2004 US ELECTION: Vice Presidential Debate

he he ...

finally a decent debate ... between President Cheney and VP wanna bee Edwards ...

did i say President Cheney ??? oops my bad ...

anyway .. discuss here :

[heading edited-sos]

Misterman38: "Oh Dick Cheney!"

I'll give this one to Cheney but I could barely watch it. It was just boring as hell to me and I'm really pissed they took off L&ASVU for this crap. I guess it won't be Nov 2nd either! Cheney did a good job of not going negative and Edward's biggest mistake was attcking Cheney by addressing him, RIGHT AWAY. It was uncomfortable and I have very little cable, so I just stuck around here. I'll admit defeat but also boredom. The Kerry-Bush debate was a lot more interesting but again, that might my bias.

My sum of the debate

Edwards: These guys aren't telling the truth.
Cheney: These guys are morons.

I think that they're both right.


Dirt
http://www.dirt.bz

This debate was so boring,I almost fell asleep

VP debates are useless anyway,so I wasn't really expecting much.

Edwards is kind of sexy, huh?

In a clean cut semi-rednecky well hung kind of way. huh?

The debate was much better than the President's debate.
These guys where more evenly matched and their differing styles made it more riveting.

The presidential debate was like watching Bush attend his own funeral--not terribly exciting.

AsianBomb777 said:

Cheney may have looked like he might have sort of won the debate, but today his lies are exposed on the front/home page of every media outlet.

Fact is... it's been a terrible week for the GOP on Iraq. Bremmer, Rumsfeld and a new report have underlined all the major mistakes, and the debate actually shows that Cheney continues to live in his fantasy world where every bit of intelligence he wishes to be true... is true.

Why would America want be resolutely guided by a pair of ostriches?

_____

Rewriting History
In his debate with John Edwards, Dick Cheney had a brand-new version of the events that led to war

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 4:32 p.m. ET Oct. 6, 2004


Oct. 6 - With virtually all of the administration’s original case for war in Iraq in tatters, Vice President Dick Cheney provided shifting and sometimes misleading arguments in last night’s debate with John Edwards about Saddam Hussein’s ties to terrorists and his access to weapons of mass destruction.

Cheney, responding to moderator Gwen Ifill’s first question, said that “concern” about Iraq before the war had “specifically focused” on the fact that Saddam’s regime had been listed for years by the U.S. government as a “state sponsor of terror,” that Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal operated out of Baghdad, that Saddam paid $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and that he had an “established relationship” with Al Qaeda.

But except for the allegation about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda—a claim that is now more in question than ever—the other examples cited by Cheney in Tuesday night’s debate never have been previously emphasized by Bush administration officials, and for good reasons.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the administration’s case last year before the United Nations Security Council, for example, he said nothing about Iraq being cited by the U.S. State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. The claim would have been especially unimpressive to a fellow member of the Security Council, the ambassador from Syria, whose country has been on the same list for years, as well as five other General Assembly members that are also on the list.

Powell also never brought up Abu Nidal living in Baghdad—most likely because Nidal, who hadn’t been associated with any terrorist attacks in years, was already dead. (He was shot under mysterious circumstances in 2002.) And while Powell made a brief mention of Iraq funneling money to the families of suicide bombers, this was never a prominent part of the Bush administration’s case for war—in large part because a number of other nations, most notably Saudi Arabia, have for years provided similar financial support to the families of Palestinian “martyrs.”

Cheney’s claims about an “established relationship” between Iraq and Al Qaeda were always a principal part of the administration’s case for war, cited by Powell at the United Nations and, most forcefully, by Cheney in numerous speeches and TV interviews before and after the invasion. But it is also a contention that has been seriously undermined by a series of recent U.S. government reports, including the September 11 Commission report, which concluded there was no “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Another is a recent CIA analysis, disclosed for the first time this week, raising questions about whether Jordanian terrorist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, had been harbored by Saddam’s regime before the war.

