An interesting thing happened the day after the vice presidential debate this past Tuesday. The talking heads of politics weren't spinning the question of who won, according to whose poll (which are being flooded by partisans regardless of who appears to come away the victor). Politicos everywhere were scrambling to check the facts. What a novel idea, if only they paid more attention to stories like that for the past 3 years. There was cheney's "Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I‘m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they‘re in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." Wrong! First off, since this administration took office cheney has, by my count, acted as president of the Senate on two Tuesdays, and by ABC's count the two had met at least three times before. And how about this whopper? "I have not suggested there is a connection between Iraq and 9/11." This from the man who told Meet the Press "If we’re successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it’s not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it’s not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." At this point the link between Iraq and al Qaeda is so weak that rumsfeld has even said that he has "not seen any strong, hard evidence links the two". My favorite was when dick mistakenly said www.factcheck.com instead of www.factcheck.org in response to a Halliburton attack by Senator Edwards (an attack the factcheck.org agreed with, mostly ) Factcheck.com turned out to be a Cayman Islands-based Name Administration Inc. When this site got swamped because of cheney's slip, they decided to redirect everyone to the site of Democratic mega donor George Soros. The site's top banner reads "Why we must not re-elect President Bush,".
The mangling of facts and reports has gone so far that it is hard to discern what is real. I'm sure we'll be hearing the administration spin the recent report on job creation in September, even though the increase is less than the 148,000 projected and the roughly 150,000 needed to keep pace with the rate at which the work force is expanding (Not to mention 18,000 manufacturing jobs that were cut). Cheney has even tried to spin the latest, and probably last, report by an administration appointed weapons inspector, which informed the American people that Iraq had "essentially destroyed'' its illicit weapons ability by the end of 1991, with its last secret factory, a biological weapons plant, eliminated in 1996. The sanctions were working despite the corruption in the "oil for food" program. A program that Halliburton was making money on through their subsidiary Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. while dick was the CEO and sanctions were in place.
So let Fox make up headlines for their website, let the administration define of "small business owner" in a way that includes cheney. It is up to us to research, fact check, pay attention, and then tell as many people as we can. These guys can't handle the reality that their policies are not working, or maybe they are working for them and their friends and they just can't handle telling us.
peace.
dave
Cheney on Iraq in 1992
"I would guess if we had gone in there," said Cheney in 1992, "I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home. And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war."
Check out:
My favorite story of the week:
Vibrator shuts down Australian airport
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/australia_air_vibrator
www.factcheck.org
Krugman's "Ignorance Isn't Strength":
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08krugman.html
Bob Herbert's "Working for a Pittance
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08herbert1.html
What really happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001?
http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm#Mai
Fox news ridiculous quotes:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/2826011
Where i got it from:
Halliburton subsidiaries do business with Iraq (Legal oil for food):
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/6/24/80648.shtml
Urging Fact-Checking, Cheney Got Site Wrong
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12901-2004Oct6.html
Cheney attendance record for tuesdays:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/6/11163/2940
as compiled from searches at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/index.html
Cheney on Meet the Press:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/
Rumsfeld quote:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100604A.shtml
ABC reporting the three meetings between the two men:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20041006_463.html
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