Friday, March 12, 2004
Lordy! WaPo's Walter Pincus fact-checks Bush on Kerry—and gets placed on A4
Instead of being buried on page 100, or something, where most actual WaPo reporting gets placed. And whaddaya know! Bush, well, shall we say compromises the truth a little?
It's the winger mirror—whenever the wingers look in the mirror, they always see somebody else.
President Bush, in his first major assault on Sen. John F. Kerry's legislative record, said this week that his Democratic opponent proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, a proposal that would "gut the intelligence services," and one that had no co-sponsors because it was "deeply irresponsible."
In terms of accuracy, the parry by the president is about half right. Bush is correct that Kerry on Sept. 29, 1995, proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget. But Bush appears to be wrong when he said the proposed Kerry cut -- about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years -- would have "gutted" intelligence. In fact, the Republican-led Congress that year approved legislation that resulted in $3.8 billion being cut over five years from the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office -- the same program Kerry said he was targeting. (via WaPo)
It's the winger mirror—whenever the wingers look in the mirror, they always see somebody else.