Today's Lies, Brought to you by the Wall Street Journal

Are they Republicans? I am using today's (September 10, 2004) Wall Street Journal, so I can't directly say yes; I'll let you judge. But the quote they used is straight out of the Republican National Committee's arsenal. Let's start on the Opinion Page. While not strictly a lie, this is very misleading.

"Mr. Kerry suddenly turned against the war, too. 'Are you one of the anti-war candidates?' asked Chris Matthews back in January on MSNBC's 'Hardball.' Mr. Kerry: 'I am--Yes . . .'

Source: . Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2004, page A12

What's your impression?


Now, let's finish quotation:

In the sense that I don‘t believe the president took to us war as he should have, yes. Absolutely. Do I think this president violated his promises to America? Yes, I do, Chris. Was there a way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable? You bet there was and we should have done it right.

Source: Hardball transcript from August 16, 2004

Was your impression based on the Wall Street Journal correct?

Does the edited version in the Wall Street Journal give a fair opportunity to truly judge what Mr. Kerry said? Chris Matthews, host of Hardball, doesn't think so.

Do you (Matthew Dowd, a senior strategist with the Bush-Cheney campaign) think that was a fair cropping of what he had to say? You cut him off after he said, yes. And you did not let him continue on to say: 'in the sense that I don‘t believe the president took to us war as he should have.'

Let me ask you, Matt, are you going to have the president stop saying that John Kerry, on our show, on HARDBALL, because that‘s what he was referring to, clearly, 220 days ago when he said this, are you going to get him to stop saying that John Kerry declared himself the anti-war candidate, which is clearly not what he said because I used the word anti-war candidate and I referred to a number of them? You say what he said on my show and he didn‘t say that. That‘s all I‘m asking.

I‘m asking you, is the president going to keep saying that something that was said on this show wasn‘t said?

Why don‘t you show [President Bush] a tape of the show for 10 seconds so he‘ll get it straight.

But you don‘t—you can‘t. So it only showed the first part of the sentence so they wouldn‘t get to judge it for themselves, right?

Would you like to have your sentences cut down like to a third of their length and let people decide on the first three or four words what you meant by the 20 words? Let me repeat it again, what he said. I‘m not going to argue this any further tonight. I think you guys should consider taking this off your loop. I think the president ought to be shown this tape so he knows what he‘s talking about, instead of having it fed to him by somebody who doesn‘t show them full sentence.

Source: Hardball transcript from August 16, 2004


This particular edited use of the Hardball quote surfaced in Kerry On Iraq , a video "paid for by the Republican National Committee and Bush-Cheney, '04 Inc." that was reportedly viewed 7,186,362 times. Does this count as 7,186,362 lies or just one big one?

source: http://www.kerryoniraq.com , a site "paid for by the Republican National Committee. Not Authorized By Any Candidate Or Candidate Committee - www.gop.com"