Veep Debate thread

[host]

Originally Posted by dunkelhelmut

For the record, I'm a Libertarian, so my party was obviously not represented in this debate, and my opinion isn't as biased as other opinions here.

As others pointed out, it seems like this was a battle of style vs substance. It was an amusing debate to watch, and seemed relatively even. Both sides appeared sharp and made some good points, and missed good opportunities to strike back.

For style, Edwards definately won. He's the younger, friendlier politician, and carried a better vibe during the whole debate. That's why people voted twice for Clinton.

For substance, Cheney appeared to win. He was very sharp, drew facts from his knowledge and memory, and was able to defend his statements better. He provided numbers and facts instead of rhetoric.

On a superficial level, I could see how people liked Edwards better. Cheney, while sharp and cunning, doesn't come across as a likable person. He does seem mean and irritable. Edwards appears to be a likable person, although I can't say that I think he's honest since he was a lawyer.

Since a President and VP's success depends much more on substance than style, I like Cheney's performance much better than Edwards'

If Newsweek's reporting on Cheney's veracity on national security issues
in statements he made during the debate is accurate, is there any line that
the sitting VP would cross before you-(Bush/Cheney supporters) would decide that he lacks credibility regarding the reasons why the U.S. attacked and occupies Iraq ?

Rewriting History
In his debate with John Edwards, Dick Cheney had a brand-new version of the events that led to war
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball - Newsweek
Updated: 4:32 p.m. ET Oct. 6, 2004

Oct. 6 - With virtually all of the administration’s original case for war in Iraq in tatters, Vice President Dick Cheney provided shifting and sometimes misleading arguments in last night’s debate with John Edwards about Saddam Hussein’s ties to terrorists and his access to weapons of mass destruction.

Cheney, responding to moderator Gwen Ifill’s first question, said that “concern” about Iraq before the war had “specifically focused” on the fact that Saddam’s regime had been listed for years by the U.S. government as a “state sponsor of terror,” that Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal operated out of Baghdad, that Saddam paid $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and that he had an “established relationship” with Al Qaeda.

But except for the allegation about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda—a claim that is now more in question than ever—the other examples cited by Cheney in Tuesday night’s debate never have been previously emphasized by Bush administration officials, and for good reasons.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the administration’s case last year before the United Nations Security Council, for example, he said nothing about Iraq being cited by the U.S. State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. The claim would have been especially unimpressive to a fellow member of the Security Council, the ambassador from Syria, whose country has been on the same list for years, as well as five other General Assembly members that are also on the list.

Powell also never brought up Abu Nidal living in Baghdad—most likely because Nidal, who hadn’t been associated with any terrorist attacks in years, was already dead. (He was shot under mysterious circumstances in 2002.) And while Powell made a brief mention of Iraq funneling money to the families of suicide bombers, this was never a prominent part of the Bush administration’s case for war—in large part because a number of other nations, most notably Saudi Arabia, have for years provided similar financial support to the families of Palestinian “martyrs.”

Cheney’s claims about an “established relationship” between Iraq and Al Qaeda were always a principal part of the administration’s case for war, cited by Powell at the United Nations and, most forcefully, by Cheney in numerous speeches and TV interviews before and after the invasion. But it is also a contention that has been seriously undermined by a series of recent U.S. government reports, including the September 11 Commission report, which concluded there was no “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Another is a recent CIA analysis, disclosed for the first time this week, raising questions about whether Jordanian terrorist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, had been harbored by Saddam’s regime before the war.

Cheney said last night that Zarqawi, who once ran a terror camp in Afghanistan with loose links to Al Qaeda, had “migrated to Baghdad” after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 and “set up shop” there, overseeing a “poisons facility” at Kurmal, in northern Iraq.

In fact, U.S. intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK, after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Zarqawi went first to Iran—a country that many officials have long believed had far more consequential relationships with terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, than Saddam’s regime. And while the new CIA report confirms that Zarqawi unquestionably did later move to Baghdad—and received medical treatment there before the war— there is still no hard evidence on whether he was being supported or assisted by Saddam’s regime. “The information on that is not clear,” said one U.S. official familiar with the report. “It’s still being worked.” Cheney also left out the fact that the alleged poisons facility that Zarqawi allegedly supervised was in a part of northern Iraq not controlled by Saddam's government.

Cheney, challenged by Edwards, insisted last night that “I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11.” But that claim is belied by an array of interviews and public comments in which Cheney has done precisely that—by repeatedly invoking claims that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent. That allegation was also debunked by the 9/11 commission after the panel found abundant evidence that Atta was actually in the United States at the time the rendezvous supposedly took place.

