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So many lies, so little time to track them 
Lie Patrol by Kevin Drum
It's easy to get cynical about politicians lying, but last night's debate was remarkable for the number of times Dick Cheney told flat-out fibs. Both candidates stretched the facts here and there, and both of them sometimes left out important context -- but Cheney was the only one to brazenly lie in front of a national audience, and he did it at least half a dozen times. Here's a summary: [more]
A modest collection of Dick Cheney lies by Fleischer
10 lies of Dick Cheney by JP Kennedy
Cheney seems to be losing his lying touch
Cheney Blunder Lauded Anti-Bush Web Site by Joanne Kenen
Vice President Dick Cheney probably did not intend to direct millions of television viewers to a Web site calling for President Bush's defeat but that's what a slip of the domain achieved.
Anyone who heeded Cheney's advice and clicked on "factcheck.com" on Wednesday morning was redirected to the site of anti-Bush billionaire investor George Soros that had a banner message saying "Why we must not reelect President Bush."
The GeorgeSoros.com site later put up a notice saying that it does not own factcheck.com and was not responsible for directing readers from that site to the Soros message. "We are as surprised as anyone by this turn of events," it said.
A lawyer for the factcheck.com site was not available for comment.
Defending his record as Halliburton's chief executive, Cheney said in the Tuesday night debate that Democratic vice-presidential challenger John Edwards (news - web sites) was trying to use Halliburton as a smokescreen. Any voter who wanted the facts, Cheney said, should check out factcheck.com -- which led to the Soros site.
The Web site Cheney had in mind, factcheck.org, was not amused when the vice president proved that he was not master of the factcheckers' domain.
Factcheck.org, run by the Annenberg Center of the University of Pennsylvania, said on its site on Wednesday that Cheney not only got the domain name confused, he had mischaracterized its fact-finding.
"Cheney ... wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards was making about what Cheney had done as chief executive officer of Halliburton," the site said on Wednesday.
"In fact we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right."
The White House Web site annotated the debate transcript, parenthetically noting that Cheney meant factcheck.org, not factcheck.com. It linked the transcript to factcheck.org.
FactCheck.org is being hammered today and loading very slowly.
The Duelfer Report
U.S. Report Finds Iraq Was Minimal Weapons Threat in '03 by Douglas Jehl
Iraq now appears to have destroyed its stockpiles of illicit weapons within months of the Persian Gulf war of 1991, and by the time of the American invasion in spring 2003, its capacity to produce such weapons was continuing to erode, the top American inspector in Iraq said in a report made public today.
The report by Charles A. Duelfer said the last Iraqi factory capable of producing militarily significant quantities of unconventional weapons was destroyed in 1996. The finding amounted to the starkest portrayal yet of a vast gap between the Bush administration's prewar assertions about Iraqi weapons and what a 15-month postinvasion inquiry by American investigators has concluded were the facts on the ground.
At the time of the American invasion, Mr. Duelfer concluded, Iraq had not possessed military-scale stockpiles of illicit weapons for a dozen years and was not actively seeking to produce them. [more]
Bush used some of his 50 minutes of free airtime today during his "major speech" to try and deflate the report.
"Liberal" media gives Bush 50 min. free airtime
White House dupes press ... again by Eric Boehlert
It looks like the White House pulled a fast one on the 24-hour news channels this morning as President Bush grabbed 50 minutes of free, uninterrupted TV airtime one month before Election Day. News outlets were told in advance Bush would give a substantive speech addressing key policy issues, which is why they agreed to carry it. (They're not in the habit of running stump speeches in their entirety.) Days ago, the speech was billed as an address on medical liability reform. Then on Monday, White House aides announced the speech would address the "war on terror" and the economy. And that's how the cable outlets dutifully hyped it this morning:
-- "President Bush heads to [Pennsylvania] for what is billed as a major speech." -- MSNBC
-- "President Bush heading to Pennsylvania for what's called a significant speech on the economy and the war on terror." -- CNN
-- "President Bush is making what's being called a significant speech on Iraq and the economy." -- Fox News
Instead, the address, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., was nothing more than a raucous Bush pep rally as the president unleashed his most sustained and personal attacks on Sen. John Kerry to date, portraying him as an out of touch liberal who cannot be trusted to defend America, while Republican loyalists in the crowd booed and jeered each mention of Kerry's name. Bush charged that Kerry proposed "an artificial timetable to pull troops out of Iraq...even if the job is not done," and insisted, "Senator Kerry has a strategy of retreat. I have a strategy of victory." In a sense, the speech was Bush's mulligan -- his do-over -- for last Thursday night, as he forcefully, if belatedly, defended the war in Iraq, and accused Kerry of being soft of terrorism. Of course, without Kerry being present it was easier for Bush to make his points.
The question is, why did all three news channels cover the attack speech for nearly an hour? In the past, they have occasionally cut away to both candidates' stump speeches for five or ten minutes, but certainly never for 50 minutes. [click through the ad then scroll down to read the entire article]
Tort of a different color
U.S. Businesses File Four Times More Lawsuites Than Private Citizens And Are Sanctioned Much More Often for Frivolous Suits: But Corporate America and Political Allies Bush and Cheney Campaign to Limit Citizens' Rights to Sue
American businesses file four times as many lawsuits as do individuals represented by trial attorneys, and they are penalized by judges much more often for pursuing frivolous litigation, according to a report issued today by Public Citizen.
The survey of case filings in two states (Arkansas and Mississippi) and two local jurisdictions (Cook County, Ill., and Philadelphia, Pa.) in 2001 found that businesses were 3.3 to 5.8 times more likely to file lawsuits than were individuals. This comes as businesses and politicians are campaigning to limit citizens' rights to sue over everything from medical malpractice damages to defective products. By way of comparison, the number of American consumers (281 million) outnumbers the number of businesses in America (7 million) by 40 times.
The report also found that businesses and their attorneys were 69 percent more likely than individual tort plaintiffs and their attorneys to be sanctioned by federal judges for filing frivolous claims or defenses. The report, Frequent Filers: Corporate Hypocrisy in Accessing the Courts, is available by clicking here.
"Corporations think America is too litigious only when they are on the receiving end of a lawsuit," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "But when they feel aggrieved, businesses are far more likely to take their beef to court than are consumers." [more]
Going it alone
France Was Ready to Send Troops to Iraq, Book Says by Glenn Kessler
French officials were prepared to provide as many as 15,000 troops for an invasion of Iraq before relations soured between the Bush administration and the French government over the timing of an attack, according to a new book published in France this week.
The book, "Chirac Contre Bush: L'Autre Guerre" ("Chirac vs. Bush: The Other War"), reports that a French general, Jean Patrick Gaviard, visited the Pentagon to meet with Central Command staff on Dec. 16, 2002 -- three months before the war began -- to discuss a French contribution of 10,000 to 15,000 troops and to negotiate landing and docking rights for French jets and ships.
French military officials were especially interested in joining in an attack, because they felt that not participating with the United States in a major war would leave French forces unprepared for future conflicts, according to Thomas Cantaloube, one of the authors. But the negotiations did not progress far before French President Jacques Chirac decided that the Americans were pushing too fast to short-circuit inspections by U.N. weapons inspectors.
Chirac, the book says, was prepared to join in an attack if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had not allowed inspectors into Iraq. "Up until December 2002, what everyone told us is that France thought Saddam Hussein was going to make a mistake and not allow inspections," Cantaloube said in an interview. After inspectors appeared to make progress in Iraq, Chirac's thinking changed, especially after polls in France showed vast opposition to an attack.
White House officials declined to comment.
The book is a detailed recounting of the deteriorating relationship between President Bush and Chirac by two journalists based in Washington and Paris for the newspaper Le Parisien. The journalists, Cantaloube and Henri Vernet, said they interviewed more than 50 military and diplomatic officials in both countries. [more]
What bugs me the most...
Both Bush and Cheney have now stated that given the chance to do things over again in Iraq they would do exactly what they have already done. This means one of two things:
1. They are so self-righteously and egomaniacally sure of themselves that they can't imagine even minor problems or errors in their judgements, decisions and actions, or,
2. They are liars and don't give a damn, and are counting on the stupidity of the electorate to not notice and vote for them anyway.
Otherwise, I thought John Edwards did a good job in the debate, and that Cheney seemed to be off-his-game.
