Reply With QuoteIt's amazing the political damage you can save yourself by completely ignoring the war dead and ordering the news media to do the same. And the Media s are all to happy to comply. Shameful, simply shameful.
story.news.yahoo.com/news..._vote_iraq
Iraq more a thorn for Kerry than Bush
15 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Iraq (news - web sites), once thought to be a political albatross for President George W. Bush (news - web sites), is turning out to be more of a headache for his Democratic rival John Kerry (news - web sites) despite the continuing turmoil and mounting US death toll.
A new Washington Post/ABC poll published Friday confirmed Bush's lead over Kerry since the Republican national convention last week, including a double-digit margin over who could best deal with Iraq.
The survey conducted from Monday to Wednesday, gave the president a 53-37 percent edge on the issue, wiping out a two point Kerry lead on August 1 just after the Democratic national convention in Boston.
Kerry spokesman Mark Kitchens dismissed the gap as the product of Bush's "shading the truth about Iraq from the American people" and said this would catch up with the Republican before the November 2 election.
"Sooner or later the mirage that Bush is painting, not only about himself but about the record of John Kerry, is going to begin to fade away because the facts are going to begin to speak for themselves," Kitchens told AFP.
Intriguingly, the Bush bounce on Iraq came amid a flurry of bad news from Baghdad, including intensified bloodshed, reports of insurgent successes and a US death toll that passed the 1,000 mark.
Despite this, a flurry of surveys have shown public disapproval of the campaign subsiding. Polls show a majority of Americans now feel that the March 2003 invasion was not a mistake, whereas more than half felt in July it was unwise.
A Newsweek poll last week showed that 45 percent of voters believed the war in Iraq had made Americans safer from terrorism, up from 38 percent in July. Only 50 percent felt it had not made the country safer, down from 57 percent.
The findings were in stark contrast to the polls of earlier in the campaign when Bush was reeling from the mounting chaos in Iraq and the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction he used to justify military action.
Analysts said the Republicans succeeded at their convention in New York on three fronts. They turned the campaign focus on terrorism, they firmly linked Iraq to the war on terror and they undermined confidence in Kerry's fitness to command.
Combined with attacks by pro-Republican Vietnam veterans on Kerry's war record, the strategy succeeded in driving down Kerry's personal ratings on a range of issues, from leadership to honesty.
But commentators said Kerry has contributed by failing to set out a clear alternative to Bush on an issue that has been a minefield for the Massachusetts senator since he voted to authorize military action in Iraq in October 2002.
The New York Times, which has harshly criticized the war, took Kerry to task in an editorial Thursday that said the Democrat had "blurred his message" on Iraq and was running out of time.
"Kerry has to make his arguments with urgency. Simply promising that things will turn around under a new administration isn't enough," the paper said.
The senator has been consistent in arguing that while voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq, he was betrayed by a White House that invaded without building an international coalition and without a plan for post-war reconstruction.
But he muddied the waters last month when he said he would have cast the same vote even if knew what he knew today about Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s weapons capacity.
A senior aide compounded by the matter by saying that Kerry as president would have "in all probability" gone to war in Iraq by now, forcing the campaign to later backtrack.
Kerry's woes continued after he pledged to reduce US troops levels in Iraq and replace them with other foreign forces within six months of taking office. This after months of urging that the country to "stay the course" in Iraq.
But analysts said the biggest danger to Kerry on Iraq is that the longer he spends trying to refine his position, the less time he devotes to the economy, where Bush is more vulnerable.
It's amazing the political damage you can save yourself by completely ignoring the war dead and ordering the news media to do the same. And the Media s are all to happy to comply. Shameful, simply shameful.
Actually, it is more amazing that you base your presidential campaign in 2004 on the Vietnam War.
What's really amazing is that two war dodgers can criticize a war hero and come away almost completely unscathed.
One draft dodger once criticized two war heros and America didn't give a ****.
W. is no Clinton. Clinton was able to reach across party lines just as Reagan had done before him. W. had limited appeal to anyone but the staunchest Republican't.
You overestimate the hate in this country for Bush. Which is not surprising.
Which media s? NY Times? Boston Globe? CNN? CBS?And the Media s are all to happy to comply. Shameful, simply shameful.
lol, come on Dan, you can't believe the you spout, can you?
This is ridiculous.by completely ignoring the war dead
The media coverage of the daily fatalities in Iraq has been more specific and announced in the press more than in any American war in history. There has never been as much focus on "the war dead" as there is right now.
Right. That's why we hide the coffins from the media, notify some of the relatives by form letter, and even deduct pay for soldiers killed in action from the day they are killed. Now that's Republican't morality at work.The media coverage of the daily fatalities in Iraq has been more specific and announced in the press more than in any American war in history.
Are these new coffins representing unreported fatalities?That's why we hide the coffins from the media
I never said they couldn't do more... I just don't see the point. It is not the Media's duty to paint the war they way you want it painted.
WHat does this have to do with the Media?notify some of the relatives by form letter, and even deduct pay for soldiers killed in action from the day they are killed.
The war dead have been well covered in the media. Several news programs (PBS NewsHour, CBS Evening News, etc) show names and pictures daily. CBS I know basically runs a half-minute vignette about each of the fallen that they can.
You do realize, Dan, that it was a democratic president who made the decision on not publishing coffins, right?
Are you saying that the Demos were wrong on this too, and you want a REPUBLICAN president to fix it?
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