Cheney said last night that Zarqawi, who once ran a terror camp in Afghanistan with loose links to Al Qaeda, had “migrated to Baghdad” after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 and “set up shop” there, overseeing a “poisons facility” at Kurmal, in northern Iraq.

In fact, U.S. intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK, after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Zarqawi went first to Iran—a country that many officials have long believed had far more consequential relationships with terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, than Saddam’s regime. And while the new CIA report confirms that Zarqawi unquestionably did later move to Baghdad—and received medical treatment there before the war— there is still no hard evidence on whether he was being supported or assisted by Saddam’s regime. “The information on that is not clear,” said one U.S. official familiar with the report. “It’s still being worked.” Cheney also left out the fact that the alleged poisons facility that Zarqawi allegedly supervised was in a part of northern Iraq not controlled by Saddam's government.

Cheney, challenged by Edwards, insisted last night that “I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11.” But that claim is belied by an array of interviews and public comments in which Cheney has done precisely that—by repeatedly invoking claims that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent. That allegation was also debunked by the 9/11 commission after the panel found abundant evidence that Atta was actually in the United States at the time the rendezvous supposedly took place.

Cheney, for example, called the claim of an Atta meeting with an Iraqi official in Prague “pretty well confirmed” in a Dec. 9, 2001, “Meet the Press” interview. In a Sept. 8, 2002, “Meet the Press” appearance, just weeks before the congressional vote on authorizing President Bush to go to war, Cheney again returned to the issue: “We’ve seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohammed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center.” Even after CIA and FBI officials had already concluded the claims of the meeting were almost certainly false, Cheney was still referring to it in a Sept. 14, 2003 “Meet the Press” appearance. “The Czechs alleged that Mohammed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraq intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.”

Republicans last night were able to point to their own lengthy list of instances when Edwards misspoke or made “inaccurate” claims during the debate. Among them: that Edwards inflated the cost of the Iraq war (by saying it was $200 billion rather than $120 billion), by claiming that the United States has absorbed 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq (by leaving out uniformed Iraqi casualty deaths that would bring the figure down to 50 percent) and, perhaps most importantly, by saying that his running mate, John Kerry, had been “absolutely clear and consistent from the beginning about Iraq.” (Edwards himself had claimed during the primary season that Kerry’s explanations for his vote on authorizing the war in Iraq were “not clear to me … I think he’s said some different things at different points in time. So I think there there’s been some inconsistency.”)

But Cheney’s miscues on Iraq are especially notable because he has been perhaps the single most vigorous advocate—both internally and in public—for the war. And the new questions about his previous statements come at a particularly awkward time for the administration. In a 1,000-page report released this afternoon, Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concludes once and for all that Iraq had no chemical or biological weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion. In fact, the report says, Iraq had destroyed the stockpiles it did have after the first Persian Gulf War under the pressure of U.N. sanctions.

As for administration claims that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program—claims that had been championed by Cheney more than any single high-level official—Duelfer found that Saddam had actually abandoned his nuclear efforts years earlier. “He was getting further away from nuclear weapons,” a U.S. government official familiar with Duelfer’s report told reporters yesterday. “He was further away from nuclear weapons in 2003 than he was in 1991.” The nuclear program wasn’t reconstituting, the official said. It was “decaying.”

In last night's debate, Cheney largely skirted the administration's prewar claims about Iraqi WMD, although he did at one point refer to a presumed nexus between terrorists and Iraqi unconventional weapons. "The point is that that's the place where you're most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years," he said. The claim that Saddam's agents had instructed Al Qaeda terrorists in making "poisons and gasses" had in fact been a prominent feature of the administration's prewar assertions, highlighted by Powell in his Security Council speech and Cheney repeatedly in his TV appearances and speeches. But the allegation was almost entirely based on the claims of one high-level Al Qaeda detainee—first identified by NEWSWEEK as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi—who, according to the 9/11 commission, has since recanted his story. Asked if Duelfer's team had found any evidence that Iraq had provided such training for terrorists, the U.S. official familiar with Duelfer's report shook his head and said simply: "No."

