There are 32 days to go until the national referendum
on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and COMPETENCE of the
_resident and the VICE _resident...Sen. John F. Kerry
(D-Mekong Delta) won such a DECISIVE victory in last
night's debate that even the shameless pollsters could
not skew it and the propapunditgandists and besotted
anchors of the network and cable news organizations
were at a lost. Conside this morning's headline on the
SeeNotNews (CNN) home page: "Debating the first debate
Pundits, pollsters and political operatives worked
furiously to answer one question after the first
debate between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry --
who won? Advisers to both campaigns say their
opponents missed an important opportunity." Can you
imagine what the "US regimestream news media"
headlines would read like this morning if Bush had
scored 53% to 37% for JFK in the Gallop/CNN/USA Today
poll, 45% to 36% for JFK in the ABC poll and 43% to
28% for JFK and 29% "Undecided" in the CBS. BUT it was
the other way around: JFK had scored 53% to 37% for
Bush in the Gallop/CNN/USA Today poll, 45% to 36% for
Bush in the ABC poll and 43% to 28% for Bush and 29%
"Undecided" in the CBS...JFK trounced Bush well beyond
the margin of error in all three polls...So you get
leads like "Debating the first debate Pundits,
pollsters and political operatives worked furiously to
answer one question after the first debate between
President Bush and Sen. John Kerry -- who won?
Advisers to both campaigns say their opponents missed
an important opportunity." Why did SeeNotNews use the
split screen in defiance of the debate rules? Has the
deep fix in the Corporatist media began to fracture in
subtle ways? Are they *finally* starting to back away
and distance themselves from this failed regime? Don't
hold your breath. It is simply that the Electoral
Uprisiing is moving beyond the decimal point at or
before which the US regimestream's shameless pollsters
can cook the numbers, just as it can and must move
beyond the decimal point at or before which the black
ops brown shirts can scuttle the collective will of
the voters of all the Duval Counties in America. Just
savor the DECISIVE victory and MOVE ON...Remember
Michael Moore, George Soros, Bruce Springsteen and the
Dixie Chicks, and numerous Nobel Laureate scientists
are criss-crossing the Bardoground States reaching out
to very different demographic groups, raising hell and
working tirelessly to save the Republic and with it
the world...FRODO LIVES!
James Ridgeway, Village Voice: Contrary to all the
press predictions, John Kerry easily overcame George
Bush in Thursday night's debate, taking the attack
from the very beginning and never once losing control.
It was a knockout—with Bush going down almost
immediately and never getting back on his feet. The
president appeared confused, left to mumble aloud on
the subject of Iraq, "It's incredibly hard work."
In debating terms, Kerry controlled the floor from
start to finish with one rapid fire attack after
another. Bush never was able to break through. His
famous frat-boy disdain was reduced to goofiness.
Kerry made him look by turns ignorant, deceitful,
churlish, and just plain out of it.
Buzzflash Editorial, www.buzzflash.com: You knew Kerry
got the better of Bush in the first debate when that
right wing Brooks’ columnist from the New York Times
declared the match-up a tie on a PBS post-debate show.
If that smarmy George Will wannabe says it came out
even, you know Bush took a shellacking.
>From a BuzzFlash perspective, Kerry was crisp, to the
point, persuasive about Iraq, and commanding in his
knowledge without being smug. He nailed Bush on the
kind of specifics that get people thinking about
whether Bush is really such a bad-ass in fighting
terrorism. Specifically, Kerry brought up two issues
more than once: Bush made errors in judgment that led
to the creation of nuclear weapons by North Korea and
Bush allowed Osama bin Laden to escape during the Tora
Bora mission. And like a junkyard dog, Kerry grabbed
onto the fact that Bush is doing little to stop
nuclear proliferation that might result in terrorists
getting their hands on nuclear weapons.
Kerry was never thrown off his mark, while Bush fell
back into his smirk at times as Kerry nailed him again
and again.
William Rivers Pitt, www.truthout.org: This was
supposed to be the debate that played to the strengths
of Bush and his administration. Foreign policy in
general and the protection of the United States from
terrorism in particular, according to all the polls
and every talking head within earshot, are the areas
where George supposedly commands the high ground. That
illusion came crashing down on the stage in Coral
Gables.
How else can one describe the demeanor and
behavior of Bush, as seen by 40,000,000 television
viewers and heard by millions more radio listeners?
Shrill. Defensive. Muddled. Angry, very angry.
Repetitive. Uninformed. Outmatched. Unprepared.
Hesitant. Twenty four minutes into the debate, Bush
lost his temper, and spent the remaining hour and six
minutes looking for all the world as though he were
sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.
This is what happens when you surround yourself
with yes-men. John Kerry put the bricks to Bush and
the last four years of his administration clearly,
concisely, eloquently and with devastating effect.
Bush reacted like a man who has never, ever had anyone
tell him anything other than "Good job, sir."
That is what happens when you have to defend your
record as President, something that no one in the
media or elsewhere had managed to force Bush to do in
the last 1,000 days. In the October 2000 debate, Bush
managed to hold his own simply by making promises and
telegraphing an aw-shucks charm. On Thursday night,
Bush faced a reckoning at the hands of a man who cut
his teeth prosecuting and imprisoning mob bosses.
This was not a Bush meltdown. It was an exposure.
George W. Bush was required to speak for 90 minutes
without having the questions beforehand, facing an
opponent far less pliable than the national press
corps. The man he has always been, stripped of the
hero-worship veneer, was there for all to see.
David Brock, www.mediamatters.org: In September 30
post-debate coverage on NBC, ABC, and MSNBC, the "fact
check" segment of all three programs appeared to
equate Senator John Kerry's tally of the cost of the
Iraq war -- which some critics charge is inflated
because it includes spent and projected funds -- to
President George W. Bush's false statement concerning
the number of Iraqis that have been effectively
trained to serve in the war. Meanwhile, CNN
inaccurately accused Kerry of misstatements.
During the debate, Kerry placed the cost of the Iraq
war at $200 billion; in fact, only $120 billion has
been spent, while the remaining $80 billion has been
projected (a small portion of which is designated for
Afghanistan). Bush, on the other hand, presented a
specific and flagrant distortion, stating that "We got
100,000 [Iraqi citizens] trained now, 125,000 by the
end of the year, over 200,000 by the end of next
year."
NBC, MSNBC, and ABC all mentioned Kerry's statement
and noted that $200 billion has not been spent on the
war in Iraq. All three networks reported that,
according to the Office of Management and Budget, only
$120 billion has been spent thus far on the Iraq war;
none noted that at least an additional $80 billion is
expected to be spent.
On CNN, political analyst Bill Schneider's
fact-checking of Bush consisted of one major
criticism: that by stating "the enemy attacked us" as
the defense for his decision to launch a preemptive
war in Iraq, the president "was implying in that
statement that the United States was attacked by
Saddam Hussein or Saddam Hussein was in league with or
behind the 9-11 attacks." Schneider noted that "the
9-11 Commission found no evidence that Saddam Hussein
was in league with Osama bin Laden or had any role in
the 9-11 attacks" and also pointed out that "Kerry
caught that immediately."
CNN national security correspondent David Ensor's
subsequent fact-checking of Kerry contained three
faulty claims: 1) that Kerry made an error when he
"left off Poland as one of the allies that's in Iraq,
a minor thing like that but Bush caught him right
away"; 2) that "Kerry said that Afghanistan is where
Osama bin Laden is"; and 3) that Kerry said "that it
was during the Iraq war that North Korea got nuclear
weapons."
In each instance, Ensor misrepresented Kerry's actual
statement...
Support Our Troops, Save the US Constitution,
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Restore Fiscal Responsibility in the White House,
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Save the Environment, Break the Corporatist
Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Rescue
the US Supreme Court from Right-Wing Radicals, Cleanse
the White House of the Chicken Hawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0439/ridgeway3.php
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
A Knockout for Kerry
Big John sends Dubya to the mat in Round One
September 30th, 2004 11:22 PM
WASHINGTON—Contrary to all the press predictions, John
Kerry easily overcame George Bush in Thursday night's
debate, taking the attack from the very beginning and
never once losing control. It was a knockout—with Bush
going down almost immediately and never getting back
on his feet. The president appeared confused, left to
mumble aloud on the subject of Iraq, "It's incredibly
hard work."
In debating terms, Kerry controlled the floor from
start to finish with one rapid fire attack after
another. Bush never was able to break through. His
famous frat-boy disdain was reduced to goofiness.
Kerry made him look by turns ignorant, deceitful,
churlish, and just plain out of it.
Bush tried to use his campaign's flip-flop line
against Kerry, but it went nowhere. Kerry had such a
clear control of facts and argument that the charge
fell almost immediately, a spent and useless weapon.
