Tuesday, 05 October 2004
Debate Question
Hesiod comes up with a killer question for the third debate:
It's a question that must be asked, because it may be the most important one in this Presidential election.
And if Bob Schieffer doesn't ask it in the third debate, John Kerry should make sure it's addressed.
What's this all-important question?
Simple:
"Mr. President, around 40% of the American people believe that Saddam Hussein had either direct or indirect involvement in the 9/11 attacks on the United States perpetrated by Al Qaeda. Where do you think they got that impression, and do you agree with them?"
Simple. Direct, and devasatating.
It also begs a couple of follow up questions depending on his answer.
If he says he doesn't know where they got that impression, Kerry should pounce with the litany of statements by Bush and Cheney that IMPLIED Saddam was connected to 9/11.
If he says he disagrees with that statement, it will dramatically hurt him with many voters, because they will suddenly realize he's been conning them.
If he says he AGREES with them, Kerry should demand evidence and ask why it has never been presented to the American people or to Congress.
I firmly believe that one reason why Bush still has solid support (if waning) for the Iraq war is because of that very misimpression.
If Kerry can put a serious dent in that belief among a significant percentage of voters by forcing the question at the third debate, and then using Bush's answers in TV ads, he will win this election going away.
UPDATE: Cut and paste my question for Mr. Lehrer Schieffer, and send it to him via e-mail at:
Make sure you state, explicitly, that you read this question on a blog, and that you think it would be a very good one to ask the President.
Put my question into quotes, so that Lehrer Schieffer doesn't dismiss the e-mails as phony. If you use quotation marks, and say you thought the questions was a good one and you forwarded it to him for that purpose, he's more likely to take it seriously. As indeed he should.
Posted by flow Frazao on October 5, 2004 at 08:52 AM in ReDefeat Bush | Permalink
i've sent out my email!
damn, you'd think people would WANT to ask tough questions, wouldn't you? looks like the conventional wisdom has changed enough post-debate one that it's kerry in the lead; hopefully the media will continue to make it so.
tv newscasters decide the election! only in america.
Posted by: mel | Oct 5, 2004 11:00:17 AM
Iraq missions that work out are missing from mainstream media
Did you see the big headline or watch the top-of-the-newscast story about the success of our sons and daughters in Samarra, Iraq?
Of course, you didn't.
I found mention deep in stories from The Christian Science Monitor and The Associated Press. But it took e-mails from Marine officers in Iraq to relay the importance of this positive news — so I could tell you.
It shouldn't be this way. Yet journalism in America is broken. It has no foundation of values by which many Americans can relate and depend. The moral of this column is not about one side prevailing in news coverage on the war on terror. It's simply about fairness — about Americans getting both sides with the same prominence.
They're not. And media emphasis on Iraq being in chaos has coincided with John Kerry making the same pitch to voters. It makes you wonder, just as we did on the authenticity of Dan Rather's reporting. And now America knows about Rather's ruse.
''Samarra is a beaming success story over here,'' writes Lt. Col Jim Rose, a Tennessee Marine whose parents live in Old Hickory. ''We were getting ready for a take-down there right after Najaf. We told the locals, 'Hey, see what happened in Najaf? Is that what you want? Cause we're coming.' It took the locals about two days to get the bad guys out.''
Rose is based in the Sunni Triangle. That's where most U.S. casualties occur, where the Sunnis are supportive of terrorists coming in. Fallujah is there, along with Samarra and Najaf, where Marines drove terrorists out of one of Islam's holiest shrines.
Rose verified a message I received from another Marine officer in Iraq. He provided perspective missing in the media: ''Those achievements, more than anything else … account for the surge in violence in recent days — especially the violence directed at Iraqis by the insurgents. Both in Najaf and Samarra, ordinary people stepped out and took sides with the Iraqi government against the insurgents, and the bad guys are hopping mad. They are trying to instill fear once again.''
Rose asked: ''Why isn't the media covering Samarra?''
Instead, we get what reader Jim League of Smyrna complains about. He cited a picture and story featured at the top of Page 13A in Saturday's Tennessean:
''The perhaps 100 protesters get front-and-center billing, and the impression is that all of Iraq is unhappy. What is missing is perspective. Imagine a foreigner perusing the front page of The Tennessean. He reads about a 15-year-old-boy being chained to his bed for six weeks. Would he be justified in believing that all parents in America constrain their children? If he had no perspective and if his impression was selectively reinforced by subtle media or political pundits, this could be possible.''
Exactly. And what we get on TV is also just one side. Consider this story Rose saw reported: ''I was going through the battle damage assessment at my desk with NBC's Today on the TV. The attack occurred in the middle of the night. I had the footage of the attack on my computer, and here's Katie Couric (or whoever hosts it) showing the same bomb location.
''I had pictures of the bombed vehicles, which is how I knew she was talking about the same location. The next shot is kids being carried into a hospital. We had eyes on this for a long time. If there were kids in there, they were toting weapons or the terrorists used them as human shields. …
''I went to our Combat Operations Center and walked into them watching the same thing. I verified what I thought and spoke with our intelligence guys. They said the whole thing was staged and probably old footage. They track the footage and have seen repeat footage shown in the past. They also said to look at the footage and see if it makes sense. More often than not, it doesn't … pulling a child from rubble with relatively clean clothes. ''
Is NBC wrong and the Marines right? Americans deserve both sides to make up their minds.
''The Najaf shrine — HUNDREDS of dead women and children were brought out after Sadr left,'' Rose wrote. ''They (Sadr's supporters) rounded them up during the battle and brought them in to be executed. Why? Because they anticipated the Americans would eventually enter the shrine and walk into a media ambush. We never went in. The people of Najaf love us right now because of that. They hate Sadr and want him dead.
''Have you heard that one yet (in the media)?''
No we haven't. We just get one side. That's bad journalism — by a news media acting in concert with Kerry.
Tim Chavez is a columnist with The Tennessean.
Posted by: Lars Hooshevoon | Oct 5, 2004 2:40:34 PM
You want to repost entire articles? Fine. Here's one for you:
"TUCSON, Ariz. The grief of losing her son in Iraq may have been too much for an Arizona woman.Friends say Karen Unruh-Wahrer collapsed and died at her Tucson home, days after learning that Army Specialist Robert Unruh had been shot and killed near Baghdad on September 25th.
He'd been in Iraq less than a month when his unit was attacked. His 45-year-old mother collapsed Saturday -- just hours after seeing her son's body.
A co-worker of of the grief-stricken woman quotes her husband as saying she died of a broken heart."
Fuck your bullshit conspiracy theories about the "liberal media". Fuck your war of choice. Fuck the boring way you cut and paste articles you wish you were literate enough to write.
Oh yeah, and Fuck You. Come back when you've got something original to say.
Posted by: smooveJ | Oct 5, 2004 6:07:38 PM
Hallo Pinhead,
Es ist nett, zu sehen, daß Sie ein amerikanischer
Punk mit einer regelwidriger und vulagr Öffnung sind. Die
Wahrheit verletzt, nicht es, shithead.
Erinnern Sie sich, haben Sie nicht an zu viel Geschlecht mit den
Bauernhoftieren. Er ruiniert Ihr liberales Sehvermögen.
Sie sind so dumm,
Lars
Posted by: Lars Hooshevoon | Oct 5, 2004 8:55:02 PM
Sex with animals? Shithead?
Come on, buddy. This is a family website. I know you want to participate (you Germans are known for your crowd participation skills), but please try to be substantive when you do.
By the way, my "liberales Sehvermögen" is just fine, thanks.
Posted by: smooveJ | Oct 5, 2004 10:46:22 PM
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/1200815
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Debate Question: