WP: 9/11 Panel's Findings Vault Bush Credibility To Campaign Forefront

[Trajan]

Analysis
9/11 Panel's Findings Vault Bush Credibility To Campaign Forefront

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 20, 2004; Page A01


The White House's swift and sustained reaction last week to the preliminary findings of the Sept. 11, 2001, commission showed the potential threat the 10-member panel poses to President Bush's reelection prospects.

After the commission staff released its findings Wednesday that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda -- challenging an assertion Bush and Vice President Cheney have made for the past two years -- Bush declared again that there was, in fact, a relationship.

Democratic and Republican strategists agree that many details of the controversy do not pose a grave threat to Bush's reelection chances.

The significance, rather, is whether Bush's Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), can use the commission's findings to split the Iraq war from the war on terrorism in the public's mind, and, more broadly, raise doubts about Bush's credibility and competence by building on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and the miscalculations about the Iraqi resistance.

-snip-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54702-2004Jun19.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Kerry should concentrate on the tapes

from 9/11, which showed a government that appeared to be run by the Three Stooges, with Stooge #1 nowhere in sight while Stooge #2 ineffectually ran the show. I had on the radio last week when the tapes were played, and folks visiting the office shook their heads in disgust, then talked about how lousy Bush was as President.

[punpirate]

2. Ummm... this presumes that Bush...

... had any credibility in the past (which he did not).

Molly Ivins had it right, from the start: "watch what Bush does, don't listen to what he says."

If people had applied that simple rule to Bush when he was running for president, we all might have been spared much death and much heartache and fear.

[Disturbed]

3. The problem remains.

America has millions of potential voters that are either ignorant &/or stupid or they are average or even above average in IQ but don't pay much attention to reality. They watch a bit of nightly news, which mostly is complicit with the Right Wing Junta and many will vote with scant knowlege of what BushCo is about. The situation will need to be extremely terrible a week or so before the election for BushCo to lose. This election surely isn't contingent upon Democratic or J. Kerry support. The base of both parties are entrenched. It's the swing voters that will decide the actual outcome.