Quotes

Howard Dean promised that the campaign this year would be honest and honorable. Funny, considering the DNC (which he runs) has a new attack ad on McCain that is so dishonest, no one should even bother taking any part of it seriosly.

The ad shows John McCain standing with a mic listening to a question from a member of a crowd in Derry, NH. The man asking the questions starts out by telling Senator McCain: “I wanna say at the outset that I’m not going to be voting for you, I’m going to be voting in the Democatic primary in order to defeat the senator from New York. Who I refer to as Joe Lieberman Democrat.” Lieberman is sitting on the stage as McCain stands and walks around, so the guy asking the question is just acting like a child to begin with to attack Lieberman by attacking Clinton and comparing the two. It’s okay to be critical, but it seemed as if his goal was just to be childish.

This pretext isn’t mentioned in the DNC ad, but it’s nice to have that background info.

The ad itself does have the question about Bush and staying in Iraq for 50 years.

The text to the left of McCain says “Senator McCain” and under it we see the text of the question being asked (we hear the question as well), the question is:

“President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years”

We then see McCain reply “maybe a hundred.” Text to the left says “100 years in Iraq.”

Then, the video freezes and the text saying 100 years in Iraq slowly starts to come toward us, getting closer and larger. The video then restarts, but there’s a noticeble edit. There is clearly some video taken out. We then see McCain say, “that’d be fine with me.” So, to watch this ad, you’d think McCain had said (50 years?) “Maybe a hundred. That’d be fine with me.”

Most Americans will see the ad and not bother to find the full video, but I’ll do it for you to show the DNC is lying and distorting what McCain truly said.

This is the video that has the full back and forth between McCain and the questioner.

What McCain actually says is this:

“Maybe a hundred. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me, I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Queda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day”

I have put in bold the part of the reply that the DNC edited out. That section edited out clearly changes the meaning of what McCain is saying. Changing the meaning without telling us they edited his reply. In other words- Howard Dean and the DNC are lying.

Worse yet- the DNC ad follows “That’d be fine with me” with video of explosions and carnage in Iraq and the text “5 years” followed by onscreen text saying “$500 billion” and “Over 4,000 dead.” They then repeat the question asked in NH. Then the snippet of McCain simply saying “maybe a hundred.” The voiceover says:

“If all he offers is more of the same, is John McCain the right choice for America’s future?”

Clearly, this ad is a lie and a disgusting attack on McCain by taking his words, editing them, leaving out the context in order to make him say something he never said and doesn’t truly believe. Furthermore, the voiceover at the end is complete dishonesty, as it comes directly after the video of carnage in Iraq and the text saying 4.000 dead. McCain is NOT more of the same in Iraq, and he’s definitely not saying that in this video clip. He specifically said “That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed”

No two ways about it- Howard Dean and the DNC are lying once again about John McCain. Will Obama denounce this ad as he denounced the NC GOP ad with videos of Rev Wrights (video clips, I might add, were NOT edited in any manner to distort what he was truly saying as this DNC ad does with McCain). Or can we expect politics as usual from Obama, tho he claims to repudiate the usual tactics?

I will end by mentioning the NY Times covering this ad. They were dishonest themselves, as their online blog post about this reads (in part):

“In the commercial, Mr. McCain’s words speak for themselves, not misstated as they have been on the campaign trail as though he called for 100 years of war. In the initial exchange with voter Dave Tiffany, and in subsequent interviews, Mr. McCain made it clear he was not talking about extended combat, but about the fact that he wouldn’t mind maintaining a presence in Iraq to assist with stability. (He likened it to the continuing presence of troops in South Korea or Bosnia.)”

How Times writer Kate Phillips can say that with a straight face is beyond what I can comprehend. She’s being dishonest when she says McCain’s words speak for themselves. There’s not a bit of truthfulness to that claim. A major clarifying statement was edited out of his reply, AND the video and text are in opposition with what he said about there not being Americans harmed, injured, killed, etc. And when you leave the clarification on South Korea, Japan, Bosnia, etc. out you’re completely distorting what McCain said. Leave it to the Times to claim that a dishonest attack ad twisting McCain’s words allowed McCain’s words to speak for themselves.

Dishonesty from Dean and the DNC…dishonesty from the Democratic Party’s biggest cheerleader, the NY Times. What a winning combination for America.