To be or not to be ... wait what was the question?

The following is a transcript of an interview with Barack Obama: AP: Sir, with regard to terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan ... OBAMA: Yeah. AP: Is there any circumstances where you'd be prepared or willing to use nuclear weapons to defeat terrorism and Osama bin Laden? OBAMA: No, I'm not, uh, there has been no discussion of using nuclear weapons and that's not a hypothetical that I'm going to discuss. AP: Not even tactical? OBAMA: No. I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance. Uh, if involving you know, civilians... Let me scratch all that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table so... Political debate aside, I thought it was a little disturbing that the AP would even try to fish out an answer with "Not even tactical?" What does that question even mean? What kind of follow-up question is that? To me the interview sounds like one of two things: Ill-prepared, which prompted such a heavy yet off-hand follow-up question, or an interview with an agenda. Me personally, I'd like to hope the question was ill prepared, not ill-spirited. How much preparation do you guys put into certain interviews? There are different levels of preparation for me. Obviously for bigger stories or bigger subjects, I try to have at LEAST five questions ready. For most crime incident stories however, my questions are largely based on the situation at hand.