Cheney, for example, called the claim of an Atta meeting with an Iraqi official in Prague “pretty well confirmed” in a Dec. 9, 2001, “Meet the Press” interview. In a Sept. 8, 2002, “Meet the Press” appearance, just weeks before the congressional vote on authorizing President Bush to go to war, Cheney again returned to the issue: “We’ve seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohammed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center.” Even after CIA and FBI officials had already concluded the claims of the meeting were almost certainly false, Cheney was still referring to it in a Sept. 14, 2003 “Meet the Press” appearance. “The Czechs alleged that Mohammed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraq intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.”

Republicans last night were able to point to their own lengthy list of instances when Edwards misspoke or made “inaccurate” claims during the debate. Among them: that Edwards inflated the cost of the Iraq war (by saying it was $200 billion rather than $120 billion), by claiming that the United States has absorbed 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq (by leaving out uniformed Iraqi casualty deaths that would bring the figure down to 50 percent) and, perhaps most importantly, by saying that his running mate, John Kerry, had been “absolutely clear and consistent from the beginning about Iraq.” (Edwards himself had claimed during the primary season that Kerry’s explanations for his vote on authorizing the war in Iraq were “not clear to me … I think he’s said some different things at different points in time. So I think there there’s been some inconsistency.”)

But Cheney’s miscues on Iraq are especially notable because he has been perhaps the single most vigorous advocate—both internally and in public—for the war. And the new questions about his previous statements come at a particularly awkward time for the administration. In a 1,000-page report released this afternoon, Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concludes once and for all that Iraq had no chemical or biological weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion. In fact, the report says, Iraq had destroyed the stockpiles it did have after the first Persian Gulf War under the pressure of U.N. sanctions.

As for administration claims that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program—claims that had been championed by Cheney more than any single high-level official—Duelfer found that Saddam had actually abandoned his nuclear efforts years earlier. “He was getting further away from nuclear weapons,” a U.S. government official familiar with Duelfer’s report told reporters yesterday. “He was further away from nuclear weapons in 2003 than he was in 1991.” The nuclear program wasn’t reconstituting, the official said. It was “decaying.”

In last night's debate, Cheney largely skirted the administration's prewar claims about Iraqi WMD, although he did at one point refer to a presumed nexus between terrorists and Iraqi unconventional weapons. "The point is that that's the place where you're most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years," he said. The claim that Saddam's agents had instructed Al Qaeda terrorists in making "poisons and gasses" had in fact been a prominent feature of the administration's prewar assertions, highlighted by Powell in his Security Council speech and Cheney repeatedly in his TV appearances and speeches. But the allegation was almost entirely based on the claims of one high-level Al Qaeda detainee—first identified by NEWSWEEK as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi—who, according to the 9/11 commission, has since recanted his story. Asked if Duelfer's team had found any evidence that Iraq had provided such training for terrorists, the U.S. official familiar with Duelfer's report shook his head and said simply: "No."
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc. <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6192327/site/newsweek/">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6192327/site/newsweek/</a>

Cheney Overstates Iraq Resolution

Cheney repeatedly said Edwards had voted "for the war" and "to commit the troops," when in fact the Iraq resolution that both Kerry and Edwards supported left the decision to the president and called for intensified diplomacy.

The resolution for which Edwards and Kerry voted said, "The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate."

And Edwards made clear in a statement at the time of his vote that he hoped to avoid war by enlisting broad support from the United Nations and US allies:
<a href="http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=272">http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=272</a>

Cheney himself cited the above site as a place to "check facts".

Cheney is vice president of a U.S. regime that is responsible for 1066
deaths of American troops in Iraq, serious combat injury to 7000 or more
of our troops, the deaths of more than 10000 Iraqis, continued suffering
and casualties, instability, and an indefinite commitment of 145000 U.S.
troops in Iraq. President Bush himself stated in a nationally televised debate
last week that Iraq is stabalizing and that a security force of 100000 Iraqis
has been trained, when the Pentagon's own current report stated that only
8169 Iraqis had completed an 8 week training course intended to train Iraqi
security recruits, and that<a href="http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=590914&section=news"> 22700 Iraqis</a>, in total, were considered to be adequately trained and equipped. <p>
It is one thing for challengers in debates with the President and the VP to make statements in those venues that are somewhat misleading and contain some inaccuracies, but it is a much more disturbing trend for the top elected officials to be so blatantly misleading and inaccurate concerning execution of their sworn duties that concern matters of life and death. <p>
Bush and Cheney seem to me to provide false and misleading information to the American people and to the world to such an extent that I can't believe any pronouncement that they make about the war in Iraq, or about threats to national security and actions that they say are needed to improve that security. What will it take before you can agree that they have broken the public trust? Will you trust them no matter what proof surfaces to undermine their claims related to justification of sending our troops to make war on Iraq ?