Sometimes the president looked like he didn't know
what Kerry was talking about. Bush would shrug his
shoulders, try one of his little sneers, or chime in
with "That's absurd" or "I don't appreciate the
candidate saying" such and such. Time and again he
reverted to his punch-drunk line that "it's incredibly
hard work. . . . We're making progress."
The president went for the slime almost from the
beginning. In answer to a question from moderator Jim
Lehrer as to whether Kerry's election would increase
the chance of a terrorist attack, Bush did his little
frat-boy twitch and smugly said, "I don't believe it's
going to happen," meaning that Kerry would never be
elected and distinctly leaving the impression he
thought we would be more open to attack if Kerry were
elected.
Tonight Bush repeated much that he has said before:
That 75 percent of all Al Qaeda leaders are in prison,
that we are winning the war in Iraq, and that there
are hopeful signs in Afghanistan, where 10 million
people are registered to vote. The capture of Saddam
had made America safer. To which Kerry responded by
ticking off the rising U.S. casualties, our inability
to gain control of the security situation in Iraq, and
the global spread of Al Qaeda.
Kerry said again that Bush had Osama bin Laden penned
up, but instead of sending skilled American troops to
get him, Bush turned the fight over to warlords who
had been on the opposite side only days before,
letting Osama escape. Kerry said Afghanistan was a
disaster, with more Americans being killed every month
and opium production soaring.
Kerry argued Bush had invaded with no plan to win the
peace, said his administration would make it clear the
U.S. has no long-term designs on Iraq, and declared he
would use a pre-emptive strike only as a last resort
after international negotiations had failed.
October 1, 2004
http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/04/10/edi04069.html
BuzzFlash Declares Kerry the Winner of Round One: He
Puts Bush on the Defensive. The Weasel in Chief
Appeared to Get Smaller by the Minute.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
You knew Kerry got the better of Bush in the first
debate when that right wing Brooks’ columnist from the
New York Times declared the match-up a tie on a PBS
post-debate show. If that smarmy George Will wannabe
says it came out even, you know Bush took a
shellacking.
>From a BuzzFlash perspective, Kerry was crisp, to the
point, persuasive about Iraq, and commanding in his
knowledge without being smug. He nailed Bush on the
kind of specifics that get people thinking about
whether Bush is really such a bad-ass in fighting
terrorism. Specifically, Kerry brought up two issues
more than once: Bush made errors in judgment that led
to the creation of nuclear weapons by North Korea and
Bush allowed Osama bin Laden to escape during the Tora
Bora mission. And like a junkyard dog, Kerry grabbed
onto the fact that Bush is doing little to stop
nuclear proliferation that might result in terrorists
getting their hands on nuclear weapons.
Kerry was never thrown off his mark, while Bush fell
back into his smirk at times as Kerry nailed him again
and again.
Bush clearly was pumped up with Frank Luntz message
points to repeat over and over again, such as
describing Kerry as a “mixed message” (flip-flop)
candidate and endlessly repeating the words liberty,
freedom and democracy in association with Afghanistan
and Iraq. These words will no doubt play well with
Bush’s base, but he won’t gain any voters from these
sort of focus group marketing phrases, whereas Kerry
clearly has a chance to pick up independents and
women, based on his strong debate positions and
presence.
Kerry needed to be reassuring about being capable of
handling the war on terrorism, because it is Bush’s
sole raison d’etre. He succeeded.
Like many BuzzFlash readers we began watching the
first debate with great trepidation. Ninety minutes
later we felt like we did at the Democratic Convention
after Kerry’s acceptance speech.
Under pressure, the guy delivered.
Bush will get some points for never lapsing into
complete incoherence, but anyone watching on
television saw him gradually shrinking at the podium.
His trite focus group platitudes sounded repetitious
after a while, and he just couldn’t handle Kerry’s
debater agility.
Bush was virtually rendered speechless by Kerry's
closing appeal that America's future belongs to
freedom, not fear.
Bush can't govern WITHOUT fear.
We should mention that today was one of the bloodiest
days in the Iraq War.
The reality on the ground does not bode well for
George W. Bush. Facts have a way of catching up with
you. Let’s just hope they tag Bush before the
election.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
Afternote: Did we hear Bush joke that he wanted to put
the twins on a leash? Or maybe he got his daughters
confused with the guys Rumsfeld had tortured on
leashes in Abu Ghraib? And wasn't Bush's hair color a
bit touched up, so to speak, as from full grey to
brownish grey? And it was time to hoist a mug of beer
just to see the look on junior's face when Kerry
quoted Poppy Bush about why HE didn't go into Baghdad
during Gulf War I because it would have led to
disaster. Just a couple of BuzzFlash catty comments.
