christian grantham
Christian Grantham was a student activist in the late 90s and later a consultant to domestic policy forums for the Clinton Administration as well as events for HRC and GLAAD.
	latest posts   Bush on Osama bin Laden   Bush Flip-Flops on Terrorism   Flip-Flopper-In-Chief   Dick Cheney: YOU'RE FIRED!   Dick Cheney on War with Iraq

October 13, 2004

Now we know why the President rarely did press conferences. Iraq has so distracted him, he doesn't know an exaggeration from the truth. Mr. President, isn't Osama bin Laden the man who attacked us on 9-11?

FLIP: "Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations."
[3rd 2004 Presidential Debate - Transcript - 10-13-04]

FLOP: "Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban."
[White House Press Conference - 03-13-02]

"We want him dead or alive ... but we are not too worried about him. ... He is the one who needs to be worried," Bush said.
[Bush not worried about bin Laden - UPI - 01-22-04]

filed under: 2004 Debates , Flip-Flops

October 12, 2004

President Bush thinks it's silly for John Kerry to believe our best hope is to reduce terror to a nuisance.

FLIP: ''I couldn't disagree more,'' Bush said. ''Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive.''

The Bush campaign also takes on the ''nuisance'' comment in a new television ad. And Vice President Dick Cheney, campaigning in Medford, N.J., called Kerry's remarks ''naive and dangerous.''
[Bush mocks terror-as-nuisance view - Chicago Sun-Times - 10-11-04]

But Bush thought differently just weeks ago.

FLOP: "I don't think you can win it," Bush said in the interview on NBC's Today show. "But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."
[Bush: 'I don't think you can win' war on terror - St. Petersberg Times - 08-31-04]

When have the facts ever stopped Bush from flip-flopping and deriding his own ideas? Bush also mocked the advice of Gen. Brent Scowcroft, his father's National Security Advisor, to consider the facts prior to engaging Iraq through a policy of pre-emptive war. General Scrowcroft also shares Kerry and Bush's view that our challenge in the war of terror is to reduce it to being "less acceptable" or a "nuisance."

"There is going to be no peace treaty on the battleship Missouri in the war on terrorism, but we can break its back so that it is a horrible nuisance and not a paralyzing influence on our societies," Scowcroft told the U.S. Institute of Peace.
[Bush, Kerry Campaign in West Before Debate - AP - 10-11-04]

also read: SlantPoint, Powerline, Blogs For Bush

filed under: Catastrophic Success , Flip-Flops

October 06, 2004

Archpundit points out Bush flip-flopping this morning in what was supposed to be a "major policy speech." It turned out to be the exact same Bush stump speech that lost the debate over Iraq last week and continues to lose even among his own Administration.

FLIP: "My opponent says he has a plan for Iraq. Parts of it should sound pretty familiar -- it's already known as the Bush plan."

FLOP: "In Iraq, Senator Kerry has a strategy of retreat; I have a strategy of victory."
[President's Remarks in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania - 10-06-04]

How can Kerry's plan be the "Bush Plan" if Kerry's plan is "a strategy of retreat?" Here is President Bush's issueing the same tired "major policy speech" declaring the exact same thing.

FLIP: "Forty-three days before the election," Bush said, "my opponent has now suddenly settled on a proposal for what to do next, and it's exactly what we're currently doing."
[Bush 'miscalculated and mismanaged' on Iraq, Kerry says - St Louis Dispatch - 09-20-04]

FLOP: "John Kerry's latest position on Iraq is to advocate retreat and defeat in the face of terror. This sends the wrong signal to our troops, our allies and our enemies."
[The Kerry Line: John Kerry's Retreat And Defeat - Bush/Cheney04 - 09-20-04]

filed under: Flip-Flops

October 06, 2004

As last night's Vice Presidential Debate illustrated, the Bush Administration's most formidable opponent in the debate over Iraq is itself. On one side of the Bush Administration you have the CIA, Cabinet officials, former Generals, Iraqi Administrators, both U.S. weapons inspectors, and a list of Republican leaders in Congress. On the other side you have Vice President Dick Cheney and those he continues to snow with lies.

Here is a big lie told by Vice President Dick Cheney last night:

"The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror."
[Transcript: Vice Presidential Debate - Washington Post - 10-06-04]

Yet on Meet The Press in March 2003, Dick Cheney clearly states a connection between Iraq and those who attacked us on 9-11.

"We know [Saddam Hussein's] out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization."
[Meet The Press - Dick Cheney - 03-16-03]

More recently on Meet The Press in September 2003, Dick Cheney continues to assert a connection between Iraq and those who attacked the United States, defying every conceivable expert and agency at the behest of the United States of America. This pattern of rejecting facts, and then lying about it, is the heart of President Bush's foreign policy.

