Friday, March 12, 2004

Look Kids! Real Reporting!

Bush Exaggerates Kerry's Position on Intelligence Budget

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A04

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.

The thing that has amazed me the most about the Bushies is not that the lie repeatedly and not that they do it in such a brazen manner that it would be easy to demonstrate their lies (Bush critics have been doing so for years online). No, what is most amazing is that the mainstream media has been to lazy to hold their feet to the fire on these matters.

The headline of this Post article alone is a sign that this is changing. If the press actually starts to hold the Bushies to account for their obvious lies then maybe they will actually have to start being more cautious in their statements. However, since the only reasons these guys remain in power is because of their lies, not being able to lie will make it that much harder to stay in power.

Amazing how that works isn't it?

Update: Here's a video of Dana Milbank talking about this story as well as Bush's new ads (btw, the title on the screen while talking about the latter was "ad offensive". Was that a subtle dig against Bush?)

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