Given Cheney's silly attempt at bait-and-switch last night attacking Edwards for not including Iraqi casualties in his statement about America "having taken 90 percent of coalition casualties", I thought I'd dig a bit.

Though Edwards said "coalition casualities" clearly all three times he used the phrase, it didn't stop Cheney from using a strawman attack on Edwards' stating that his comments were "beyond the pale" because he didn't count Iraq amongst the coalition casualties apparently.

So does the White House themselves now count Iraq as part of the "coalition of the willing"?

Checking the White House website's own report on "RENEWAL IN IRAQ: The Coalition" is revealing!

The report (linked above) offers several links to several supporting documents/pages. Strangely enough however, the link on that page to "Who Are the Coalition Members?" now leads to a "The file you have attempted to access cannot be found." error page!

All the other links on the page work fine. But the list of "Coalition Members" has seemingly been scrubbed from the website.

Thanks to the Wayback Machine, we can check the originally linked file however.

That file, apparently last updated and archived by the Wayback on February 2, 2004, but still dated "April 3, 2003" lists a coalition of 49 countries. Needless to say, several of them have since pulled out of the coaltion (Spain, Costa Rica, etc.)

I understand why they might wish to update the page at the White House website as coaltion members come and go. But deleting it entirely certainly raised my eyebrow.

I don't know when the page officially came down, if it was before last night's sleight-of-hand about coalition casualties or not. But isn't it a bit deceptive and/or cynical to simply disappear the page entirely from the historic record?

There is a "Press Release" I found that is still on the site dated "March 21, 2003" which lists 48 countries as part of the coaltion. But the page from their "Policies in Focus > Iraq: Special Report" is gone.

I'm sure the folks in Blogistan will correct me if any of the information above is somehow inaccurate. But in the meantime, I'm left wondering what other official pieces of information once posted to the White House website (theoretically owned by the people of the United States of America) have been scrubbed as well from the historical record?

UPDATE 10/22/04: Hooray! Mainstream media finally picks up on this story!

From last night's V.P. Debate:

Meanwhile, back in Reality Land, where at least 3 meetings by Cheney and Edwards have already been verified, it is now revealed that Cheney has actually only provided over the Senate on two Tuesdays over his entire tenure! No wonder he doesn't recall meeting Edwards in the Senate!

Incidentally, that's the same number of Tuesdays that Edwards himself has presided over the Senate! Daily Kos has the embarrassing details this time from Reality Land...

This thing is becoming a disaster for Bush/Cheney. Cheney may have given the Dems a gift as good as Bush's performance last week! Made-to-order, Cheney has in one fell swoop demonstrated on video, and in front of a national audience, everything that is wrong with both the Bush/Cheney campaign, and their four year reign of error, misleads and misinformation. Thank you, Mr. Cheney. A job well done.

DEBATE #1 · "Bush: Still Misleading" · "Miserable Failure" · "How Bush Did" · "This or That" · "Song and Dance" · "It's Hard Work" · DEBATE #2 · "Bush's Top 5 Moments" · "Greatest Hits and Misses" · DEBATE #3 · "Smile!" · "Still Misleading America" · V.P. DEBATE · "Cheney: Still Misleading" · "Cheney's Heart Breaking Resume" · IRAQ & 9/11 · "BRAD BLOG's Anything to Win" · "BRAD BLOG's Wrong Choice" · "Bush Reads My Pet Goat" · "Rumsfeld Busted on Face the Nation" · "Fear at the RNC" · "Lone Wolf" · "A Mother's Tears" · "Right Track" · "Hold Them Accountable" · "Seymour Hersh on Abu Ghraib" · "Not There" · "Bush's Hysterial Joke" · FOX NEWS · "O'Reilly: Shut Up!" · "Who Runs Fox News?" · OTHER · "BRAD BLOG's Take Your Country Back" · "Bush's Mis-State of the Union" · "Bush on OB-GYN's" · "Restoring the Promise" · "Bush's New Director of the CIA" · "Enron: Got the Power!" · "A Man of His Word" · "The Two Faces of Bush" · "Bush: The Ten Year Difference" · "Jon Stewart on Crossfire" · "Asshole" · ELECTION DAY INSPIRATION! · "Angry? Start Over!" · More soon...

It occurs to me that on the day after Election Day, the Bush/Cheney sycophants may well acknowledge a Kerry/Edwards landslide but then try to tell us "Bush/Cheney, however, actually won the election on substance."

Now I realize each partisan side is more likely to believe their candidate won whichever debate on the substance since they likely agree with what their candidate said. But in the two debates so far where Republicans have been unable to claim a clear victory with a straight face (obviously, even less so in the first Presidential Debate), they keep falling back on this "but he won on substance" canard.

Given that Bush, in the first debate, seemed almost devoid of actual "substance", even proving to have a difficult time explaining many of his Administration's own policies, and Cheney's demonstrable twisting of facts and logic in his debate, how can Republicans even suggest that either Bush or Cheney won either of those debates on "substance"?

In order to do so, they are required to twist, turn, remove context, and otherwise prevaricate on just about every point which was made in both debates. So on which points, in either of the first two debates, did Bush/Cheney manage to make a "substantive" point that Kerry/Edwards was unable to effectively rebut? I am unable to think of any off-hand, but I look forward to being proven wrong. Please try and do so using "substance" in your comments if you have any...not style, twisted logic or out-of-context and/or inaccurate quotes. Please stick to what was actually said. Here's the transcripts from Debate #1 and the V.P. Debate for reference.

(Thanks Desi for the tip!)

On the continued Bush/Cheney tactic of taking virtually everything Kerry/Edwards have to say completely out of context. (For background, see FactCheck.org's take on just one recent Bush/Cheney commercial.)

Classic Bush/Cheney-esque sleight of hand in this exchange from tonight's debate...Note Edwards talks about coalition casualties in his statement. By the time it's done, Cheney has pulled the old switcheroo. The same way everything else from these guys has worked...Read, and see if you can spot the rabbit as he sneaks it into the hat...

That slippery Dick.

Tonight at the V.P. debate...

Meanwhile, back again in Reality Land on February 1, 2001...

UPDATE: More pictures from Reality Land of Cheney and Edwards not meeting, along with an ABC News report on at least three acknowledged occasions when they did meet. Ugh. Those god-damned partisan facts again!

Tonight at the V.P. debate...

And previously...back in Reality Land...

And this...

DEVELOPING...MORE...

More on the lying Dick from Kerry-Edward's peeps...right here.

Thoughts on what you saw now that it's over? Fact-checks? Media spin you catch in the analysis? Who won and who lost? If anyone?

I'll share my thoughts here in Comments. Please share yours as they hitcha!

Okay, please join us in COMMENTS for Play-by-Play Open Thread throughout the V.P. Debate tonight! Starting now! Come on in, and share your on-the-fly two cents!

Let's hear from ya!

When I heard the story of Bremer's speech to DePauw University late last night, I realized that we hadn't thought about him, seen him, or heard from him since the day he hightailed it outta Baghdad when "sovereignty" was handed back to the Iraqis.

He's been nowhere to be found. Oddly enough, he wasn't even pulled out of mothballs to appear at the Republican Convention Fear-Fest. He was a likeable character and projected some sense of confidence to the American people. So it was strange that they didn't exploit him the way they exploited Rudy, McCain, Arnold and the others.

Perhaps now we know why. Here's part of the statement he made:

Ah...not a "friendly". Might go all "Dick Clarke" on 'em I suppose the Bushies feared.

And now, as Atrios reports, the Bushies are going all "Dick Clarke" on him! Apparently calling Bremer a liar, claiming that he never asked for more troops.

Atrios set the record straight, with this July 2003 report from Mercury News:

Enough. Enough lying. Enough dissembling. Enough character assassination. Enough saving their own ass, and not giving a damn about America's ass. We can and must do so much better. It's time for them to go.

UPDATE: John Aravosis points out, in regards to this story, that the folks at the Dept. of Defense who are lying now about Paul Bremer, would be from the same Pentagon also currently telling us that no draft will be necessary. Fool me once?

Stop on by during tonight's V.P. Debate! We'll be having another Open Thread where you can toss in your play-by-play two cents as it happens! We had much fun last week during the first Presidential Debate, and tonight should be even nastier --- So please stop on by during the big show. I'll open up the thread about 30 minutes or so prior to show time! See ya then!

"The orders have come down - Be as fair as you possibly can." --- Bill O'Reilly, on tonight's O'Reilly Factor

Apparently the orders did not "come down" far enough. O'Reilly tonight opened his All-Spin All-The-Time Zone this evening on how close the race now is. (I differ with that opinion, but that's fine and not the point of this item.)

He assured his viewers in his "Talking Points" segment that, with the race this tight, it's only going to get still nastier, and thus, he will be there to help viewers to sort out what's really going on in the race. He will help sort out the "spin" of the two candidates by examining their ads to expose who's telling the truth and who isn't.

To help us get started, he then showed two of the latest Video Ads from the campaign. He showed this one for Bush, and immediately followed it with this reponse ad from Kerry.

Here's the voice-over of the Bush ad (read carefully...emphasis added for text that also appears on screen during the spot):

Here's the voice-over from the Kerry ad (emphasis added again for text that also appears on screen as it's read):

Now the Bush ad is demonstrably misleading and/or downright false. The ad referred to this statement that Kerry made during the debate:

And there is not a single incorrect fact, statement or even word in the Kerry ad.

So how did O'Reilly help us "sort out the spin"? He had an entire segment, with an expert who --- surprise! --- agreed with O'Reilly's analysis that Kerry's ad crossed the line because he used the word "lying" in it!

Yes, that's right. Not a single word about the demonstrably misleading and/or false substance in the Bush ad. Not one.

Does it really matter that Fox is so unfair and so unbalanced? Is that news to anyone? Perhaps not. But the fact that they are the number one most watched news channel --- clearly for their pure entertainment value --- and so flagrantly do everything possible to support Bush and while telling tells folks they are "fair and balanced" is simply outrageous.

I'm still waiting for any real conservative (other than our friend and frequent BRAD BLOG commenter Teddy here) to speak up and denounce the appalling and flagrant bias of Fox News. I'm waiting for those same conservative wingnuts who are still bashing Rather and CBS, who actually made a lazy mistake versus out and out partisanship over the airwaves, to speak out against Fox.

Sidenote: Fox News Watch, the weekend show on Fox that claims to "cover the coverage" spent 3 of their 4 segments on various CBS related "controversies". They spent exactly zero segments covering any of this week's many Fox News, um, "digressions". And so it goes.

(If you're new here, read this and this and this and this for an idea of just a few of the outright lies and anti-Kerry bias that Fox News has sold America in just the past few days alone!)