Game, Set, Match?

When George Bush and Dick Cheney look back at the election and wonder when it all went wrong, the answer may be October 28. After declining to discuss the missing weapons story for days, perhaps encouraged by right wing radio, TV and internet bloggers yelling "John Kerry is wrong," on Thursday Bush and Cheney crawled from beneath their rocks and challenged Kerry.

"Senator Kerry will say anything to get elected," Bush told 6,000 supporters.

The right reacted happily, perhaps thinking this would be the event that turns the corner for Bush. In fact, during the 6 p.m. hour on the east coast Charles Krauthammer on Fox News was going on about how the missing weapon story was now hurting John Kerry.

Unbeknownst to them, a thousand miles away in St. Paul, Minnesota, in a battleground state no less, KSTP was broadcasting a story from a reporter who was in actually in Iraq at the weapons site and saw the weapons, showing a tape, which shows U.S. military personnel examining the weapons, which they later left unguarded.

The KSTP crew witnessed soldiers using bolt cutters to get into bunkers. Inside, they found many containers marked "explosives." At least one set of crates carried the name "Al-Qaqaa State Establishment."

So much for the Bush complaint about speaking without the facts. On CNN Newsnight, Aaron Brown asked former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay if this was "game, set, match" on ending the debate on Kerry's claims. Kay's response - "I think it is game, set and match."

While Bush was speaking before 6,000, Kerry attended a rally in Madison, Wis., that attracted more than 80,000 people, drawn by Bruce Springsteen. A fire marshal said the crowd, near the state capitol, was the largest ever to assemble for a single event in the city.

In a close election, everyone was looking for the tipping point. Was this it, or the latest Halliburton relavations, or the doctored ad? Whatever it was, it was bad

How soon we forget

When the New York Times broke a story on how some 380 tons of explosives, powerful enough to detonate nuclear warheads, were missing from a former Iraqi military facility that was supposed to be under American control, conservatives immediately worked to discredit the story.

Currently the accuracy of the story is up in the air. In the end it will probably be accurate, just overplayed. But will the Kerry campaign suffer for jumping all over the story? Liberals who end up disappointed that the Times let them down on an important story, just as CBS did with the National Guard story (destroying a good story with sloppiness), only have themselves and a short memory, to blame.

During the 1990s the New York Times waged a sloppy, inaccurate war against Bill Clinton but because liberals don't fight as hard as conservatives, many of the stories stuck in the public's mind. From the Times initial inaccurate story/headline on Whitewater to the Wen Ho Lee story, which the Times had to apologize for, the Times established a poor journalistic standard.

The Times, and the Washington Post, refused to apologize for their poor Whitewater coverage and yet liberals still thought they were "their" newspaper. Early on in the Bush administration John Harris of the Post pointed out that the new administration were being subject to the same treatment. Harris wrote this new president has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton. Take it from someone who made a living writing about those uproars.

So why did the liberals get fooled again? They thought the Times and Post were just going after the current administration rather than just practicing bad journalism. The Post and the Times may be interesting reading, unfortunately one may have to treat them like the Washington Times, Interesting, if true.

Fair & Balanced? The Right says NO!

If anyone has any doubts that the media has been co-opted by conservatives, one only has to look at the media's recent debate "truth squads" and the reaction to the press questioning whether truth checks should be comprehensive rather than artificial balance.

After each of the recent debates the networks, and many news organizations, ran truth checks of what the candidates said during the debates. The media would usually run through an equal list of questionable statements by each candidate, giving the impression that both candidates were equally stretching the truth.

ABC's political director Mark Halperin wrote a now-leaked memo saying there is no need for artificial balance in truth-squadding the claims and charges of the Bush and Kerry campaigns.

USA Today reported, Halperin stated in his memo, "though both sides need to be held accountable, it doesn't mean “we reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that.”

As the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz said "In other words, if one side is using a howitzer and the other a popgun, you don't have to portray them as both firing ammunition, without making distinctions."

Imagine that, rather than just running a top five or so list of questionable claims by each candidate, Halperin suggested putting the number of claims in perspective. Sounds sensible, but apparently conservatives disagree.

Rightwing radio talk show host Laura Ingraham said the memo “is blatantly an expression of partisanship on the part of ABC News,” according to USA Today. “Halperin should make it official and move down to Washington to join the Democratic National Committee.”

Gee, what if the public were to find out that Bush, to us the words William Safire once used on another White House occupant, is a congenital liar? Is it appropriate for the press to say “Kerry exaggerates but Bush tells a number of whoppers?” Apparently Ms. Ingraham and conservatives demand the “both candidates made questionable claims” line instead.

Fox anchor Chris Wallace said: "An ABC News memo has been leaked that suggests the network is holding President Bush and Senator Kerry to different standards." He's right. Bush gets to fib as much as he wants but will only be held accountable to the same extent as Kerry.