After-Afternote, 10/1/04 7:30 AM: Clearly, Kerry has
an opening now to redefine the debate and reframe the
vote on the issue of Bush's credibility and
competence. Kerry finally broke through the threshold
issue that may force some undecided voters to ask, "Is
Bush up to the Job or Just All Hat and No Cattle?"
For the moment, as a result of the first debate and
two weeks of Kerry attacks on Bush's conduct of the
Iraq War, the focus is on Bush's competence. That's
quite a turnabout. We'll see if Kerry can maintain
this "frame" and keep Bush on the defensive.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100204Z.shtml
It Was a Rout
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 01 October 2004
"Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes
Frazier!"
- Howard Cosell
There was a President on that stage in Florida on
Thursday night, and his name was not George.
This was supposed to be the debate that played to
the strengths of Bush and his administration. Foreign
policy in general and the protection of the United
States from terrorism in particular, according to all
the polls and every talking head within earshot, are
the areas where George supposedly commands the high
ground. That illusion came crashing down on the stage
in Coral Gables.
How else can one describe the demeanor and
behavior of Bush, as seen by 40,000,000 television
viewers and heard by millions more radio listeners?
Shrill. Defensive. Muddled. Angry, very angry.
Repetitive. Uninformed. Outmatched. Unprepared.
Hesitant. Twenty four minutes into the debate, Bush
lost his temper, and spent the remaining hour and six
minutes looking for all the world as though he were
sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.
This is what happens when you surround yourself
with yes-men. John Kerry put the bricks to Bush and
the last four years of his administration clearly,
concisely, eloquently and with devastating effect.
Bush reacted like a man who has never, ever had anyone
tell him anything other than "Good job, sir."
That is what happens when you have to defend your
record as President, something that no one in the
media or elsewhere had managed to force Bush to do in
the last 1,000 days. In the October 2000 debate, Bush
managed to hold his own simply by making promises and
telegraphing an aw-shucks charm. On Thursday night,
Bush faced a reckoning at the hands of a man who cut
his teeth prosecuting and imprisoning mob bosses.
This was not a Bush meltdown. It was an exposure.
George W. Bush was required to speak for 90 minutes
without having the questions beforehand, facing an
opponent far less pliable than the national press
corps. The man he has always been, stripped of the
hero-worship veneer, was there for all to see.
Don't take my word for it, though.
"They need to make Americans forget what happened
tonight," said ultraconservative Joe Scarborough on
MSNBC, speaking on what he believed the Bush campaign
needed to do post-debate. Right out of the gate,
Scarborough and the other talking heads gave the
debate to Kerry, hands down, turn out the lights when
you leave. "I think John Kerry," said Scarborough a
bit later, "looked more Presidential."
A post-debate caller to C-SPAN announced herself
as one who had voted for and supported Bush, and then
described the Democratic candidate as "President
Kerry." Freudian slip? We report, you decide.
At FreeRepublic.com, the bastion of far-right
cheerleading, the faithful were fashioning nooses.
"It's really painful listening to Bush," said one
Godebert. "Kerry has had him on the defensive from the
beginning. Kerry sounds confident while Bush has a
pleading defensive tone. Not good so far."
"Kerry looked much more experienced," said one
whadizit. "He appeared to be relaxed and in control. W
looked weary and worn and sounded weary and worn."
"Unfortunately," saith The Sons of Liberty, "Kerry
looked more prepared. He seemed to have more facts,
however questionable, at his command and he delivered
his message succinctly. Even when confronted on his
flip-flops, he had plausible explanations. On the
other hand, The President seemed to lose his train of
thought at times. He continued to repeat the same
things, and he looked tired and a little haggard. He
needs to do much better next time."
The comments went on and drearily on in this vein,
in conversation thread after conversation thread,
until a forum participant named areafiftyone threw the
distraught legions a lifeline: "I had that feeling
that Kerry had the questions beforehand. He seemed to
have his answers right on target. Bush seemed like he
was surprised by the questions. I wish they could
investigate to see if the DNC got a hold of the
questions beforehand."
Yeah, that's it. Never mind that one participant
had total command of the facts, an understanding of
the foreign policy realm, a firm grasp on the
situations in Iraq, North Korea and Afghanistan, while
the other participant seemed shocked that faded
platitudes and repeated campaign slogans weren't
getting the job done. The shattering, humiliating,
obvious defeat handed to George W. Bush before a
massive television audience must have come because
moderator Jim Lehrer somehow conspired with debate
host Fox News to telegraph the questions to Kerry
beforehand.
