The Bush “Wolves” ad is certainly a new low, for all sorts of reasons. Here’s one: The narrator says, “In an increasingly dangerous world, even after the first terrorist attack on America, John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America’s intelligence operations — by $6 billion — cuts so deep they would have weakened America’s defenses, and weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm.”
My God! Even after 9/11, those awful liberals were voting to cut intelligence? How could they? Wait, read the fine print: The vote the ad cites (with tiny-type attribution) is from 1993-4. “The first terrorist attack on America” turns out to be the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The actual record of Kerry and those “liberals” is being misrepresented here anyway (see the facts). And Porter Goss, President Bush’s hand-picked CIA boss, proposed even bigger cuts than Kerry did, way back then.
But the larger framing of the ad is an outright, intentional deception to make viewers think that Kerry voted against intelligence funding after 9/11. It’s not subtle, or debatable, or fuzzy; it’s a blatantly bogus attempt to spread misinformation.
Since it worked with the Saddam-al Qaeda connection, I guess the Bush team feels it might work again. Have they no decency? I guess we knew the answer.
ADDENDUM: I wrote this post Friday morning but problems with my software kept the post from going live. In the interim, I note that both Josh Marshall and Slate have posted similar comments. Lies may get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on, but in this case at least there are a lot of boots pounding the pavement.
And of course Salon’s War Room has been all over it, here (Geraldine Sealey’s commentary), here (the ad is just in time for Wolf Awareness Week!), and here (Caroline Kennedy’s comment: “I can’t believe anyone would make up their mind based on an ad showing a bunch of animals running around”).
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