FactCheck.org: Gingrich Overshoots the Truth

[pampango]

http://factcheck.org/2011/05/gingrich-overshoots-the-truth/

Republican Newt Gingrich mistakenly claimed on "Meet the Press" that a U.S. helicopter involved in the Osama bin Laden raid "was shot down." There’s no evidence of that. U.S. officials say it crash landed and was destroyed by Navy SEALs. Gingrich also was wrong to say Pakistan’s intelligence chief did not apologize for "failing to find" bin Laden. He may not have apologized to Gingrich or the U.S. public, but he did apologize to the Pakistani Parliament.

On domestic affairs, Gingrich exaggerated or overstated the facts on food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid fraud, and the uninsured — making bad situations appear even worse.

Although there has been some unfounded speculation among bloggers about what brought down the U.S. helicopter, there is no evidence that it was shot down. The U.S. hasn’t disclosed precisely why the helicopter went down — perhaps because, as the Army Times reported, it was a "secret stealth Black Hawk" whose existence wasn’t public knowledge. At a May 2 press briefing, John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said there was "no engagement with Pakistani forces." The American Forces Press Service, which is part of the Department of Defense, wrote on May 9 that the helicopter was damaged during a "hard landing." State Department spokesman Mark Toner on May 13 said it "crashed landed, or however you want to phrase it, and it was destroyed by the team on the ground."

Gingrich, May 15: We — between Medicare and Medicaid — we pay between $70 billion and $120 billion a year to crooks. And IBM has agreed to help solve it, American Express has agreed to help solve it, Visa’s agreed to help solve it. You can’t get anybody in this town to look at it. That’s, that’s almost $1 trillion over a decade. So there are things you can do to improve Medicare.

It’s true that Medicare and Medicaid paid about $70 billion in "improper payments" in 2010, but not all of those payments were fraudulent. Furthermore, Congress has already passed a law implementing the very kinds of solutions that Gingrich claimed "you can’t get anybody in this town to look at."

[eppur_se_muova]

1. "Overshoots" is waaaaaaaay too charitable. nt