A battle of donkeys and chicken hawks (5/6)

By Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer, and Brendan Nyhan

The Bush campaign is once again using a vote against a huge appropriations bill to make it appear that John Kerry opposed one of its specific provisions, this time funding of body armor for soldiers. Meanwhile, Senator Frank Lautenberg is the latest Democrat to use the label "chicken hawk" to tar Republicans and avoid substantive criticism of Kerry's record on national security issues. (Read the whole column.)

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5/6/2004 01:00:41 AM EST |

The meaning of "liberation" shifts in the political winds (5/5)

By Brendan Nyhan

In a March 15 email to supporters and a subsequent direct mail solicitation (333K PDF), President Bush stated that Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), his opponent in the 2004 presidential race, voted "for the use of force in Iraq and against funding the liberation of Iraq." But this claim, which is intended to illustrate alleged inconsistencies in Kerry's policy views, is phrased in a highly misleading way.

The President often described the war as being intended to liberate the Iraqi people; as a result, the claim that Kerry voted "against funding the liberation of Iraq" falsely suggests he opposed funding the military effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime. The Massachusetts Senator actually opposed a supplemental appropriations bill in October 2003 that funded military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan months after the Baathist government had been toppled (Kerry had previously supported an alternative proposal to fund the bill by rescinding tax cuts for the wealthy, which was defeated).

In fact, Bush himself said Iraq had already been liberated numerous times in the months before Kerry's vote, including his controversial May 1, 2003 speech from the USS Abraham Lincoln and two other major addresses from September 2003:

"The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror." (President Bush announces major combat operations in Iraq have ended, May 1, 2003)

"And that is why, five months after we liberated Iraq, a collection of killers is desperately trying to undermine Iraq's progress and throw the country into chaos." (Address to the nation, Sept. 7, 2003)

"And because there were consequences, because a coalition of nations acted to defend the peace, and the credibility of the United Nations, Iraq is free, and today we are joined by representatives of a liberated country." (Speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 23, 2003)

Of course, some critics can argue that Kerry's vote against funding security and reconstruction operations in Iraq after the war is still evidence of inconsistency. But Bush's phrasing obscures this distinction by omitting proper context for the October 2003 vote.

Unfortunately, this is far from the only case of the Bush campaign taking items out of context. In another example, an email sent to supporters by Bush-Cheney '04 campaign chairman Marc Racicot on Monday claimed that "one group compared our President to Adolf Hitler!" (92K PDF) However, the group in question, MoveOn.org, did not actually make this comparison, as we have previously shown. Two highly objectionable ads comparing Bush to Hitler were entered in a contest on the website, and MoveOn showed poor judgment in posting them for evaluation by members along with hundreds of other entries. It later apologized and removed them from the contest.

As always, the devil is in the details.

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Related links:
-A flurry of unfair associations (Ben Fritz, 1/13/04)

5/5/2004 08:38:37 AM EST |

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