http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer25nov25,1,506207.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinionsFor the GOP, Criticism Is Next to Cowardice
A new ad questioning the patriotism of Democratic candidates is dirty politics.
Robert Scheer
November 25, 2003
What nerve for President Bush to question the patriotism of his Democratic opponents, two of whom are highly decorated Purple Heart and Bronze and Silver Star veterans and all of whom have labored long to make this a better country.
But the television ad that the Republican Party is running on Bush's behalf in Iowa this week does just that, making the outrageous insinuation that critics of the president's policies are in fact supporters of terrorists.
"Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists," the ad states. "Some call for us to retreat, putting our national security in the hands of others." The ad urges viewers to tell Congress "to support the president's policy of preemptive self-defense."
This is dirty politics at its absolute lowest, equating criticism with cowardice.
The irony is that the ad features the president delivering the 2003 State of the Union speech, which has turned out to be an enormous embarrassment of admitted distortions, including one claim, based on a forged document, that Iraq was a nuclear threat. It was in that speech that the president touted the imminent threat of Iraq's so-far-undiscovered weapons of mass destruction while implying that Saddam Hussein collaborated with Al Qaeda on the 9/11 attacks — a charge that the president himself recently conceded was without foundation.
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