraf certainly has been responding to a changing threat and to changing conditions, and we are going to support him on that. Do we —

Q But the question —

MR. SNOW: No, the question — I’m sorry, then I’ll let you go back at me. I think the appropriate question is, is he doing what he can, is he committed to winning? The answer is, yes.

Q The question is, is the President satisfied?

MR. SNOW: The President — as long as you have terrorists at large in the world, the President is not going to be satisfied. And I daresay President Musharraf is not satisfied.

Q The question is, Dick Cheney —

MR. SNOW: What you’re trying to do — I’m not going to answer a question —

Q I have a very simple question; there’s no trick question to this. The Vice President was in Pakistan, he was meeting with President Musharraf. There are media reports that he was saying, expressing the administration’s dissatisfaction with the way that President Musharraf has conducted incursions or overseen the border regions. Is that the message that the Vice President was delivering?

MR. SNOW: Again, I’m not going to try to convey precisely what the Vice President said. The President made it clear a couple of weeks ago, President Musharraf is committed to winning this, and we are committed to working with him in this war on terror. We’re not going to be — we’re often asked to give out report cards on other heads of state. I’m not going to play.

Q But you give out report cards on Mr. Maliki all the time.

MR. SNOW: Well, no, quite often you guys will ask us, are you satisfied with X, Y, and Z, and we talk about how we’re working with them.

Q Can you talk about the aid — part of the Vice President’s message, I know it was just referred to in David’s question, about the potential for aid being cut off by the U.S. to Pakistan?

MR. SNOW: No, because what you’re speculating about is congressional action. I’m not going to talk about that.