Bummer ... Bad News Dogs Bush As Election Nears Oct 29, 7:45 AM (ET) By SCOTT LINDLAW RDLEY, Pa. (AP) - 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 has been powerless to halt a recent tide of bad news, from surging violence and missing weapons in Iraq, to missteps by his own campaign, to a potentially damaging new probe by his own FBI. The inconvenient news has been magnified in the superheated atmosphere of the final week of Bush's tight race with Democrat John Kerry. In a Friday speech, Kerry hoped to stoke the latest revelation: news that the FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid military contracts to Halliburton Co. (HAL), formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. His running mate, John Edwards, 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 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.
Not to derail your thread no worries but... There was a story about this yesterday and I'm a bit confused about it. Are they saying that 100,000 people have died directly because of the war or that 100,000 more people have died than what is usual for Iraq during an 18 month period?
I had to re-read that part a coulpe of times to get it... they are syaing that there was over 100,000 more deaths than what would be expected as normal in Iraq during the same period of time before the war. scary numbers...but imo the blame for most fo those has to lay at the feet of the rebels..
Speaking of bad news....I didn't want to start a whole new topic on this since it's kind of old news, but I think this is a new picture. Check this out, regarding the whole "Was Bush wearing a wire during the debates" issue. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/29/bulge/index_np.html
All the liberal media needs to do is just turn up the dial on the bad news. It's a sad state when they have as much control on public opinion as they currently do.
More than normally expected if it wasn't for a war. This number includes the deaths that were indirectly caused by the war, such as starvation, poor medical care, accidents and things of that nature.
100,000 more people have died than what is usual for Iraq during an 18 month period Freedom is never free.
actually i have to respect the president (or karl rove) to the fact that he isn't turning up the fear full blast the past weeks. I predicted months ago that we would get warnings of terrorist attacks and we'd at least be in Opulent Orange on the official skittles warning system. I thought we'd get wild warnings of possible attacks in various counties in Ohio PA and FL. IMO, the prez is running a fairer campaign that he could have run, granted we have three more days, but so far he's been pretty good about it and sticking with the typical game plan and continuing to repeat what he always says about kerry and the WOT (which may not work, considering american attention spans).
Bush "flip-flopping" as well: http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041026-121303-1337r.htm Bush breaks with GOP on same-sex unions Washington, DC, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- President Bush broke with the Republican Party platform in supporting states' rights to permit same-sex civil unions. "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so. ... "I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights. And I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between a union between a man and a woman. "Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others," Bush told ABC's Charlie Gibson in an interview broadcast Tuesday on "Good Morning America." "So the Republican platform on that point, as far as you're concerned, is wrong?" Gibson asked the president, to which Bush replied: "Right."
"So the Republican platform on that point, as far as you're concerned, is wrong?" Gibson asked the president, to which Bush replied: "Right." Kerry uses Bush's own words to fire back at the commander-in-chief "Senator Kerry would say anything to get elected," Bush told cheering supporters in a hockey stadium in Saginaw. [Edit: I removed my offensive remark and let GWB speak for himself.]
But you also have to figure in the fact that these rebels were not killing innocent people prior to our invasion. THis actually worsens the situation because this figure now contends that more innocent Iraqis are dying at the end of the rebels then did when Saddam was in power. When Saddam was in power, al-Sadr and the insurgents were non-existent. Back then, Saddam, and only Saddam, did the killing. If the number killed has gone up, then that falls on our shoulders.
I agree and disagree.. I agree that we should have done more to keep the insurgents from having the freedowm and ordinance to conduct their attcks... I disagree that we are directly responsible for them targeting civilians....we didnt force them to kill civilians, they could have gone after military forces solely and noone would think twice about it...afterall, thats the cost of war....but these maniacs think nothng of killing many noncombatants all in the name of Allah. that is not something we had a hand in nore should we be blamed for it.(unless of course you believe that more troops on the ground would have helped curtail their activities...but in that Im not even sure we could have) its never black and white when it comes to the blame game during wartime.
Here is a yet unnoticed picture of Kerry from the debate ... which reminds me of a favorite movie quote: "They see us on stage with tight trousers. We've got, you know, Armadillos in our trousers."
I thought that was odd too but hey .......whatever it takes right? Give the man the credit, he is doing every thing in his power...