Debate reviews
Joshua Micah Marshall -- Vice-Presidential debate review
(...)
Another point that I believe will ripple over the next few days is that Vice President Cheney told a number of just straight-up falsehoods during the foreign policy portion of the debate. And that creates lots of grist for Democrats in the on-going debate spin war.
I didn't take close notes and I don't have a transcript available. But there was the time when the VP said he'd never suggested Saddam was connected to 9/11 -- which will come back to haunt him. And there were a number of other Iraq, WMD and 9/11-whoppers.
Then there was the time when he said that a major reason for the decline of suicide bombings in Israel is that Saddam is no longer paying those $25,000 bounties to the families of the bombers.
That's got to be one of the stupidest I've ever heard. No one believes that. And I'm sure he'll be ridiculed endlessly for saying it. [more
Cheney quotes on Iraq and 9/11
Cheney's Pants Spontaneously Immolated by Digby
Edwards was excellent as I knew he would be. Articulate, engaging and smart. If anybody had the mistaken idea that they could Quayle this guy, he certainly proved them wrong tonight.
But I think Cheney may have set a record for how many times a candidate can outright, baldfacedly lie in an hour and a half on national television. And that's saying something. He and Junior really are living in some sort of dreamworld where they apparently don't have to worry that their every previous public statement is noted and available for the whole world to see. Here on planet earth we have google and lexis-nexis and we can dig up all the examples of when they said things they claim they didn't say.
The most obvious is Dick's continued insistence that he's never said there was a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam. Fergawd's sake. But the debate was riddled with an amazing array of outright lies by Cheney from small ones like "I'd never met him before tonight" to huge ones like suggesting that there has been a drop in suicide bombings in Israel because Saddam isn't paying a bounty. This article captures a few, but there are many more that will be fleshed out over the next few days.
I predict that once the full scope of the lies Cheney told tonight are artfully dribbled out by the Democrats over the next couple of days, Cheney's respectable "draw" will turn into a rout. This isn't 2000 and the Democrats are not going to stand for this shit this time. [more]
Mixed messages by Michael Berube
So I caught the replay of the debate on C-SPAN late last night, and I found out, to my surprise, that Cheney has never claimed that there was any connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. And here I was, all this time, thinking that there was a connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda and that Cheney had told me so! My bad! Then Cheney looked directly at me, right through the TV screen, and told me that I was getting sleepy, very sleepy. Then I had a really weird dream where this bald guy in a chef apron was snarling at me and serving me pork sausage Gitmo style.
I'm so confused.
A pictures worth...
Click the pictures and read all about it.
War profiteering
Funds to Rebuild Iraq Are Drifting Away From Target by Jonathan Weisman and Robin Wright
As little as 27 cents of every dollar spent on Iraq's reconstruction has actually filtered down to projects benefiting Iraqis, a statistic that is prompting the State Department to fundamentally rethink the Bush administration's troubled reconstruction effort.
Between soaring security costs, corruption and mismanagement, contractors' profits, and U.S. governmental costs, reconstruction funding is being drained away, leaving little left to improve the lives of Iraqis, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. Senior administration officials and congressional experts on the reconstruction effort called the analysis credible. One senior U.S. official familiar with reconstruction suggested as little as a quarter of the funding is reaching its intended projects.
The State Department will acknowledge the problem in a quarterly report to Congress today and say that the United States is trying to accelerate aid and redirect how it is spent, U.S. officials said yesterday. But the Bush administration is still not meeting the goal it set this summer to inject $300 million to $400 million monthly into Iraq's economy by Sept. 1, the officials said.
(...)
With little fanfare, Congress last week approved the Bush administration's request to reallocate $3.46 billion from long-term infrastructure projects to more pressing security and job-creation programs. The transfer marks a significant refocusing of the year-old, $18.4 billion effort to rebuild Iraq.
But administration officials, lawmakers and think tanks say major changes are needed not only in what the reconstruction money is spent on but also how it is spent. Too much money has been filtered through major American businesses such as Halliburton Co. and Bechtel Corp. on large-scale electricity, water and oil infrastructure projects, and not nearly enough has gone to smaller, more decentralized reconstruction efforts that could be handled by Iraqis, they say. [more]
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