Hey, welcome to Part Deux (if you haven't read Part One, keep scrolling...it's down there), which is kind of a summary of the post-debate coverage on MSNBC (as always, Chris Matthews of Hardball was on site for the event with a panel and various guests…no Zell Miller this time…sorry). I’m basically taking my notes (damn straight I took notes) and transcribing them so they actually make sense, along with anything else that comes to mind.
First, some fact checking, courtesy of Brian Williams (he’s the guy replacing Tom Brokaw; you can probably trust him). John Kerry has repeatedly thrown around the figure of $200 billion spent in Iraq, and I apologize that I didn’t look further when writing up my earlier post, because that is actually false. The closest figure is around $119 billion. Still a lot? Hell yeah, but Kerry had little to lose by reporting the actual figure.
Meanwhile, Bush stated that they had 100,000 Iraqis fully trained, and that by January they’d be up to 125,000, when in reality (this according the Prime Minister of Iraq, Iyad Allawi) Iraq now commands an army of 50,000, and that by January they’ll be up to 145,000, and all the way to 250,000 by the end of 2005. Why Bush didn’t use the Prime Minister’s numbers, which are far more impressive, I do not know.
On a lesser scale, Bush claimed the Iran sanctions were around before his administration, which is true, but the Bush administration did renew them.
Odd…I would’ve figured, if anything, the factual issues would have been bigger than this, but this was all they could dig up.
Kerry’s position on Iraq seems pretty clear to me now, after hearing not only his responses, but also the analysts on MSNBC and Jon Stewart. With the information we have now, the war on Iraq should have never happened. But, given the information he was given then (with the weapons of mass destruction and so forth), war was the correct decision, and even in that case it was poorly executed. Feel free to tell me if I’m wrong, just be prepared to back it up…I just watched four hours of debate coverage.
I took down some numbers on the debate, but they’re all available at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/ (scroll down a few boxes…but seriously, look around that page, there’s some great stuff).
Notably about the debate, the Kerry campaign pushed for the removal of the little warning lights earlier in the day (they felt it would be distracting), the only light interference was on Bush’s part, and even then it only flashed twice (didn’t even reach the buzzer…their last resort to get them to shut up).
The managing editor of Newsweek noted that Bush’s fallback was Kerry sending mixed message, and in some ways rightfully so…it was all he had going for him this time around.
John McCain noted that he would have liked to see more focus on other foreign relations issues, such as the war on drugs, immigration, et cetera, but can understand why Iraq would get all the focus (I agree with him on this…look at the Shuster’s Corner section of the Hardball site…the numbers speak). He also noted that with thirty-two pages of debate rules, he was a little skeptical that the evening would be that interesting, but in the end people got what they came to see (another point I agree with him on…man, this guy should run for President…oh, wait).
So yeah...there's your coverage for the first debate. I really enjoyed it, and found it well worth my time. Really can't wait for the Cheney/Edwards debate on Tuesday, and I hope you'll all tune in to that.
Please...if you have any thoughts on the debate, post away. If you can, keep them all on this thread so we don't get two separate discussions about the same thing (I broke these up for ease of reading). If not...whatya gonna do, but it'd be nice to get some order.
Oh, and if you're of age, for God's sake, VOTE IN NOVEMBER.
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