The liberal activist group MoveOn.org announced today a month-long, $1 million TV effort against Republican presidential nominee John McCain. It starts with a $160,000 TV ad buy designed to link McCain to President Bush on MoveOn.org's signature issue: opposition to the war in Iraq.
The ad, to air on broadcast and cable in New Mexico and Iowa, says "We need to know how long we'd be in Iraq if John McCain were president." It then shows McCain saying "I don't think Americans are concerned if we're there for 100 years or 1,000 years or 10,000 years." The ad concludes: "100 years in Iraq. And you thought no one could be worse than George Bush."
The ad is breathtakingly intellectually dishonest in making its point. Here's the full quote from McCain's Jan. 6 appearance on "Face the Nation," in which he makes clear he's describing a peaceful presence:
“My point was and continues to be, how long do we have to stay in Bosnia? How long do we have to stay in South Korea? How long are we going to stay in Japan? How long are we going to stay in Germany? All of those, 50, 60-year period. No one complains. In fact, they contribute enormously their presence to stability in the world. The point is it's American casualties. We've got to get Americans off the front line, have the Iraqis as part of the strategy, take over more and more of the responsibilities. And then I don't think Americans are concerned if we're there for 100 years or 1,000 years or 10,000 years. What they care about is a sacrifice of our most precious treasure, and that's American blood. So what I'm saying is look, if Americans are there in a support role, but they're not taking casualties, that's fine. We're in Kuwait now. As you well recall, we had a war, we stayed in Kuwait. We didn't stay in Saudi Arabia. So it's going to be up to the relationship between the Iraqi government and the United States of America.”
The Democratic National Committee aired a similar ad, using a similar out-of-context quote from a twon-hall meeting a few days earlier. See the analysis by the nonpartisan factcheck.org here.
I thought "moveon" was created to battle the misinformation and petty politics that didn't deal with real issues. While Iraq is a very serious issue, your attempt to parse McCain in order to loosely tie him to Bush is a failure or your mission. This is not change I can believe in. It is the same old BS, not matter who it is attacking. Keep playing to your very liberal anti-war at all costs base and McCain will win for sure.
Posted by: Barry O. | April 30, 2008 at 04:28 PM