Or something.
The two most embarrassing moments for Bush, culled
from a symphony of embarrassing moments, came while
discussing the situation in Iraq. After many minutes
of being pummeled about the head and shoulders with
the realities of the mess he had created, Bush lost
his temper for the ninth or tenth time and insisted,
"We're going to win this war in Iraq!" Yet it was many
months and many dead American soldiers ago, on May 1st
2003 in fact, that Bush stood below a banner reading
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and proclaimed, "Major combat
operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq,
the United States and our allies have prevailed."
Hm.
The second embarrassing moment came after Bush
repeated his mantra about "staying the course" until
the paint started to peel off the podium he was
slouching over. We have to be resolute, we have to
stay the course, we cannot send mixed messages to our
troops and the world...and yet after an hour of
bombardment from Kerry, Bush finally said, "Well, I
think -- listen, I fully agree that one should shift
tactics, and we will, in Iraq."
So, OK, let me get this straight: We have to stay
the course and not send mixed messages, and you've
been blowing voluminous amounts of sunshine up the
collective American backside for weeks about how boffo
the Iraq situation is, but after an hour of taking
rhetorical body blows from your opponent, you suddenly
claim we are going to change tactics? It seemed for
all the world that John Kerry, his opponent, convinced
Bush that things in Iraq are as bad as people have
been saying for weeks and months now.
The most amusing aspect of the whole debate came
several hours before it began, when ABCNews.com posted
an Associated Press article discussing the debate in
the past tense. "After a deluge of campaign speeches
and hostile television ads," wrote AP, apparently
putting the Way-Back Machine they've been building to
use, "President Bush and challenger John Kerry got
their chance to face each other directly Thursday
night before an audience of tens of millions of voters
in a high-stakes debate about terrorism, the Iraq war
and the bloody aftermath."
"The 90-minute encounter," continued AP reporter
Nostradamus from his post somewhere in the space-time
continuum, "was particularly crucial for Kerry,
trailing slightly in the polls and struggling for
momentum less than five weeks before the election. The
Democratic candidate faced the challenge of presenting
himself as a credible commander in chief after a
torrent of Republican criticism that he was prone to
changing his positions."
The bloggers got hold of this masterpiece of
gun-jumping by about 4:00pm EST, and ABC scrubbed the
page. As for the 'flip-flopper' tag, you can put that
particular Bush campaign talking point to bed. If this
had been a boxing match, it would have been stopped.
If Bush shows up for the next two debates, I will be,
frankly, amazed. Watch for his campaign to reach for
the chicken switch before the weekend is out, claiming
perfidy on the part of the networks or some other sad
folderol.
No amount of spin will be able to undo the reality
of what took place in Florida on Thursday night. What
happened on that stage was an absolute, immutable
truth. Bush looked bad. Worse, he looked uninformed,
overmatched and angry. Worst of all, he's going to
have to go through it two more times.
If he shows up.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and
international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq:
What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The
Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
-------
http://mediamatters.org/items/200410010004
Network fact-checks equated possible Kerry
misstatement with flagrant Bush distortion; CNN
falsely accused Kerry of falsehoods
In September 30 post-debate coverage on NBC, ABC, and
MSNBC, the "fact check" segment of all three programs
appeared to equate Senator John Kerry's tally of the
cost of the Iraq war -- which some critics charge is
inflated because it includes spent and projected funds
-- to President George W. Bush's false statement
concerning the number of Iraqis that have been
effectively trained to serve in the war. Meanwhile,
CNN inaccurately accused Kerry of misstatements.
During the debate, Kerry placed the cost of the Iraq
war at $200 billion; in fact, only $120 billion has
been spent, while the remaining $80 billion has been
projected (a small portion of which is designated for
Afghanistan). Bush, on the other hand, presented a
specific and flagrant distortion, stating that "We got
100,000 [Iraqi citizens] trained now, 125,000 by the
end of the year, over 200,000 by the end of next
year."
On NBC (and later on MSNBC), anchor Brian Williams
described "an obvious difference in numbers" between
the number of trained Iraqis Bush claimed and the
number given by Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad
Allawi. On September 23, Allawi stated: "The Iraqi
government now commands almost 50,000 armed and combat
ready Iraqis. By January it will be some 145,000 and
by the end of next year some 250,000 Iraqis."
