Post-debate anti-spin:
MSNBC:
misleading remarks in debate
FoxNews:
Debate Fact Check
FoxNews:
VP's Claim About Meeting Edwards Debunked
Quote:"The vice president said that the first time I met Senator Edwards was tonight when we walked on the stage. I guess he forgot the time we sat next to each other for a couple hours about three years ago. I guess he forgot the time we met at the swearing in of another senator. So, my wife Elizabeth reminded him on the stage," Edwards said as the crowd roared.
According to Edwards staff, Cheney replied, "Oh, yeah."
The fact check pages focus on Cheney's assertion that "I have not suggested there's a
connection between Iraq and 9/11." MSNBC's leads with it and has four separate quotes from 2001-2003 in which Cheney does assert such a link. Fox has it further down its page and has one.
They also mention Cheney's reference to Saddam Hussein having "an
established relationship with al Qaeda" and "a 10-year relationship". MSNBC points out that Tenet merely cited "high-level contacts" over a 10-year period, which however "never led to any cooperative activity". FoxNews writes that "contacts were limited and sketchy", and "did not amount to state sponsorship of Al Qaeda".
They deal with Cheney's erroneous statement that this was the
first time he met Edwards, "perhaps the most awkward blooper of the evening" according to FoxNews - see above.
MSNBC tackles Edwards' false claim that the war in Iraq has cost $200 billion "and counting", though that is what
the cost of the warreduce and forgive Iraqi debt to the tune of nearly $80 billion." But MSNBC notes that "while there are reports of some sort of agreement, no plan has been made public".
On Cheney's statement that the US has only taken
50% of the casualties in Iraq if you include Iraqi security forces, MSNBC notes that the US "does not keep track of Iraqi casualties", and that one senior U.S. official's estimation that 750 Iraqi policemen have been killed compares to 1,061 US deaths.
Fox takes on Edwards for saying American troops were sent into Iraq "
without the body armor they needed," a comment that "might suggest they had no body armor at all, when in fact they did" - just not "the brand new, improved armor".
(Question of how you define "needed", I guess - I read a harrowing report from an imbed who described how several soldiers in his unit were killed because the vehicles they had to patrol in had no armored plating above chest-level - there are vehicles that do, just not enough of 'em. The unit did get them - but too late for those who by then had died ...)
Edwards was wrong when he said that "millionaires sitting by their swimming pool"
pay a lower tax rate than the men and women who serve in Iraq, MSNBC notes. Most soldiers do however pay the
same rate as that which applies to dividends, though they pay a much lower effective rate after deductions.
Both MSNBC and Fox, further down the page, point out how Cheney engaged in the tax fallacy again, accusing Kerry of "
voting for taxes 98 times1.6 million private-sector jobs have been lost," when "the actual number is close to 900,000".
Finally, it remarks on how Cheney "charged that Kerry and Edwards
oppose the No Child Left Behind education law", when "both senators voted for the law and support some modifications and billions of dollars to fully fund the education program."
