" I united a country divided between aerosol-free hair spray and hard-to-hold styling gel."
Posted on 10/05/2004 9:38:42 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - In a strikingly personal and bitter debate, Vice President Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration's record on Iraq on Tuesday night as "exactly the right thing to do'' and asserted that Senators John Kerry and John Edwards bent with the political winds on national security.
Mr. Edwards fired back with a wide-ranging assault on the administration's honesty and competence in foreign and domestic policy. "One thing that's very clear is that a long résumé does not equal good judgment," Mr. Edwards declared, in one of many sharp exchanges that spoke to the closeness of the race and the differences between the two tickets.
Mr. Cheney was defiantly unapologetic about the course of the conflict in Iraq, defending the Administration against the charge that it had failed to provide enough troops to stabilize Iraq, as the former top American official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, said in a speech on Monday. Mr. Cheney said he would recommend the same course in Iraq if he had it to do over again, adding, "The world is safer today because Saddam Hussein is in jail, his government's no longer in power, and we did exactly the right thing.'' [Excerpts, Page A20, video, nytimes.com.]
Mr. Edwards immediately shot back, "Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people.'' He repeatedly charged that Mr. Cheney had conflated the threat from Mr. Hussein with Al Qaeda, and argued that the United States needed a "fresh start'' and new leadership if it was to succeed in Iraq.
The bitter tone of the debate, held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, extended across a range of issues, from Mr. Cheney's tenure as chief executive of Halliburton to Mr. Edward's voting record in the Senate.
After what many viewed as a lackluster performance by Mr. Bush in last week's debate, Mr. Cheney returned to the harsh attacks of the Republican convention, asserting that Mr. Kerry was unprincipled on national security and could not be trusted to be as aggressive as the Republicans in protecting the nation.
He asserted that the Kerry-Edwards ticket had shifted positions to suit its political needs. "Now, if they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to Al Qaeda?"' Mr. Cheney asked.
Five days after Mr. Bush's first encounter with Mr. Kerry, in Florida last Thursday, Mr. Cheney was under pressure to halt any momentum the Democratic ticket had picked up and sharpen the Republican assault on Mr. Kerry. After weeks in which Mr. Bush held a steady lead, polls have shown the race tightening markedly, to a statistical dead heat in several of them.
For Mr. Edwards, the 90-minute debate, moderated by Gwen Ifill of PBS, was his biggest test yet, pitting him against a far more experienced opponent.
Mr. Edwards appeared to hold his own in the remarkably intense thrust and parry of the evening, matching Mr. Cheney blow for blow and at times putting Mr. Cheney on the defensive. But their confrontation contained nothing that is likely to alter the race fundamentally, and the focus is likely to shift rapidly back to the top of their respective tickets. Mr. Bush is giving a speech on terrorism and the economy on Wednesday morning, and he and Mr. Kerry will debate each other two more times, on Friday in St. Louis and next Wednesday in Tempe, Ariz.
With so much at stake, both men unleashed their sharpest attacks, each describing his opponent -- seated just inches away -- with withering contempt. Referring to Halliburton, Mr. Edwards said, "The facts are, the vice president's company, that he was CEO of, that did business with sworn enemies of the United States, paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false financial information.'' That company, Mr. Edwards added, ended up with a $7.5 billion no-bid contract for work in Iraq.
Mr. Cheney shot back that the Democrat was raising Halliburton as a smokescreen to obscure his own record in the Senate, which was, he asserted, "not very distinguished' and marked by so many missed votes that a local newspaper called him "Senator Gone.'' The vice president added that he was presiding officer of the Senate, yet, "The first time I ever met you was when you walked onto the stage tonight.''
Mr. Edwards, his sunny smile gone cold, replied that Mr. Cheney's voting record included voting against such popular programs and initiatives as Head Start, the creation of the Department of Education, meals on wheels for the elderly, and a federal holiday to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
One of the rare moments of personal warmth Tuesday night came on the issue of gay marriage. Mr. Cheney, who has a gay daughter, reiterated his support for the idea that marriage should be regulated by the states, in contrast to Mr. Bush's call for a federal constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. "People ought to be free to choose any arrangement they want,'' he said. "It's really no one else's business.'' Mr. Edwards praised Mr. Cheney for openly embracing his daughter.
When the moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS, turned the discussion to domestic policy, Mr. Edwards jumped in with gusto, noting that Mr. Bush was the first president in 70 years to preside over a net loss of jobs.
From the first moments of the debate, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Edwards clashed sharply and directly on Iraq. Mr. Cheney, pressing the party's attacks of recent days, asserted that Mr. Kerry had embraced a "global test" for the preemptive use of force in last week's debate.
Mr. Cheney described it as a "part of a track record that goes back to the 1970s'' of being "on the wrong side of defense issues," and said the Democrats gave no indication of being willing to go forward aggressively in the war on terror.
Mr. Edwards countered, "What John Kerry said, and it's just as clear as day to anybody who was listening, He said, 'We will find terrorists where they are and kill them before they ever do harm to the American people."
Mr. Edwards pointed out that Mr. Kerry had explicitly said he would never give any other nation a veto over American national security decisions. But he said the American people and the rest of the world deserved to know the full truth about why the United States was going to war.
"It is critical that we be credible," Mr. Edwards said. "They need to know that the credibility of the United States is always good."
The two candidates met around a table, a format favored by Mr. Cheney's team because they said it would play to what they characterized as the vice president's strengths: his low-key but earnest manner. The atmosphere from the start was chilly. The two men came out on stage, shook hands and then immediately sat down and began taking notes on yellow legal pads, exchanging barely a glance.
The personal contrast between the two vice presidential candidates could not have been more striking. At 51, Mr. Edwards was participating in his first one-on-one televised debate, a measure of his meteoric six-year rise in electoral politics, from millionaire trial lawyer to first-term senator from North Carolina to the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket.
Even so, Republicans asserted that his skills as a courtroom lawyer steeped in the Southern populist tradition made him a formidable opponent. Before the debate, Matthew Dowd, President Bush's campaign strategist and an expert in the art of lowering political expectations for his team, called Mr. Edwards a "cross between Atticus Finch and William Jennings Bryan."
Mr. Cheney's job was made all the more difficult by a confluence of events, including the continued violence in Iraq, that raised questions about his advocacy of the invasion of Iraq and the administration's planning for what came after Saddam Hussein was deposed.
In a speech on Monday, L. Paul Bremer, who oversaw the American presence in Iraq until the handover of sovereignty early this summer, said the United States had failed to put enough troops on the ground to assure security in Iraq. Mr. Kerry seized on Mr. Bremer's comments to buttress his case that Mr. Bush had mishandled the war, a line of argument Mr. Edwards pressed.
Mr. Cheney said that Iraq had been an appropriate target after the Sept. 11 attacks because of its "established relationship with Al Qaeda'' and that Iraq had been the ''nexus'' that could provide terrorists with access to nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
But Mr. Edwards, in his first response, challenged Mr. Cheney's credibility, saying: "Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people.'' Senator Edwards charged that Mr. Cheney and President Bush "continue to tell people things are going well in Iraq,'' an assertion he said was obviously false to the American people who can see otherwise everyday on television.
Mr. Edwards also accused Mr. Cheney of falsely lining the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and Iraq. "There is no connection between attacks of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. You said there is some connection; there is not.''
When Ms. Ifill asked if a Kerry-Edwards administration would have acted differently when confronted with the threat of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Edwards said that Saddam Hussein "needed to be confronted'' but that .United Nations weapons inspectors should have been given more time. He said the American invasion of March 200 had distracted attention fom Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, who were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We had Osama bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora,'' he said. "We had the finest military in the world on the ground.' Mr. Edwards stumbled once, though, and began to refer to Osama Bin Laden as Saddam Hussein."Listen carefully to what the vice president is saying,'' said Mr. Edwards, "because there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11, period. The 9/11 commission has said it's true, Colin Powell has said it's true, but the Vice President has suggested there is. But there's not.''
Asked whether the administration moved to quickly to leave the fight in Afghanistan, Mr. Cheney said the administration has "never let up on Osama Bin Laden from Day One. We'll continue to aggressively pursue him and I'm confident we'll get him.''
In other words, Cheney cleaned the Silky Pony's clock.
One thing that's very clear is that a long résumé does not equal good judgment,"
He can say that again, Kerry's got a 30 year resume and his judgement SUX!!
This is the most awful one sided reporting of this debate I've seen yet.
I thought so too. It's almost as if they were watching a different debate.
"One of the rare moments of personal warmth Tuesday night came on the issue of gay marriage. Mr. Cheney, who has a gay daughter, reiterated his support for the idea that marriage should be regulated by the states, in contrast to Mr. Bush's call for a federal constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. "People ought to be free to choose any arrangement they want,'' he said. "It's really no one else's business.'' Mr. Edwards praised Mr. Cheney for openly embracing his daughter."
Moments of PERSONAL WARMTH??? Is it possible these people really think this way?
Agreed. Cheney took that youngsters lunch money!
See you saw what I was having trouble with. :)
This also frustrates me. I've heard several soldiers that are angry because of the MSM lying about what's really happening in Iraq. They say it's not at all as it's being portrayed. Bush/Cheney are being accused of lying when it's the MSM who is doing the lying. At best, MSM is only giving one side of the picture.
Edwards brought up Cheney's daughter and endlessly talked about her before Cheney had mentioned her.
Is that civil or appropriate? Even in politics?
" I united a country divided between aerosol-free hair spray and hard-to-hold styling gel."
"Attack, Dick! Attack!"
Those with the most at stake in Iraq personally, are the armed forces. They favor keeping the current commander-in-chief by a margin of 4-to-1. Spin that NYT. Or even just report it.
If you were hiring someone, one of the most important parts of the job interview is the discussion of the candidate's abilities to do the job as evidenced by his/her prior accomplishments (and disappointments). And the more important the position, the greater that discussion.
The Democrat ticket has made an unusual number of promises about what they will deliver. What gives anyone any level of comfort that they will be able to deliver on any of those promises? I heard some liberals criticize what they perceive as George Bush's lack of curiosity, but who lack the curiosity here?
These are the same people who consider partial-birth abortion a loving option. In a word, they are depraved.
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