But Allawi's numbers also appear to be inflated. NBC
Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw noted that "NBC's
Richard Engle is reporting this week from Iraq that
they had about 100,000 Iraqis in training, but they
had to fire 40,000 of them in the past five days or so
because of their suspect origins. They may have been
infiltrators or because they were simply incompetent.
Those numbers will go up and down over the course of
the next several weeks." And, as MSNBC noted on
September 24 (though not during their debate
coverage), recently released Pentagon documents reveal
that "only about 53,000 of the 100,000 Iraqis on duty
now have undergone training"; "fewer than 100,000 will
be trained by the end of this year"; and "only 8,169
have had the full eight-week academy training."
NBC, MSNBC, and ABC all mentioned Kerry's statement
and noted that $200 billion has not been spent on the
war in Iraq. All three networks reported that,
according to the Office of Management and Budget, only
$120 billion has been spent thus far on the Iraq war;
none noted that at least an additional $80 billion is
expected to be spent.
On CNN, political analyst Bill Schneider's
fact-checking of Bush consisted of one major
criticism: that by stating "the enemy attacked us" as
the defense for his decision to launch a preemptive
war in Iraq, the president "was implying in that
statement that the United States was attacked by
Saddam Hussein or Saddam Hussein was in league with or
behind the 9-11 attacks." Schneider noted that "the
9-11 Commission found no evidence that Saddam Hussein
was in league with Osama bin Laden or had any role in
the 9-11 attacks" and also pointed out that "Kerry
caught that immediately."
CNN national security correspondent David Ensor's
subsequent fact-checking of Kerry contained three
faulty claims: 1) that Kerry made an error when he
"left off Poland as one of the allies that's in Iraq,
a minor thing like that but Bush caught him right
away"; 2) that "Kerry said that Afghanistan is where
Osama bin Laden is"; and 3) that Kerry said "that it
was during the Iraq war that North Korea got nuclear
weapons."
In each instance, Ensor misrepresented Kerry's actual
statement:
• "Kerry left off Poland"
KERRY: [W]hen we went in, there were three countries:
Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's
not a grand coalition. We can do better.
LEHRER: Thirty seconds, Mr. President.
BUSH: Well, actually, he forgot Poland.
Ensor described Kerry's omission of Poland as an
"error." But Kerry did not claim to be providing a
comprehensive list of countries with troops in Iraq;
Ensor also failed to mention that Kerry went on to
explain his criticism of the coalition:
KERRY: But you can't tell me that when the most troops
any other country has on the ground is Great Britain
with 8,300, and below that the four others are below
4,000, and below that, there isn't anybody out of the
hundreds, that we have a genuine coalition to get this
job done.
Poland committed approximately 2,500 troops to Iraq.
• "Kerry said that Afghanistan is where Osama bin
Laden is"
Had Ensor considered this statement in its proper
context, he would have recognized Kerry's statement
that "[t]he president moved the troops, so he's got
ten times the number of troops in Iraq than he has in
Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is" was referring
to Kerry's prior point: that when bin Laden was in
Afghanistan, Bush relied on "Afghan warlords" to
capture him while he diverted American troops to Iraq.
KERRY: Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of
Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn't use
American forces, the best-trained in the world, to go
kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and
he outsourced that job too. That's wrong.
• Kerry said "that it was during the Iraq war that
North Korea got nuclear weapons"
In ostensibly correcting this "fundamental error,"
Ensor noted that "the CIA has said for some years now
and prior to the Iraq war that it believed North Korea
might have one or two nuclear weapons." However, Kerry
did not claim that North Korea lacked nuclear weapons
prior to the Iraq war. His statement indicates that he
was referring to North Korea's recent dramatic
increase in nuclear capabilities:
KERRY: Thirty-five to forty countries in the world had
a greater capability of making weapons at the moment
the president invaded than Saddam Hussein. And while
he's been diverted, with nine out of ten active duty
divisions of our Army, either going to Iraq, coming
back from Iraq, or getting ready to go, North Korea's
gotten nuclear weapons and the world is more
dangerous.
[...]
KERRY: [F]or two years, this administration didn't
talk at all to North Korea. While they didn't talk at
all, the fuel rods came out, the inspectors were
kicked out, the television cameras were kicked out.
And today, there are four to seven nuclear weapons in
the hands of North Korea.
CBS and FOX News Channel did not present fact check
segments.
— J.C. & A.S.
Posted by richard at October 1, 2004 12:09 PM