Bush and Shaggy: It Wasn’t Me
From Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me:
She even caught me on camera
“It wasn’t me”
She saw the marks on my shoulder
“It wasn’t me”
Heard the words that I told her
“It wasn’t me”
Heard the screamimg getting louder
“It wasn’t me”
I think that nicely encapsulates the Bush campaign’s ad strategy so far. On body armor, as I explained yesterday, “Congress gives Bush money for the armor, Rumsfeld and the Pentagon are in charge of procuring the armor … but [they] fail do adequately do so. Fast-forward to 2004 and it’s John Kerry’s fault!”
Not procuring body armor?
It wasn’t me.
I also wrote that “Researching the hypocrisy in the ‘higher combat pay’ charge is left as an exercise for the reader.” I don’t think he’s a reader, but Josh Marshall has completed said research on combat pay, finding an August 15th, 2003 San Francisco Chronicle article on the subject:
The White House quickly backpedaled Thursday on Pentagon plans to cut the combat pay of the 157,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan after disclosure of the idea quickly became a political embarrassment.
The Pentagon’s support for the idea of rolling back “imminent danger pay” by $75 a month and “family separation allowances” for the American forces by $150 a month collapsed after a story in The Chronicle Thursday generated intense criticism from military families, veterans groups and Democratic candidates seeking to unseat President Bush in 2004.
Unfortunately, neither the SF Chronicle nor the Army Times has public archives. However, I did find this blurb for a story in the current issue of Army Times:
White House won’t try to cut special deployment pays
The Bush administration will not repeat its highly publicized — and ultimately unsuccessful — attempt last year to cut benefits for deployed troops.
Nice. They can find all the unpopular things they’ve done and say “Kerry did it. It wasn’t me.” Even if they’re caught on camera, or Googleable archives.
Cutting combat pay?
It wasn’t me!
Still left as an exercise for the reader is the third specious (crooked? lying?) charge: Kerry opposed “better health care for reservists and their families” while Bush supported it.
AB
UPDATE: The SF Chronicle (now apparently the SF Gate) does have archives online. See the 8/15/2003 article on combat pay here. Thanks to sashax for the link.