What a deal, and as blogger Josh Marshall points out, Ingraham is not alone in her reaction.

"The most noteworthy thing I've seen in the right-wing response is that there seems to be little effort to deny or engage the question of whether the Bush campaign is being qualitatively more dishonest than the Kerry campaign. All the whining is focused on the fact that any news organization would have the temerity to try to distinguish between them."

Wall Street Journal Hypocrisy

When Dick Cheney lied about never meeting Sen. John Edwards, Opinion Journal.com, the Wall Street Journal’s web site, covered up for Cheney, saying he was "mistaken" and implied the meeting must have been forgettable for Cheney not to have remember it.

The Journal did point out, “It turns out Cheney was mistaken, as the Associated Press reports,” but followed that with a blogger's comment that somehow compared Cheney to a high school football player.

But when Al Gore made a "mistake" in a 2000 debate and said he visited a Texas disaster site with the head of FEMA, how did the Journal react?

If Al Gore can't tell the truth as a candidate, how can we trust him to be president? Maybe if this Presidential thing doesn't work out for Al Gore, he can get a job doing Burger King commercials for The Whopper.

Which was worse, not remembering meeting a senator or traveling with a federal agency director?

So, will the Journal ask: "IF DICK CHENEY CAN'T TELL THE TRUTH AS A CANDIDATE, HOW CAN WE TRUST HIM TO BE VICE PRESIDENT?" Don't expect an answer. Perhaps the Journal editorial staff is hoping that its page is so forgetable that no one remembers the 2000 article.

Also, according to the dailykos, Cheney said he didn’t meet Edwards until last night despite being as the Senate every Tuesday. Small problem, apparently Cheney presided over the Senate a grand total of TWO times over the past four years – the same number of times as Edwards presided over the Senate.

So TWICE in FOUR YEARS Cheney actually showed up to be presiding officer of the Senate and he didn't meet Edwards. What are the odds?

Liar, Liar

There was no A Few Good Men moment last night, probably because in a debate there is no judge to make sure the debaters are telling the truth and no real sanctions if one side lies.

As a result, Dick Cheney revised his role he plays on right wing radio, spewing forth a torrent of lies that the moderator was unwilling to question and Edwards had limited amount of time to dispute. To many, the lies played well. One only has to look at the Washington Post's TV coverage to see the impact. Tom Shales, in his debate review, nearly led with Cheney's zinger that "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on this stage tonight."

Just one problem. IT WASN'T TRUE!!!!!! The Los Angeles Times (subscription required) pointed out that "It was perhaps the most surprising tidbit of new information during the debate — that Vice President Dick Cheney had never met Sen. John Edwards until Tuesday night. Except it wasn't true."

Less than two hours after the debate ended, aides to Edwards and Sen. John F. Kerry distributed a photograph from the Feb. 1, 2001, National Prayer Breakfast showing Edwards and Cheney standing side by side.

The Times also pointed out that in January 2003 Edwards escorted the newly elected senator from North Carolina, Elizabeth Hanford Dole, onto the Senate floor for her swearing-in by Cheney.

The problem is that people will remember the lie and not the truth and that was what Cheney/Bush was hoping for. After all, that is a staple of right wing radio, spew lies knowing that very few will be uncovered and very few people will ever realize they are lies. The Right likes to complain about 527s but right wing radio is little more than free campaign ads for Republicans.

A Few Good Men: the Sequel

With all the talk of what the Vice Presidential debate will be like tonight, one thing to keep in mind is question of whether life imitates art. One only has to think about the movie A Few Good Men and the final courtroom scene and imagine John Edwards playing Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) and Dick Cheney as Colonel Nathan Jessep (Jack Nicholson)

Will we see the "moment" where Edwards catches Jessep/Cheney in "the lie" on Iraq? Will Cheney turn like a cornered rat like Jessep? Will Cheney finally tell the truth and thereby sink the Bush/Cheney ship?

In the film Kaffee puts together a case showing how Jessep lied about ordering the code red on Private Santiago, much like Edwards should do to Cheney regarding how he lied about the prewar intelligence on Iraq, lied about a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and badly estimated the reaction to the Iraqi response to the US.

One only has to look at recent news to see that the administration lied on prewar intelligence; that, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, there was no connection between Iraq and Al Quida; and as Presidential Envoy to Iraq Paul Bremer said, the administration was warned that more troops were needed to go into Iraq to maintain order.

Confronted with his lies, all Jessep could say was "You little bastard," which seems right up Cheney's alley. One can imagine Cheney saying "You want Answers" and Edwards saying "I want the Truth!"

Jessep's final reply seems eerily like something Cheney would say.

You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

The problem is that just as Santiago probably posed little threat, so too may have Iraq if sanctions, inspections, and international pressure remained. Unfortunately, Jessep, like Cheney and Bush acted on their convictions rather than reality. In the movie, such convictions cost at least one American his life. In reality in Iraq, it has cost more than 1,000 American their lives.