“In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
Folks, this is serious. ”
Paul Krugman, “Lies, Sighs and Politics” NYT 6/8/07
[From Google News
Huckabee Errs on Reagan’s Birthday During Debate
FOX News – Jun 5, 2007
“Today’s the birthday of Ronald Reagan,” Huckabee said as he made a statement about terror and related it to the Cold War and the nine-year conflict between …
Huckabee: Confusing Reagan’s birth, death dates ‘absolute error’ Boston Globe
Huckabee Acknowledges Debate Error on Reagan Dates KATV
all 72 news articles »
72 news articles!!!! Ay Yi Yi!!!!!!! When I searched for the Iraq gaffe, I found one article. ]
“Asked whether we should have invaded Iraq, Mr. Romney said that war could only have been avoided if Saddam “had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction.†He dismissed this as an “unreasonable hypothetical.â€Except that Saddam did, in fact, allow inspectors in. Remember Hans Blix? ”
“… as far as I can tell, no major news organization did any fact-checking of either debate….”
“Look, debates involving 10 people are, inevitably, short on extended discussion. But news organizations should fight the shallowness of the format by providing the facts — not embrace it by reporting on a presidential race as if it were a high-school popularity contest.”
Paul Krugman, “Lies, Sighs and Politics” NYT 6/8/07
This stuff just drives me nuts. If our public news organizations are not going to monitor the facts, we, the people, must. We need to note and remember so that our public rhetoric is informed as much as possible by the way things actually happened instead of spin, confusion and lies.