Posted on 03/18/2004 5:33:17 PM PST by Indy Pendance
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush sought on Thursday to paint Democratic White House candidate John Kerry as indecisive, in a new television advertisement that features a clip of the Massachusetts senator talking about Iraq just two days earlier.
In a new example of the early rhetorical brawling that has marked this year's campaign, the Bush camp pounced on Kerry's explanation of a vote against Bush's request last year for $87 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The commercial is slated to run on cable stations across the country. It includes a clip of Kerry telling an audience on Tuesday, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it."
The ad closes with the words: "John Kerry: Wrong on Defense."
The broader context of Kerry's remark -- made in response to an earlier Bush ad -- was his explanation that he supported a version of the $87 billion funding proposal for Iraq that would have paid for it by repealing of Bush's tax cuts on the wealthy. But when that amendment failed, Kerry voted against the bill.
The Republican president has been hammering Kerry for opposing that money, despite his 2002 vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq, in an effort to portray him as dangerously weak and inconsistent on security issues.
Both candidates are trying to tout their credentials on national security and defense, amid the continuing U.S. war on global terrorism and instability in post-war Iraq.
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, campaigned this week among fellow veterans and Bush on Thursday visited troops at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
"John Kerry opposed a red-inked, blank check on Bush's failed Iraq policy," Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said in a statement responding to the ad, which he called "misleading."
Kerry has said that one of his concerns about the funding bill was that the Bush administration had not done enough to enlist international help with the Iraq operation.
The Kerry quotation is the same one ridiculed by Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday in aggressively attacking the four-term Massachusetts senator's voting record.
With the exception of the new quote, the rest of the nationwide advertisement is the similar to one released in West Virginia this week in which a narrator listed such things as body armor and health care for soldiers and suggested Kerry had voted against those when he opposed the $87 billion.
"The same misleading ads that the Bush/Cheney campaign dumped on the people of West Virginia, they are now dumping on the Nation," Meehan said. "The three weeks in a row of Bush misleading TV ads, and millions in cash, can't hide George Bush's record of broken promises and misleading America."
Can the Dems be any dumber? They say his policy has 'failed' on one hand and on the other they say he never had a coherent policy to start with. This 'logic' must be one of those nuance things kerry loves to use.
Kerry was endorsed by another world leader - Queen Latifah.
Yeah, I wonder how many times (none at all I bet), did Reuters refer to Bob Dole in 1996 as the "decorated WWII veteran".
"In subtle word choices and phrasings this article sends a clear message that Clinton is rhetorical brawler who unfairly attacks decorated veteran Bob Dole."
Yeah, they are some very bitter liberal scumbags. The stench comes through in everything they put out.
Really, I didn't know that.
My journalism prof spent a good deal of class time discussing objective journalism. And then he said, "Now, how do we get around that?" The rest of the class was spent discussing various ways of slanting a story--all in the name of objectivity.
Actually, this should say, "I'm for it, yes I'm against it"
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