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/.../newsweek/

Aerogram said:

AsianBomb777 said:

Last night in The Daily Show (and on several talk shows) - they showed the clip of Chenney saying that he had never met Edwards ... then they showed a clip of them sitting right next to each other at a Senate function.

Um... could the Vice President be lying?



[Edited 10/7/04 11:53am]

Vice President Cheney's remarks were riddled with inaccuracies -- few of the biggest whoppers below:

CHENEY'S MISLEAD: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11"

THE TRUTH: As the Washington Post reports today, Cheney has repeatedly insinuated and "strongly suggested" that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks on September 11th.[2] And in its fact check column today, the Boston Globe says "Cheney has consistently asserted strong prewar links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, even after the 9/11 Commission definitively concluded that there had not been a collaborative relationship between the two. In a radio interview in January 2004, Cheney said: 'I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.'"[3]

On December 9, 2001, Cheney went on "Meet the Press" to perpetuate the now entirely debunked theory that one of the 9/11 hijackers met with an Iraqi official.[4] He went back on a year ago to describe Iraq as part of ""the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."[5]

Most recently, Cheney has claimed that Iraq harbored the terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and said Zarqawi "is an al Qaeda associate who took refuge in Baghdad, found sanctuary and safe harbor there before we ever launched into Iraq."[6] But yesterday, a report Cheney himself requested found that there is no conclusive evidence to support that claim. An administration official said, "The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything."[7]

CHENEY'S MISLEAD: "900,000 small businesses will be hit" by the Kerry-Edwards plan to roll back tax cuts for people in the top income bracket.

THE TRUTH: As the Washington Post writes this morning: "This is misleading. Under Cheney's definition, a small business is any taxpayer who includes some income from a small business investment, partnership, limited liability corporation or trust. By that definition, every partner at a huge accounting firm or at the largest law firm would represent small businesses. According to IRS data, a tiny fraction of small business "S-corporations" earn enough profits to be in the top two tax brackets. Most are in the bottom two brackets."[8]

CHENEY'S MISLEAD: "We have added 1.7 million jobs to the economy."

THE TRUTH: On November 2nd, George Bush will be the first president in 70 years to lose jobs. There will be about a million fewer jobs than there were when Bush took office -- and about 7 million fewer than Bush's own post-9/11 estimate. Cheney's using fuzzy math: 1.7 million jobs have been added, but millions more have been lost.[9]

As Edwards mentioned, Cheney's record is pretty scary: "When he was one of 435 members of the United States House, he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start , one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors . He voted against the Department of Education . He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors . He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King . He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa ."

Let's make sure we vote him out on November 2nd.


Footnotes:

1. http://www.cbsnews.com/st...7648.shtml
2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6188565/
3. http://www.boston.com/new...he_debate/
4. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6188565/
5. Same as 4, above.
6. http://cnnstudentnews.cnn...sb.00.html
7. http://www.kansascity.com...836114.htm
8. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6188565/
9. http://www.boston.com/new...he_debate/

www.moveonpac.org -Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

CynthiasSocks said:

Cheney spat out lies from the very outset. In his opening statement hemade a connection between 9/11 and Iraq
And his idea of answering to the charges of Haliburton were to say you don't have a strong atendance record He lied and lied and lied all throughout the debate. I would give the win to Edwards for standing toe to toe with such a strong and seasoned liar

Did anybody notice how at the end of the debate Edwards stood up and shook hands with Cheney even before he could get up from the chair? Not sure if that was a calculated move or not but haven't heard anyone comment on it so far.

The debate was anything but boring. Both were articulate, responsive to questions and one another, and clearly articulated differences between them.

Neither was a clear winner from where I sat, but Edwards' message was the only message for sane voters. I think the dems have copped out on gay marriage, but in this back-assward society, to say the right thing would amount to political suicide, guarantying 4 more messed up years of greed, corruption, religious fanatacism, international dismay, and unintelligible speech.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Cheney spat out lies from the very outset. In his opening statement hemade a connection between 9/11 and Iraq
And his idea of answering to the charges of Haliburton were to say you don't have a strong atendance record He lied and lied and lied all throughout the debate. I would give the win to Edwards for standing toe to toe with such a strong and seasoned liar

Did anybody notice how at the end of the debate Edwards stood up and shook hands with Cheney even before he could get up from the chair? Not sure if that was a calculated move or not but haven't heard anyone comment on it so far.

