Cheney would have to steal the title from Dan Rather.
Posted on 10/27/2004 11:14:41 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
SIOUX CITY, Iowa - Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush on Wednesday of “dodging and bobbing and weaving” on explanations for nearly 400 tons of missing explosives in Iraq. Bush said his presidential challenger was making wild charges without knowing the facts.
Less than a week before the election, both campaigns intensified their efforts — in speeches, in TV ads, in telephone appeals and in courtrooms across the nation.
With their agendas laid out all summer and fall, Bush and Kerry were trying to create an aura of excitement in get-out-the-vote rallies, hoping to snag the dwindling pool of voters who haven’t taken sides.
Kerry hit hard at this week’s revelation that explosives had disappeared from an outpost in Iraq.
“The missing explosives could very likely be in the hands of terrorists and insurgents, who are actually attacking our forces now 80 times a day on average,” Kerry said at a rally in Sioux City. “But now today we’ve learned even more. What we’re seeing is a White House that is dodging and bobbing and weaving in their usual efforts to avoid responsibility, just as they’ve done every step of the way in our involvement in Iraq.”
Kerry said Vice President Dick Cheney “is becoming the chief minister of disinformation” while the president remains silent on the matter.
Bush did bring up the matter a few minutes later, in a speech in Lititz, Pa.
“Now the senator is making wild charges about missing explosives when his top foreign policy adviser admits, quote, ’we do not know the facts.”’ Bush said. “Think about that — the senator’s denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts. Unfortunately, that’s part of a pattern of saying almost anything to get elected.”
Bush was referring to remarks made by Kerry adviser Richard Holbrooke Tuesday in an interview with Fox News. Holbrooke said “the U.N. inspectors had told the American military this was a major depot.” He added: “I don’t know what happened. I do know one thing — in most administrations the buck stops in the Oval Office.”
Kerry also appealed to middle class voters in the election homestretch Wednesday, saying Bush had sold them out to help the wealthy and now wanted “four more years so that he can keep up the bad work.”
Bush, meanwhile, put together a campaign endgame that included persistent appeals for Democratic votes and a rarely used weapon in this bruising campaign — a positive commercial.
Rockers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi were rejoining the Kerry campaign, minstrels in his fast-moving gallery. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was bringing his star power — and moderate GOP reputation — to Bush’s side later in the week.
The president turned to the iconoclastic Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia to accompany him Wednesday to Pennsylvania and Ohio events, in keeping with his late-breaking appeals to Democrats who aren’t sold on their own party’s nominee.
Bush, in Pennsylvania, said, “I want to remind the American people that if Senator Kerry had his way ... Saddam Hussein would still be in power, he would control all those weapons and explosives” and could have shared them with America’s terrorist enemies.
“For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief,” Bush said.
Kerry was focusing on economic troubles in the Sioux City speech Wednesday before stumping in Minnesota and back in Iowa, at a Cedar Rapids event. Aides saw that speech and one Friday that will blend his campaign’s economic and foreign policy proposals as his “closing arguments” for change. The speeches were added to his schedule after aides had said earlier that a speech Tuesday on homeland security was to be his last of the campaign.
After ripping Kerry for weeks as an equivocator, Bush planned to close the contest with a 60-second commercial meant to show him as steady, trustworthy and compassionate in dangerous times.
The ad shows an emotional president telling the Republican National Convention about meeting the children and parents of slain U.S. soldiers, as well as wounded servicemen and women.
“These four years have brought moments I could not foresee and will not forget,” Bush says. “I’ve learned firsthand that ordering Americans into battle is the hardest decision, even when it is right.” The commercial will be seen by a limited audience, given that it will run only on a couple national cable news networks.
Still, neither campaign was going upbeat, nor were their supporters.
Hard-hitting leaflets lined mailboxes in a dozen or so hotly contested states. A glossy mailing by the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee showed burning roadside wreckage in Iraq, with U.S. soldiers looking on, and the headline “Wrong Choices ... Less Secure.”
A Republican National Committee mailing showed pictures of Jane Fonda and Michael Moore, two anti-war liberals supporting Kerry, and the headline, “John Kerry’s heart and soul of America?”
Kerry’s latest ad accuses the Bush administration of failing to secure the explosives that disappeared from a military installation south of Baghdad around the time U.S. forces were toppling Saddam Hussein’s government.
New state polls suggested the race was deadlocked in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the three most important battlegrounds in the race for 270 Electoral College votes.
With the possibility of another inconclusive election night looming, lawyers were already deep in courtroom entanglements in a variety of states over problems either anticipated or already experienced in states with heavy early voting.
In one example, a federal judge in Miami ruled against Democrats in saying Florida election officials will not be required to process incomplete voter registration forms.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. URL: http://msnbc
Kerry's Kracking up.
no he compared him to Goebbels and that idiot from Iraq, this campaign has sunk to a new low.
Keep talking Kerry...You are assuring our victory this Tuesday.
That's rich coming from a bigger liar than Clinton.
Cheney would have to steal the title from Dan Rather.
Kerry's really running with this "those weapons are killing our kids!" thing, proving they've got NOTHING left.
This is the guy who says he's better at getting along with our "allies?"
I just heard a clip of kerry screaming on Rush.
Kerry is sounding Howard Deanish.
Not good.
BTTT
You can hear it in his voice. Kerry is very angry. Shouting at the top of his lungs as if he knows he's going down.
Rush is playing Kerry clips - he sounds nuts.... very nuts
Time to break out the "coalition of the wild-eyed" ad again, with some additions.
Kerry's being spastic.
Kerry is not a good man.
It's the scream? ;=)
"Kerry is sounding Howard Deanish."
I agree...he sounds like a cross between Howard Dean and Michael Moore. He's attempting to rev up his only true base....the left wing liberal wackos. It's all he will have left on voting day.
Perhaps, but I'm a CONVICTED LIAR
Kerry sounds like a rambling, incoherent drunken fool.
Teresa said he was like a boy...
I didn't think he could get so far along with his emptiness. But the MSM has given him a complete pass.
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