"We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization."
[Meet The Press - Dick Cheney - 09-14-03]

Dick Cheney's lies didn't stop there. Last Night, Dick Cheney said the VP debate was the first time he had ever met Senator John Edwards. Oh really?

filed under: 2004 Debates , Catastrophic Success , Flip-Flops

September 29, 2004

"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.

"And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.

"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."
[Defense Secretary Dick Cheney - Discovery Institute in Seattle - 1992]

filed under: Flip-Flops

September 20, 2004

President Bush describes Kerry's plan on Iraq as "exactly what we're currently doing." If that's so, then why does the Bush/Cheney campaign say Kerry's plan on Iraq advocates "retreat and defeat?"

"Forty-three days before the election," Bush said, "my opponent has now suddenly settled on a proposal for what to do next, and it's exactly what we're currently doing."
[Bush 'miscalculated and mismanaged' on Iraq, Kerry says - St Louis Dispatch - 09-20-04]

"John Kerry's latest position on Iraq is to advocate retreat and defeat in the face of terror. This sends the wrong signal to our troops, our allies and our enemies.
[The Kerry Line: John Kerry's Retreat And Defeat - Bush/Cheney04 - 09-20-04]

also read: Atrios, Captain's Quarters, Blogs For Bush, WizBang

filed under: Flip-Flops

September 11, 2004

If Cheney never said we'd get struck by a terrorist attack if Kerry is elected, then what was Cheney saying we'd "get hit" with if Kerry was elected? Spit balls?

"I did not say if Kerry is elected, we will be hit by a terrorist attack," Cheney said in an interview with the newspaper during a campaign swing through the battleground states of Ohio and Wisconsin where he is working to bring swing voters to the Republican side. [Cheney Softens Comments on Kerry and Terror Threat - AP - 09-10-04]

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.
[Cheney Warns Against Vote for Kerry - AP - 09-07-04]

filed under: Flip-Flops

September 01, 2004

It seems like the further Zell Miller's hair-part moves to the right, the more out of touch with himself he becomes. What else better explains how Miller can describe the actions of others as heroic only later to call those same actions into question?

Kerry An "Authentic Hero": "My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend. He was once a lieutenant governor -- but he didn't stay in that office 16 years, like someone else I know. It just took two years before the people of Massachusetts moved him into the United States Senate in 1984.

Kerry "Strengthened Our Military": "In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington. Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so. John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment.”
[U.S. Senator Zell Miller - Remarks to the Democratic Party of Georgia Jefferson Jackson Dinner 2001]

also read: Kicking Ass

filed under: Flip-Flops

August 31, 2004

Yesterday, President Bush had a pesimistic assessment for the American people on the war on terror: "I don't think you can win it."

But when appearing before a group of veterans today, President Bush told them what they wanted to hear: "we are winning, and we will win."

While the President was snowing America's veterans, he failed to explain his proposed budget cut of $1,000,000,000 from Veterans Affairs.

Bush amended his view less than three hours after an official of Kerry's campaign told reporters that the senator would hold a rally in Nashville Tuesday night to "talk about the war on terror, and ask why the president thinks we can't win it." Kerry, an American Legion member, will break with the tradition of suspending campaigning during the opposite party's convention and will address the group on Wednesday, on the eve of Bush's acceptance speech.
[Bush: 'We Will Win' the War on Terror - Washington Post - 08-31-04]

filed under: Flip-Flops

August 29, 2004

Phyllis Schlafly doesn't see any controversy in the Republican party's newly professed call for a constitutional amendment banning abortion.

"We're reasonably happy," said longtime conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, who sat in the guest section's front row. The abortion issue, she noted, "caused big fights" at the previous three Republican conventions, "and it's completely noncontroversial now. There wasn't even a motion to alter it in any way."
[GOP Keeps Peace With Platform That Supports Bush - Washington Post - 08-27-04]

No one represents today's Republican party principles on abortion rights better than Phyllis Schlafly. So where is Schlafly's prominent speaking role?

filed under: Flip-Flops

August 24, 2004

Vice President Dick Cheney was for a discriminatory amendment to the United States Constitution... before he was against it.

CHENEY - January 2004
"At this stage, obviously, the president is going to have to make a decision in terms of what administration policy is on this particular provision, and I will support whatever decision he makes," Cheney told the Post.
[Cheney would support constitutional ban on gay marraige - USA Today - 01-10-04]

BUSH - February 2004
"If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America. Decisive and democratic action is needed, because attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country."
[Remarks by the President Calling for Constitutional Amendment Protecting Marriage - White House - February 24, 2004]

CHENEY - August 2004
"My general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want," Cheney, 63, said in response to a question at a campaign "town hall" meeting in Davenport, Iowa.
[Cheney Says Does Not Back Federal Gay Marriage Ban - Reuters - 08-24-04]

filed under: Equal Marriage Rights , Equal Marriage Rights , Flip-Flops