4H
NEWS
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2004
Edwards, Cheney clash, refute each others' 'facts'
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CLEVELAND — Sen. John Edwards accused the Bush administration Tuesday night of bungling the war in Iraq and presiding over a historic loss of jobs.
"Your facts are just wrong." Vice President Dick Cheney shot back in a crackling campaign debate.
In a clash at close quarters. Edwards accused Cheney of "not being straight" with the American people about the war. He said U.S. casualties are rising monthly and the United States is bearing 90 percent of the cost and suffering 90 percent of the dead and wounded.
dead and wounded.
Cheney promptly challenged those figures, saying the Iraqi security forces had taken nearly half of the casualties.
"For you to demean their sacrifice is beyond the pale," he said to Edwards seated a few feet away.
"Oh, I'm not," Edwards protested before the vice president cut him off.
"Frankly, senator, you have a record that's not very distinguished." Cheney said to the North Carolina lawmaker after accusing him of a pattern of absences in the Senate during his one term.
In a jab at the Bush-Cheney campaign's claim on experience, he said. "Mr. Vice President, I don't think the country can take four more years of this type of experience."
He also said that as a member of Congress more than a decade ago, Cheney voted against Head Start and banning plastic guns that can escape detection in metal detectors.
Edwards was on the attack from the opening moments of the debate.
He said that in addition to mismanaging the war in Iraq, the administration had Osama bin
Laden cornered in Afghanistan at one point, but turned over the hunt for him to Afghan warlords.
"The senator has got his facts wrong," said Cheney. "We've never let up on Osama bin Laden from day one. We've actively and aggressively pursued him."
In rebuttal to Edwards' charges on the war, Cheney repeatedly criticized the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry, for shifting positions on the conflict.
Referring to Kerry's debate with President Bush last week, Cheney said the four-term Massachusetts senator had declared he would submit American military commitments overseas to a global test.
He said that was part of a record that led Kerry to oppose the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 and "always being on the wrong side" of defense issues.
On domestic issues, Edwards said Bush has presided over a loss of jobs during his administration — the first president to do so since Herbert Hoover sat in the White House. He also said more Americans are in poverty, and living without health insurance, than when the president took the oath of office in 2001.
seek to take action.
Edwards denied that even before the vice president said it, noting that the Democratic proposal calls for rolling back the Bush tax cuts on only those earning $200,000 or more a year.
But Cheney said jobs were being created, and said a Kerry-Edwards administration would seek to raise taxes.
carrying Cheeney, whose daughter, Mary, is a lesbian, spoke supportively about gay relationships and said that "people ought to be free to choose any arrangement they want." At the same time, Bush supports passage of a constitutional marriage to ban
gay marriage, and Cheney said. "He sets policy for this administration, and I support him."
Edwards said it was obvious that the Chenes loved their daughter and that "you can't have anything but respect" for them. "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and so does John Kerry." Edwards said. But, he added, "We should not use the Constitution to divide this country."
Edwards also charged that Cheney, as the chief executive officer of Halliburton, pushed to lift U.S. sanctions against Iran, did business with countries that were "sworn enemies of the United States," and that Halliburton paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false information "just like Enron and Ken Lay," the now indicted former chief.
her mother.
Cheney accused Edwards of "trying to throw up a smoke screen" and said "there's no sub
stance to the charges"
Kerry and Edwards have sought to link Cheney to Halliburton as a symbol of corporate greed and insider connections. Halliburton has reported making more than $7.6 billion so far from U.S. government contracts in Iraq.
The Republican said Kerry voted to authorize the war, then voted against an $87 billion aid package for Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Democratic primary politics were at work at that point. "If they couldn't stand up to pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to al-Qaida?" he said.
Democratic oppose Bush and Kerry will debate twice more, the next time being on Friday in St. Louis and Oct. 13 in Arizona.
salt.
It was the only debate of the campaign for Cheney and his Democratic opponent.
White House backs Bush's moves in Iraq
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The White House staunchly defended its Iraq policy Tuesday as new questions emerged about President Bush's prewar decisions and postwar planning.
An impending weapons report undercut the administration's main rationale for the war, and the former head of the American occupation said the United States had too few troops in Iraq after the invasion.
Four weeks before Election Day, Democrat John Kerry pounced on the acknowledgment by former Iraq administrator Paul Bremer Iraq that the United States had "paid a big price" for insufficient troop levels.
Bremer, who shot into the national headlines with his remarks, softened his comments
during a speech Tuesday in Michigan.
Michigan. "We certainly had enough (troops) going into Iraq, because we won the war in a very short three weeks," he told an audience of more than 400 people at Michigan State University.
"The point that I have been making, and that has gotten a little bit distorted in the press recently, is that, as I look back now, I believe it would have been better to stop the looting that was found right after the war.
"One way to have stopped the looting would have been to have more troops on the ground. That's a retrospective wisdom of mine, looking backwards," he added. "I think there are enough troops there now for the job we are doing."
Kerry said there was a "long
list of mistakes" that the Bush administration had made in Iraq.
"I'm glad that Paul Bremer has finally admitted at least two of them," Kerry said, referring to postwar troop levels and a failure to contain chaos.
At a campaign stop in Tipton, Iowa, Kerry said the question for voters was whether Bush was "constitutionally incapable of acknowledging the truth" or was "just so stubborn."
His speechwriters polished an address that administration aides said would be a sweeping indictment of Kerry's policies on Iraq, the war on terrorism and the economy.
"It's a comprehensive look at two very different records, one of accomplishment, and one of being on the wrong side of history over and over again." Bush campaign communications
"We certainly had
enough (troops) going into Iraq, because we won the war in a very short three weeks."
Paul Bremer
Former Iraqi administrator
director Nicole Devenish said of the speech.
"The president will talk about the choice we face in this election between his commitment to success in the war on terror and John Kerry's record of voting against measures to keep us safe, and attacking policies he once supported."
Liberal spoonful
Sharon Novotny tries a
tries a "Kerryberry" sundae during her lunch at the Valley Dairy restaurant in Butler, Pa., yesterday. Patrons of the western Pennsylvania restaurant chain show their support for a 2004 presidential candidate by ordering either a "Bushberry" or "Kerryberry" sundae, a heap of ice cream drizzled with strawberry syrup and topped with either a red or blue plastic pick.
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