trying to grok

FISK

OK, I'm not normally a fisker, but the bias in this Reuters article really ticked me off.

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.

"Sought...to paint" him this way. Wasn't successful though. But poor Dubya tried really hard.

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."

Cowboy Bush has "pounced" on poor little Kerry. All this shameful "brawling" over something so minor as voting for something and then opposing it. Why should this matter to the public? It's not like anyone pays attention to voting records anyway, right?

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.

Reuters jumps to Kerry's defense to explain the context of his ridiculous quote, and then says Bush is "hammering" him, trying to make him look weak. Not succeeding, though. Poor Dubya.

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.

Ooo, look! A chance to throw in that he's "a decorated Vietnam veteran"!

"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 (news - web sites) Wednesday in aggressively attacking the four-term Massachusetts senator's voting record.

Mean old Cheney is picking on Kerry. Those measly voting records. Who cares about those anyway? It's not like it's on the importance level of, say, National Guard sign-in sheets.

With the exception of the new quote, the rest of the nationwide advertisement is the similar (sic) 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."

Couldn't find anyone from the White House to interview? Bush has nothing to say in defense of his commercials?

Can you not feel this dripping with bias? It's really disgusting. I know this isn't even the worst of these articles; I've seen much worse in the handling of Israel. But for whatever reason, this one ticked me off today.

Posted by Sarah at March 19, 2004 01:28 PM