HRC CALLS VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY’S REMARKS ON HIV/AIDS ‘INEXCUSABLE’

‘Vice President Cheney’s ignorance about the HIV/AIDS crisis is inexcusable,’ said HRC President Cheryl Jacques.

WASHINGTON — Human Rights Campaign President Cheryl Jacques made the following statement regarding remarks made by Vice President Dick Cheney last night about the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States.

“Vice President Cheney’s ignorance about the HIV/AIDS crisis is inexcusable,” said Jacques. “When asked about the effect this epidemic is having on Americans — especially communities of color — he said he was unaware of the problem.”

Jacques continued, “He failed the question, but he’s also failed millions of Americans at risk for or living with HIV infection. The administration has an abysmal record on the domestic epidemic, cutting funds for key prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and failing to adequately fund health care coverage for people with HIV. Despite this failure to fund, the administration has found resources to increase funding for abstinence-until-marriage programs by millions upon millions of dollars — programs that are unproven, untested and insufficient.”

Moderator Gwen Ifill first addressed Vice President Cheney during the debate, saying, “I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts.”

Vice President Cheney responded first about the crisis in Africa, but then answered, “Here in the United States, we've made significant progress. I have not heard those numbers with respect to African-American women. I was not aware that it was — that they’re in epidemic there.”

“Cheney was just one of 13 House members to vote against the precursor to the Ryan White CARE Act in 1988 — the AIDS Federal Policy Act,” noted Jacques. “Unlike the Bush Administration, Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards are focused on solving our HIV/AIDS crisis. Both co-sponsor the Early Treatment for HIV Act and support full funding for science-based HIV-prevention programs and the Ryan White CARE Act. The Kerry-Edwards commitment is strong and clear.”

HRC RESPONDS TO VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE COMMENTS ON SAME-SEX COUPLES

WASHINGTON — Human Rights Campaign President Cheryl Jacques made the following statement today regarding comments about same-sex couples made during the vice presidential debate.

“Tonight we saw the worst kind of flip flop. Vice President Cheney said he supported his daughter, but then said he supported President Bush’s effort to discriminate against her. John Edwards affirmed his and Senator Kerry’s support for protections for same-sex couples and chastised President Bush for using the Constitution to divide the American people.”

Aerogram said:

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Cheney spat out lies from the very outset. In his opening statement hemade a connection between 9/11 and Iraq
And his idea of answering to the charges of Haliburton were to say you don't have a strong atendance record He lied and lied and lied all throughout the debate. I would give the win to Edwards for standing toe to toe with such a strong and seasoned liar

Did anybody notice how at the end of the debate Edwards stood up and shook hands with Cheney even before he could get up from the chair? Not sure if that was a calculated move or not but haven't heard anyone comment on it so far.

Cheney was dishonest in so many ways. His contention that it was his first encounter with Edwards was not only a lie disproved by video footage... he also neglected to mention he has rarely set foot in the senate during his mandate (if anyone has the exact number, I'd like to know, but I've seen at least one report saying it was less than ten times).

He was going for broke. Quite desperate if you ask me.

XxAxX said:

shanti0608 said:

XxAxX said:

XxAxX said:

Speaking of factchecking, this funny piece from the bbc website:

Apparently when Cheney rebutted an Edwards' point during the debate he made a horrendous mistake.

He advised viewers to check the facts for themselves by visiting Factcheck.com but he in fact meant to say Factcheck.org (University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center).

So instead of being able to check the facts thousands of visitors were instead confronted with the following statement:

President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values.

Factcheck.com has nothing to do with .org and is merely a redirect ad site which in this case sent visitors to the homepage of George Soros.

Perhaps it is just as well because the real Factcheck had this to say: