When truth was stretched

By Seattle Times news services

RON EDMONDS / AP Sen. John Kerry, left, listens to President Bush during the first presidential debate last night in Coral Gables, Fla. Moderator Jim Lehrer is at center.

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WASHINGTON — President Bush and Sen. John Kerry made few major factual errors in last night's debate, though on occasion they stretched the truth, left out inconvenient facts — or may have confused viewers as they spoke in policy shorthand.

Bush, for instance, praised reports that "10 million people have registered to vote in Afghanistan in the upcoming presidential election." While that may be true, there are also fears of massive vote rigging in advance of the country's first-ever presidential election Oct. 9, because the registration numbers are in some places significantly higher than what had been estimated for eligible voters.

Bush reprised a standard attack from his stump speech, as he presented Kerry as a flip-flopper who once said he "actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

The quote, something Kerry has acknowledged as an inarticulate moment, was in reference to a military funding bill that included money for troops in Iraq.

But the reality is a little more complex. The senator did vote for an amendment approving the money, but only if it was paid for by repealing tax cuts pushed by Bush. When that proposal failed, Kerry voted against the bill to protest what he considered a flawed and costly war.

Kerry repeatedly stated last night that U.S. forces allowed Osama bin Laden to escape during the battle at Tora Bora in 2001 because the administration "outsourced" the task to Afghan militia leaders. This probably overstates the case — it is unclear if bin Laden was at Tora Bora — but it is correct that the Pentagon relied on Afghan proxy forces in an effort to minimize the potential loss of U.S. military lives.

After the Tora Bora fight, as local Afghan militias began withdrawing, considering their part of the war over, top Pentagon authorities appeared ready to send hundreds of conventional ground forces into the White Mountains to press the search for bin Laden and associates. That plan was nixed in favor of offers of money, weapons and cold-weather clothing to sustain Afghan cooperation.

The two men also disputed whether Saddam Hussein would have been stronger if the United States had not launched an invasion. This is a question that will be long debated by historians, and the answer may never be clear. Bush said it was necessary to disarm Saddam — but his administration invaded Iraq because it believed Saddam was concealing stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and no such weapons have been found.

Some post-invasion reports have argued that Saddam retained the capability to restart his weapons programs, but many experts consider that doubtful as long as he remained under U.N. sanctions and inspections.
 
However, when Kerry says Saddam would have been continually weakened, he is making a leap of faith that the U.N. Security Council would have been willing to continue a sanctions regime that was increasingly unpopular with key nations.

Kerry suggested that the U.S. has spent $200 billion on Iraq, largely because it supplied the bulk of the troops. This is an exaggeration, because it combines the amount already spent — about $120 billion — with money that is expected to be spent in the coming year or requested by the administration.

But Bush also made an error when he corrected Kerry, saying Kerry forgot to mention Poland supplied forces when the invasion began. Kerry said there were three countries — Great Britain, Australia and the United States — and Bush said, "actually he forgot Poland."

Poland later supplied troops and commanded a zone of Iraq. But it was not part of the original ground invasion. And though Bush said there are 30 countries in the coalition, he neglected to say that about a half-dozen countries have withdrawn their troops in recent months.

At another point, Kerry said, "Secretary of State Colin Powell told this president the Pottery Barn rule: if you break it, you fix it." This anecdote comes from Bob Woodward's book, "Plan of Attack," but actually, Woodward reported that Powell privately talked with aides about the rule that if "you break it, you own it." He did not say this to the president — and it turned out Pottery Barn does not have such a rule.

On North Korea, Bush charged that Kerry's proposal to have direct talks with North Korea would end the six-nation diplomacy that the administration has pursued over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. Kerry has said he would continue the six-party talks as well, but Bush said direct talks with North Korea would drive away China, a key player in the negotiations.

But each of the other four countries in the talks has held direct talks with North Korea during the six-party process — and China has repeatedly asked the Bush administration to talk directly with North Korea. Moreover, the Bush administration has talked directly to North Korean diplomats on the sidelines of the six-party talks, and Powell met with his North Korean counterpart over the summer.

Bush twice suggested al-Qaida is a vastly diminished force at the top, saying at one point that "75 percent of known al-Qaida leaders have been brought to justice," and at another, that Osama bin Laden is "isolated — 75 percent of his people have been brought to justice."

But al-Qaida is still considered a mortal danger in part because it refills its ranks and leadership. The president was actually referring to deaths or arrests of operatives who powered al-Qaida when it mounted the Sept. 11 attacks, not those behind the organization today.

Earlier this year, the CIA estimated two-thirds of the leaders at the time of the attacks were gone. Bush upped the proportion to three-quarters in his national convention speech in August, based on intelligence findings that were not publicly detailed.

Kerry stretched in accusing Bush of spending too little on homeland security and too much in giving tax cuts to the rich. "This president thought it was more important to give the wealthiest people in America a tax cut rather than invest in homeland security," he said. "And long before President Bush and I get a tax cut — and that's who gets it — long before we do, I'm going to invest in homeland security."

Bush's tax cuts were across the board, not just for rich people like Kerry and himself.

The Democrat apparently misspoke when painting a dark picture of the chaos in Iraq today. He said of Iraq, "we got weapons of mass destruction crossing the border every single day, and they're blowing people up."

He apparently meant terrorists, not weapons of mass destruction, were crossing the border.

Kerry called Bush on another statement — the president's assertion in reference to Iraq that "the enemy attacked us ... and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people."

As Kerry pointed out, Saddam did not attack the United States. And the administration has backed away from earlier claims of a direct link between bin Laden and Saddam.

Compiled from reports by The Washington Post, The Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune.