October 29, 200421 yr Bad News Dogs Bush As Election Nears 2 hours, 17 minutes ago By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer LINK YARDLEY, Pa. - The presidency comes with powerful tools that can help incumbents keep their jobs: a mighty public-relations machine, a bully pulpit, a famous airplane. Yet President Bush (news - web sites) has been powerless to halt a recent tide of bad news, from surging violence and missing weapons in Iraq (news - web sites), to missteps by his own campaign, to a potentially damaging new probe by his own FBI (news - web sites). The inconvenient news has been magnified in the superheated atmosphere of the final week of Bush's tight race with Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites). In a Friday speech, Kerry hoped to stoke the latest revelation: news that the FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon (news - web sites) improperly awarded no-bid military contracts to Halliburton Co., formerly headed by Vice President d*** Cheney (news - web sites). His running mate, John Edwards (news - web sites), said, "The special treatment of Halliburton is wrong." For four straight days, Bush had been dogged by a report that nearly 400 tons of explosives disappeared from Iraq's Al-Qaqaa military installation. Bush aides winced when former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a frequent Bush campaign partner and surrogate, said the troops in Iraq, not Bush, bore the responsibility for searching for the explosives. "No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough ? didn't they search carefully enough?" Giuliani said on NBC's "Today" program. There was more: The U.N. nuclear agency said U.S. officials were warned about the vulnerability of explosives stored at the installation after another facility was looted. Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP-TV, which had a crew embedded with the 101st Airborne Division during the war, released videotape that it said showed soldiers examining explosives at the massive Al-Qaqaa facility nine days after the fall of Baghdad. The video could possibly undermine Bush's suggestion the explosives were looted before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The presidency is a mixed blessing for incumbents seeking a second term, said Ken Khachigian, who worked in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses. "You have to take the good with the bad," Khachigian said. "The good is, you're the president of the United States, flying on Air Force One and military helicopters. It's pretty impressive, and that's been helping the president." At the same time, "there's a natural tendency in the media to try to expose the incumbent," he said. But some of the headlines hurting Bush are not directly related to the campaign. Thursday, there was new horror from Iraq: Insurgents slaughtered 11 Iraqi soldiers, beheading one, then shooting the others execution-style. Two more U.S. soldiers were killed ? one in a car bombing in Baghdad, and the other in an ambush near Balad, 40 miles north of the capital. More than 1,100 U.S. service members have died since Bush launched the Iraq war in March 2003. A new survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months since the U.S.-led invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war. Voters were reminded in the week before the election that the cost in dollars is soaring too. Bush plans to send Congress a request of up to $75 billion early next year for additional money to finance wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites) and operations against terrorism, congressional aides said earlier this week. That's on top of $215 billion that lawmakers have provided since 2001 to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan and begin rebuilding those countries. Bush's camp prides itself on its professionalism, but his re-election campaign acknowledged Thursday that it had doctored a photograph used in a television commercial to remove the president and the podium where he was standing. The campaign said the ad will be re-edited and reshipped to TV stations. A group of soldiers in the crowd was electronically copied to fill in the space where the president and the podium had been, aides say. In his addresses Thursday, Bush skated past the bad news, sticking to his prepared remarks and avoiding reporters. On Iraq, he emphasized that elections are scheduled for January. "Think how far that society has come from the days of torture chambers and mass graves," Bush said in Saginaw, Mich. "Freedom is on the march!" Khachigian said the Bush White House should counterattack vigorously. "I'm not going to second-guess what they're doing, but I'd encourage the president to be very aggressive, and it would be to his political advantage to lay the strap to Kerry," Khachigian said. Specifically, Bush should step up his denunciations of Kerry for whipping up the missing-explosives affair, Khachigian said.
October 29, 200421 yr Author Like I said earlier...the damage is done on the weapons thing. Point Kerry. 603756[/snapback] I think Giulliani made it worse... He blamed the troops for it. :blink:
October 29, 200421 yr Author Ya, I saw that. Burn him at the stake! Traitor! 603775[/snapback] :lol :lol The Neocons are saying: :ban Giulliani
October 29, 200421 yr Like I said earlier...the damage is done on the weapons thing.? Point Kerry. 603756[/snapback] I think Giulliani made it worse... He blamed the troops for it. :blink: 603771[/snapback] They are responsible - Fox is now reporting some Major stepped up and admitted that his unit destroyed 200 tons of the stuff after we got there. Do the math 200 tons destroyed successfully 180 tons misrepresented, actually 3 or something like that Net "missing" tonnage - pretty close to ZERO - about what the NYT's credibility is these days :lol 604024[/snapback] You get mud on your keyboard when you typed that? Because youve been spinning your ass off on this the past few days.
October 30, 200421 yr But those 250 tons were not located under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency -- as the missing high-grade explosives had been -- and Pentagon spokesman Admin Di Rita could not definitely say whether they were part of the missing 377 tons. Maj. Austin Pearson, speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon, said his team removed 250 tons of TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords, and white phosphorous rounds on April 13, 2003 -- 10 days after U.S. forces first reached the Al-Qaqaa site. "I did not see any IAEA seals at any of the locations we went into. I was not looking for that," Pearson said. Di Rita sought to point to Pearson's comments as evidence that some RDX, one of the high-energy explosives, might have been removed from the site. RDX is also known as plastic explosive. But Di Rita acknowledged: "I can't say RDX that was on the list of IAEA is what the major pulled out. ... We believe that some of the things they were pulling out of there were RDX." Further study was needed, Di Rita said.
October 30, 200421 yr They are responsible - Fox is now reporting some Major stepped up and admitted that his unit destroyed 200 tons of the stuff after we got there. Do the math 200 tons destroyed successfully 180 tons misrepresented, actually 3 or something like that Net "missing" tonnage - pretty close to ZERO - about what the NYT's credibility is these days :lol 604024[/snapback] You get mud on your keyboard when you typed that? Because youve been spinning your ass off on this the past few days. I'm not seeing any attempts at refutation here. Your silence on the substance is deafening... The "story" is developing to in a way that it appears to be 100% USDA pure opportunistic B.S. on the part of the Kerry and his lapdogs at NYT and CBS. It turned sour in a short enough period that the B.S. aspect WILL get out to a lot of the public. With the stink of Rathergate still fresh in their minds, this can do nothing but damage Kerry from now until Nov 2. Kerry is in trouble - Hawaii is slipping away with Edwards having to rush out there to do damage control... NJ might be in play... 604147[/snapback] I dont see any reputation effects on the Times? Wanna show me evidence on how it has? And sorry, Drudge the sludge and other right wing nut jobs dont count. As far as the conclusions of this, you put together all your evidence and I put together all mine and we get different conclusions on what happend. Youve proven nothing that is the smoking gun to save Bush. So Bush at best managed to drown it in plausible distinctions. All this after a terrible week of news for him. But since you didnt refute each and every one of my claims, Ill take that as acceptance too. Just because youve convinced yourself in that head of yours, doesnt mean its how reality is. Lets be honest here. Who was attacking the other for letting weapons get into terrorist hands and who was attacking the other for "jumping to conclusions." Which one would bother people more? Id say the average person the former. Which one would you rather be accused of? Id say the latter. But not you. Look at it this way. What was Bush doing this week? Trying to explain what happend. They were trying to unspin the crap against them like Gulliani's soldier attack. Then saying Kerry jumped to conclusions. He was defensive and offensive. What was Kerry? Was he ever defending himself for jumping to conclusions as you claim? Nope. He turned it around on Bush and the WMDs. Kerry was all offense. Match, Kerry. And this is backfiring on Kerry? :lol Thats laughable. NJ is just as in play as Arkansas. Look at the most recent polls: FD-Univ=Kerry 45, Bush 38 Rasmusses=Kerry 52, Bush 44 Survey USA=Kerry 51 Bush 43 The closest Bush gets in Quinnipac which has it tied at 46. Incumbent rule kills Bush on that one. Sorry, try again. As far as Hawaii, clearly youre a bit lost in space because the Hawaii poll came out before this stuff hit the news. So thank you for exposing your spin in the open. But Ill try and see what its like to spin like you. Bush had leads in three major tracking polls(TIPP, Zogby, and Wash Post) and now all three leads are gone. Does that mean your full of crap?
October 30, 200421 yr So why is Edwards going to Hawaii again?? So why did Kerry feel the need for a Philly rally again?? With NJ and PA "locked up" that would seem to be a waste of time and money. Your man is fading fast... 604204[/snapback] Nice job totally trying to change the issue. So then you admit youre absolutley wrong to assert that Edwards going to Hawaii is because of backlash of Kerry "jumping to conclusions"? Im glad you realize that. Really I do. And once again your logic can be turned around on Bush. Why is Bush campaigning in Colorado? Why is he campaigning in Nevada? Your chimp is fading fast... Oh, and since you didnt answer my inquiry into proving NYT being made less credible, Ill assume, since you always claims others do, that you adopt my position. And since you also wont address the tracking polls. Ill also assume you adopt those positons too. And since you havent address my points on why this is worse for Bush, Ill assume those are adopted too.
October 30, 200421 yr I don't believe I've made any such claim - a quoteback is in order. ok: With the stink of Rathergate still fresh in their minds, this can do nothing but damage Kerry from now until Nov 2. Kerry is in trouble - Hawaii is slipping away with Edwards having to rush out there to do damage control Really bad at transitions or just not realizing what you type? Sigh...for the 26th time - I'm not a Bush supporter - I'm anti-Kerry. Badnarik is my man. ABK Yeah whatever. But whats bad for Bush is good for Kerry so your claims that Kerry is falling because he is in Penn and NJ are easily crushed since Bush is in his owned states too.
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