[seep]

I thought Cheney wiped the floor with him, honestly, and apparently I'm the only one who liked his demeanor better than Edwards'. He came across like an experienced professional delivering a beatdown to an underconfident upstart. I guess that's not what most people find charismatic, but apparently a lot of people think that watching Bush trip over his lines and struggle for words makes him cute and cuddly and "just a regular Joe like one of us", so I guess my finger's just not on the pulse of America.

[maypo]

The debate's not supposed to be a charisma contest. Endless lying loses you points.

[seep]

I agree, but I still thought Cheney debated better and was more articulate. If Edwards "won" it's because calling Cheney on the Iraq-Al Qaeda non-connection is kind of a silver bullet; there's really almost nothing you can say to that.

[maypo]

I just couldn't believe anything he said, not just on Iraq but also;

health care, a disaster with an expensive medicare drug benefit (60 Billion$$$) when you could save more buying drugs from Canada.

the economy,massive tax cuts for the wealthy and the shill of saying small business will be paying taxes if Kerry's plan is instituted, (utter nonsense, if you earn over 200 thousand profit in a small business it should not be magically exempt from taxation) If Bush says one more time "you can't tax the rich" i'll start ranting ( of course you can't if you make it policy.)

education, their never ending love of school vouchers; read this article about falling property value and tax income in Texas to understand how disconnnection of property taxes from local school districts will result in the collapse of tax income and property values

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/business/07scene.html


and the link of Cheney via Scooter Libby to the outing of the C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame Check out this link from the Washington Post for more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/business/07scene.html

This does not even begin to discuss the gutting of the clean air act, energy policy and many other things I disagree with this administration on, including an increased connection of church and state, perhaps one of the worst effects of this administration, can you say "jihad"

If you want more real information, not rhetoric I suggest a subscription to Atlantic Monthly, it's cheap, about ten dollars a year and it connects you to some of the best minds in the press and government. Television news has decayed to such a point that it is scarcely news. (saw old Reagan press conference in a documntary and it was like hounds on a fox, that's press)You could have known about the tribal factions and Iraq's natural tendencies towards civil war years before we invaded.

[ubertuber]

There was a wonderful characterization in the NY Times (buried in an article on about the 13th page). The author said something to the effect that this VP debate was between two candidates - one, Cheney, for whom substance is a form of style, and another, Edwards, for whom style is a form of substance. I think this really captures the strengths of the way these two men portray themselves. I'll say again that I was impressed by both sides.

[Paq]

at first, i was impressed by both men..then the whole factcheck.org thing and I gotta say, I'd be more impressed with cheney if all his "facts" and dodges and little digs weren't lies..well, not all of them, but a good number. It's one thing to back up your answer, defend your position, etc, which i thought cheney did rather well...it's another thing to totally distort the truth when you're doing it...

so at first, i was calling it a draw, but now i'll go back to my original want of Edwards winning..

[seep]

Originally Posted by maypo

I just couldn't believe anything he said, not just on Iraq but also;

health care, a disaster with an expensive medicare drug benefit (60 Billion$$$) when you could save more buying drugs from Canada.

the economy,massive tax cuts for the wealthy and the shill of saying small business will be paying taxes if Kerry's plan is instituted, (utter nonsense, if you earn over 200 thousand profit in a small business it should not be magically exempt from taxation) If Bush says one more time "you can't tax the rich" i'll start ranting ( of course you can't if you make it policy.)

education, their never ending love of school vouchers; read this article about falling property value and tax income in Texas to understand how disconnnection of property taxes from local school districts will result in the collapse of tax income and property values

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/business/07scene.html


and the link of Cheney via Scooter Libby to the outing of the C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame Check out this link from the Washington Post for more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/business/07scene.html

This does not even begin to discuss the gutting of the clean air act, energy policy and many other things I disagree with this administration on, including an increased connection of church and state, perhaps one of the worst effects of this administration, can you say "jihad"

If you want more real information, not rhetoric I suggest a subscription to Atlantic Monthly, it's cheap, about ten dollars a year and it connects you to some of the best minds in the press and government. Television news has decayed to such a point that it is scarcely news. (saw old Reagan press conference in a documntary and it was like hounds on a fox, that's press)You could have known about the tribal factions and Iraq's natural tendencies towards civil war years before we invaded.

Kerry seems to have picked up the ball and run with it on a lot of these things tonight.

Thanks for the information.