Bush: “If Iraq were to fail, it would be a haven for terrorists.” Er, it is now. It wasn’t before we invaded.
Bush says Kerry disrespects our allies, by saying he’s “going it alone.” Kerry: Eight countries have left the coalition. “If Missouri were a country it would be the 3d largest country in the coalition.”
There he goes again: The President just repeated that the Duelfer report showed that sanctions didn’t work…
“I hear there’s rumors on the, uh, Internets.”
Something tells me our president does not spend a lot of time online.
The president says “I listened to my generals,” but given that Kerry just pointed out that Shinseki was retired for asking for more troops, he probably should have said “I listened to my generals after I sacked the ones who didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear.”
Bush just said this. I am not making it up:
“Of course I listened to our generals, that’s what a president does.”
How the president of the United States can stand up in front of the country and say “sanctions were not working” in Iraq, as he just did, when the commission he personally chose to resolve that question just reported to the country that sanctions did work is simply beyond me.
Kerry just zinged Bush on this, but it calls for something more than a debate retort. It calls for, I don’t know, medical care. This is not politics; it’s psychosis.
Live-blogging the debate
I’ve got some after-the-fact thoughts on Web 2.0 to post soon. But first, there’s this debate…
Draw? Draw? Are we on the same planet?
It is bizarre and strange to me that there is even a partial consensus among the TV talking heads that this debate was a draw. But then I’m terrible at judging what the media spin will be.
It seemed painfully clear to me that Cheney was tired and repetitious, Edwards nimble and engaged. When Cheney lurched at Edwards with cold, sharp jabs, Edwards parried with warmth and then gracefully landed his own blows. (Yes, it did seem like a boxing match at times — that’s good, there should be some real mixing-it-up in a debate.)
Here on the Web the commentary feels closer to reality. Andrew Sullivan says Cheney was “road-kill”: ” There was a tone of exasperation in much of Cheney’s wooden and often technical responses to political and moral questions…. He went down snarling. His personal attacks on Edwards were so brutal and so personal and so direct that I cannot believe that anyone but die-hard partisans would have warmed to them. Edwards’ criticisms, on the other hand, were tough but relatively indirect — he was always and constantly directing the answers to his own policies. Edwards, whom I’d thought would come of as a neophyte, was able to give answers that were clear and methodical.
Here’s Josh Marshall: “I thought that about a third of the way through the debate Edwards started to get under Cheney’s skin. The VP seemed mad. And not in a flattering way. The basic reason, I think, was the same as in President Bush’s case. He didn’t like hearing the fusillade of criticism about Iraq and the war on terror. There were no grimaces and rolling eyes like in the president’s case. But something about him turned sour and snide. And, again, not in a way that helped him land any punches on Edwards or Kerry.”
And over in Salon’s War Room, we’re fact-checking Cheney’s false statements about never having met Kerry before the debate and about Zarqawi and otherwise mopping up some of the evening’s loose ends.
I suppose the spin-meisters will have their say in the next few minutes, but boy, if the issue in this debate had anything to do with Edwards’ callowness or inexperience, he has fully put that to rest.