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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: redfish who wrote (48302)	9/13/2004 10:35:23 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 81568

Kerry Challenges Bush on Iraq-9/11 Connection _____________________________ CNN Sunday 12 September 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry accused the Bush administration Sunday of falsely linking Iraq to the attacks of September 11, 2001, "in its desperate attempts to reinvent a rationale for the Iraq war." Kerry made his charge in a statement released after Secretary of State Colin Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he has seen nothing to link Saddam Hussein's regime with the 9/11 attacks. "We know that there had been connections and there had been exchanges between al Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein regime. And those have been pursued and looked at," Powell said on the program. "But I have seen nothing that makes a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and that awful regime, and what happened on 9/11." Kerry said Powell "came clean with the American people about the lack of a connection between Iraq, Saddam Hussein and the September 11 attacks." Not only that, Kerry said, Powell also contradicted comments Vice President Dick Cheney has made as recently as Friday. At campaign stops Thursday and Friday, Cheney mentioned al Qaeda in discussing the Iraq war, but he did not link Iraq under Saddam to September 11. On Thursday in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cheney described Saddam as a "man who provided safe harbor and sanctuary to terrorists for years" and who "provided safe harbor and sanctuary as well for al Qaeda." In Wisconsin on Friday, he said the "al Qaeda organization had a relationship with the Iraqis." "The bottom line is that we're [in Iraq] for the safety and security of the nation, and our friends and allies around the world," Cheney said. "We didn't do anything to provoke the attack of 9/11. We were attacked by the terrorists, and we've responded forcefully and aggressively." In June, Cheney said "we don't know" whether Iraq was involved in 9/11. In September 2003, Cheney said Iraq under Saddam had been "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." But at the time President Bush said, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 [attacks]. What the vice president said was that he has been involved with al Qaeda." The independent, bipartisan panel that investigated the attacks released its final report July 22. The 9/11 commission found there were numerous contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda in the 1990s, but it said those contacts did not result in a "collaborative relationship." In his statement Sunday, Kerry complained that Cheney "continues to intentionally mislead the American public by drawing a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 in an attempt to make the invasion of Iraq part of the global war on terror. "The president needs to answer the question: Who do you think is right? Vice President Cheney or Secretary Powell? And if it's Secretary Powell, will you direct your vice president to stop misleading the American people?" The Kerry statement continued: "On an issue of such importance, where U.S. troops are bearing nearly 90 percent of the burden, and American taxpayers are paying $200 billion and counting, the administration has an especially solemn obligation to conduct itself in an honest and straightforward way. "Unfortunately, in its desperate attempts to reinvent a rationale for the Iraq war, this White House has repeatedly chosen to mislead the American people." truthout.org

To: redfish who wrote (48302)	9/13/2004 3:31:08 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 81568

News from the Votemaster Not much to report. The only state poll is Maine, but it is interesting. Kerry and Bush are tied at 43% each. This result is bad news for Kerry, who expected to win Maine easily, as Gore did in 2000. Maine is one of the two states that does not use a winner-take-all system for allocating its votes in the electoral college (Nebraska is the other one). The winner of each of the two congressional districts gets one, and the statewide winner gets the other two. The poll did not break down the results by CD. Also noteworthy in Maine is that 43% of the voters say Bush deserves another term while 55% say it is time for someone new. This finding suggests that a lot of people there dislike Bush but are not sure Kerry is the answer. Finally, although the people of Maine are not so hot on George Bush, they definitely like bear-baiting. The referendum on banning it is losing 52% to 35%. I think bears should be allowed to vote on that one. Zogby did a survey among rural voters. The good news for Bush is that he is ahead 52% to 37% in this demographic group. The bad news is that in 2000 he led 59% to 37% at this point. Jobs, terrorism, Iraq, health care, and education are the top issues down on the farm. Not surprisingly, those rural voters who see jobs as the most important issue prefer Kerry and those who see terrorism as the key issue prefer Bush. <font color=red>I have it on good authority that overseas voters are registering in huge numbers this time, maybe double or triple 2000. I was told that the number of people who showed up at the Democratic party caucus in England earlier this year was 10 times what it was in 2000, ditto in other countries. Americans overseas vote in the state they last lived in, even if that was decades ago. There are about 7 million overseas Americans and probably about 5 million are over 18. In Florida, it was the overseas absentee ballots that swung the election. I believe that something like 8% are military, but the rest are students, teachers, artists, government workers, business executives, spouses of foreign nationals, missionaries, retirees, and more. What is significant here is that these people represent a lot of votes and are not included in any of the polls. Nobody knows if they are largely Democrats or Republicans, but their votes could be one of the big surprises of this election. if anyone has any actual data (as opposed to speculation) on this group, I'd be interested.<font color=black> electoral-vote.com

To: redfish who wrote (48302)	9/13/2004 8:46:28 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

<<...the White House is very scared of the new book about the Bush family by Kitty Kelley -- White House press manipulator Dan Bartlett actually called the president of NBC in an effort to get the network to cancel appearances by Kelly on Today. That should be a wake-up call to the press. If the White House is so scared of Kelley's reportedly very dishy, very embarrassing book that they're trying to pressure a TV network into not covering it, you just know that the Bushes can't handle the truth -- and the book's revelations may well be worth additional, deeper coverage...>> americanpolitics.com