The Mystery of the Bulge in the Jacket By ELISABETH BUMILLER

What was that bulge in the back of President Bush’s suit jacket at the presidential debate in Miami last week? …

First they said that pictures showing the bulge might have been doctored. But then, when the bulge turned out to be clearly visible in the television footage of the evening, they offered a different explanation.

“There was nothing under his suit jacket,” said Nicolle Devenish, a campaign spokeswoman.

“It was most likely a rumpling of that portion of his suit jacket, or a wrinkle in the fabric.”

Ms. Devenish could not say why the “rumpling” was rectangular.

Nor was the bulge from a bulletproof vest, according to campaign and White House officials; they said Mr. Bush was not wearing one.
—
See Is Bush Wired?

washingtonpost.com: Second Presidential Debate — President Bush and Sen. John Kerry
Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
October 8, 2004

Links to a transcript of the second presidential debate between between President Bush (R) and Sen. John F. Kerry (D). The moderator of the nationally televised debate is Charles Gibson of ABC News. The questions came from an audience of “soft” voters selected by the Gallup polling organization.

[Includes annotated fact checking. See also:]

FactCheck.org Cheney & Edwards Mangle Facts
Example: Bush forgets he owns a tree-growing company.

Both candidates played loose with the facts at the second Presidential Debate in St. Louis Oct. 8. Bush claimed Kerry’s health-care plan would lead to rationing and “ruin the quality of health care in America,” a claim unsupported by neutral experts. Kerry claimed the Bush administration had forced the Army Chief of Staff to retire for pushing to send more troops to Iraq, but in fact he retired on schedule.

We offer a sampler of the dubious and sometimes false statements made by each of the candidates.

dangerousmeta!

Blast from the past; a quote from Dick Cheney in 1992:

“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam Hussein worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait [in 1991], but also when the president made the decision that we’d achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.”

NewMexiKen: Oops oops!

[F]rom Marshall —

In a rather churlish moment, Cheney told Edwards that the two of them had never met before tonight’s debate, despite the fact the Edwards is a serving senator and Cheney’s the body’s presiding officer.

But as Atrios and no doubt many others have now pointed out, one can easily find a citation on the web of a prayer breakfast the two men attended together in February 2001. And the Dems are already circulating a picture from the event showing the two standing right next to each other.

Update: According to Dan Froomkin, AP has identified three meetings:

• “On Feb. 1, 2001, the vice president thanked Edwards by name at a Senate prayer breakfast and sat beside him during the event. …

NewMexiKen: Does he think people won’t check?

“Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session.” — Vice President Cheney during debate last night.

Actual fact: In nearly four years Cheney has presided on just two Tuesdays (out of 127).

Furthermore, Edwards has presided twice during that time also.

Info via Kos.

[links are to NewMexiKen, who pulls several cites together (thanks!)]

2023-11-27: This post is nearly 20 years old. I’ve posted others since then. Please look around.

The Washington Post has the complete transcript in one page with annotations/factchecking: washingtonpost.com – Vice Presidential Debate Between Vice President Cheney and Sen. John Edwards

Edwards: The vice president has still not said anything about what Mr. Bremer said, about the failure to have adequate troops, the failure to be able to secure the country in the short term.

You know, remember “shock and awe”?

Look at where we are now. It is a direct result of the failure to plan, the failure to have others involved in this effort. This is not an accident. …

This is the height of hypocrisy. …

EDWARDS: One thing that’s very clear is that a long resume does not equal good judgment. I mean, we’ve seen over and over and over the misjudgments made by this administration. …

John Kerry has voted for the biggest military appropriations bill in the country’s history. John Kerry has voted for the biggest intelligence appropriations in the country’s history.

This vice president, when he was secretary of defense, cut over 80 weapons systems, including the very ones he’s criticizing John Kerry for voting against. These are weapons systems, a big chunk of which, the vice president himself suggested we get rid of after the Cold War. …

Edwards: Mr. Vice President, I don’t think the country can take four more years of this kind of experience. …

Edwards: Here’s the truth: I have grown up in the bright light of America. But that light is flickering today. Now, I know that the vice president and the president don’t see it, but you do. … What they’re going to give you is four more years of the same.

CBS News | Text Of Cheney-Edwards Debate | October 6, 2004 05:32:20

Cheney: But let’s look at what we know about Mr. Zarqawi. … We know that when we went into Afghanistan that he then migrated to Baghdad. He set up shop in Baghdad, where he oversaw the poisons facility up at Khurmal, where the terrorists were developing ricin and other deadly substances to use. We know he’s still in Baghdad today. [mjh: and we can’t find him? just like bin Laden.]

Washington > Intelligence: A New C.I.A. Report Casts Doubt on a Key Terrorist’s Tie to Iraq” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/politics/06intel.html”>The New York Times > Washington > Intelligence: A New C.I.A. Report Casts Doubt on a Key Terrorist’s Tie to Iraq

The C.I.A. report, sent to policy makers in August, says it is now not clear whether Mr. Hussein’s government harbored members of a group led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the officials said. The assertion that Iraq provided refuge to Mr. Zarqawi was the primary basis for the administration’s prewar assertions connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda.

Iraq & Afghanistan: Post-Invasion Chaos Blamed for Drug Surge

A new CIA assessment undercuts the White House’s claim that Saddam Hussein maintained ties to al-Qaida, saying there’s no conclusive evidence that the regime harbored Osama bin Laden associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The CIA review, which U.S. officials said Monday was requested some months ago by Vice President Dick Cheney, is the latest assessment that calls into question one of President Bush’s key justifications for last year’s U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The new assessment follows the independent Sept. 11 commission’s finding that there was no “collaborative relationship” between the former Iraqi regime and bin Laden’s terrorist network. …

The Bush administration has clashed repeatedly with the CIA and other intelligence community agencies over Iraq and terrorism. …

Bush called the report, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, a “guess,” but later amended his remarks to call it an “estimate.”

Note to abqjournal readers: the first few paragraphs of this article appeared in the Journal (no link available); the real article is much longer. Editors have the power to shape everything we know. mjh

CBC News: Al-Qaeda remarks ‘misunderstood’: Rumsfeld

U.S. Defence Secretary Don ald Rumsfeld said he was “misunderstood” when he claimed Monday night that there was no “hard evidence” linking Saddam Hussein and al- Qaeda.

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Rumsfeld said, “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.”

But hours after his appearance, he issued a statement saying his comment “regrettably was misunderstood.”

“I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq,” Rumsfeld said in a statement on the Department of Defence website, posted hours after his appearance.

Note this common Radical Right technique of claiming a direct quote is ‘misunderstood.’ We heard this from Cheney, who assured us we were doomed if Kerry wins and then spun otherwise. Spiders spin. Remember that Cheney and Rumsfeld are from the Nixon Adminstration (if you don’t remember Nixon, he was more evil than Raygun, less evil than Bush — and that’s saying a lot). mjh

Column:Bush flip-flopped on all but taxes by Nathan Cobb, Daily Lobo columnist

Promise: In 2001, Bush trumpeted that finding Osama bin Laden was his administration’s “number one priority. We will not rest until we’ve found him.”

How Bush backed it up: In 2002, when asked about the whereabouts of Osama, he replied, “I don’t know where he is. I have no idea, and I really don’t care. It’s not that important.”

Read that one over a few times and really let it sink in.