Cheney v. Edward......Dick the sly Master of Deception.....
<!--StartFragment -->When asked about Afghanistan, Cheney talked about El Salvador; when asked about jobs, he tried to bring up education; when he was pressed on Halliburton, he directed people to a (wrong) website that doesn't answer any of the questions raised.
When he wasn't deflecting attention away from the administration's awful policy record (an arduous task, mind you), Cheney distorted the records of his opponents, distorted the Bush administration's records, and even distorted his own record. It was a busy night.
Cheney started early, by offering up this gem: "The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." This was such a stunning display of overspin that it's almost silly to bother refuting it.
But let's go ahead anyway. Here's what Cheney had to say on "Meet the Press" in September 2003: "If we're successful in Iraq, then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Cheney wasn't finished. He disputed Edwards' claim that Americans have suffered 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq, stating that if Iraqis are included, that number drops to 50 percent. An article in today's Los Angeles Times rebuts that charge the best: "[T]here are no reliable figures on Iraqi deaths. As a result, Cheney's assertion is nearly impossible to verify."
It's similarly impossible to verify Cheney's assertion that, "You [Sen. Edwards] made the comment that the Gulf War coalition in '91 was far stronger than this. No. We had 34 countries then; we've got 30 today."
It's impossible to verify simply because it's demonstrably untrue. While the numbers are right, they're terribly misleading. For instance, other countries in the coalition during the Gulf War supplied nearly one quarter of the troops. Not so today. Other countries in the coalition pledged to finance the vast majority of operations in the Gulf War. Not so today.
http://www.americanfamilyvoices.org/projects/DailyRealityCheck.asp?ID=247
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10244-2004Oct5.html?
sub=new
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<!--StartFragment -->When asked about Afghanistan, Cheney talked about El Salvador; when asked about jobs, he tried to bring up education; when he was pressed on Halliburton, he directed people to a (wrong) website that doesn't answer any of the questions raised.
When he wasn't deflecting attention away from the administration's awful policy record (an arduous task, mind you), Cheney distorted the records of his opponents, distorted the Bush administration's records, and even distorted his own record. It was a busy night.
Cheney started early, by offering up this gem: "The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." This was such a stunning display of overspin that it's almost silly to bother refuting it.
But let's go ahead anyway. Here's what Cheney had to say on "Meet the Press" in September 2003: "If we're successful in Iraq, then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Cheney wasn't finished. He disputed Edwards' claim that Americans have suffered 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq, stating that if Iraqis are included, that number drops to 50 percent. An article in today's Los Angeles Times rebuts that charge the best: "[T]here are no reliable figures on Iraqi deaths. As a result, Cheney's assertion is nearly impossible to verify."
It's similarly impossible to verify Cheney's assertion that, "You [Sen. Edwards] made the comment that the Gulf War coalition in '91 was far stronger than this. No. We had 34 countries then; we've got 30 today."
It's impossible to verify simply because it's demonstrably untrue. While the numbers are right, they're terribly misleading. For instance, other countries in the coalition during the Gulf War supplied nearly one quarter of the troops. Not so today. Other countries in the coalition pledged to finance the vast majority of operations in the Gulf War. Not so today.
http://www.americanfamilyvoices.org/projects/DailyRealityCheck.asp?ID=247
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10244-2004Oct5.html?
sub=new
<!--StartFragment -->
[font=Arial, Helvetica]Small Businesses[/font]
Cheney made a puffed-up claim that "900,000 small businesses will be hit" should Kerry and Edwards raise taxes on individuals making more than $200,000 a year, as they promise to do.
As we've explained before, 900,000 is an inflated figure that results from counting every high-income individual who reports even $1 of business income as a "small business owner." Even Cheney and his wife Lynne would qualify as a "small business owner" under that definition because Mrs. Cheney reports income as a "consultant" from fees she collects as a corporate board member, even though she had no employees and the business income is only 3.5% of the total income reported on their 2003 tax returns.
A better figure comes from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, which recently calculated that the Kerry tax increase would hit roughly 471,000 small employers. That's barely half the figure Cheney used.
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