Letter from America: Vice-President Dick Cheney was judged to have held Senator John Edwards to a draw or even better in the aftermath of the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday.
Cheney appeared to have scored one of those great debate putdowns when he accused Edwards of being an absentee senator. "I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session," said Cheney, turning to Edwards. "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."
Within an hour, however, Democrats provided footage showing Edwards and Cheney sitting together at a prayer breakfast in 2001. "Thank you very much, Congressman Watts, Senator Edwards," Cheney is shown telling the guests. "Lynne and I are honoured to be with you all this morning." This will be remembered when all that people recall of Edwards will be his grin, like that of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire cat.
Cheney also made an error when he replied to Edwards's attack on his record at Halliburton by urging viewers to go to factcheck.com to find the truth.
Thousands of viewers imediately logged on, only to find themselves redirected to georgesoros.com which highlighted a personal message from the pro-Kerry billionaire saying: "President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values."
The Soros website now tells viewers it does not own the factcheck.com domain name and is not responsible for it redirecting people to georgesoros.com. "We are as surprised as anyone by this turn of events," it says. "We believe that Vice-President Cheney intended to direct viewers of the vice-presidential debate to factcheck.org."
Clearly he did. factcheck.org is the website of the highly respected Annenberg nonprofit advocate for voters that "aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in US politics".
Cheney wanted to draw attention to a September 30th criticism on the Annenberg website of a Kerry ad implying Cheney has a financial interest in Halliburton and profited from the company's contracts in Iraq.
"The fact is, Cheney doesn't gain a penny from Halliburton's contracts, and almost certainly won't lose even if Halliburton goes bankrupt," it said, based on documentation from Cheney's office. "The ad claims Cheney got $2 million from Halliburton as vice-president, which is false," it continued.
"Actually, nearly $1.6 million of that was paid before Cheney took office. More importantly, all of it was earned before he was a candidate, when he was the company's chief executive."
It stated that the $398,548 Halliburton paid to Cheney while in office was all deferred compensation, "a common practice that high-salaried executives use to reduce their tax bills by spreading income over several years." There was no conflict of interest as Cheney had insured his payments against Halliburton going bankrupt.
Nevertheless, the Vice-
President will not want to draw attention to Annenberg's latest political critiques.
Looking back at the vice-presidential debate it says: "Cheney wrongly implied that FactCheck had defended his tenure as CEO of Halliburton Co, and the vice-president even got our name wrong. He overstated matters when he said Edwards voted 'for the war' and 'to commit the troops, to send them to war.'
"He exaggerated the number of times Kerry has voted to raise taxes, and puffed up the number of small-business owners who would see a tax increase under Kerry's proposals."
As for Edwards, it says the Democrat "falsely claimed the administration lobbied the Congress to cut the combat pay of troops in Iraq, something the White House never supported, and he used misleading numbers about jobs."
The website also takes issue with a Bush ad claiming that Kerry's healthcare proposals would put "big government in charge" of medical decisions. "In fact, Kerry's plan would leave 97 per cent with the insurance they have now - while up to 27 million who aren't insured would gain coverage" and "Bush's claim turns out to be based on opinions from two conservative advocates whose predictions aren't supported by neutral experts."
It also slammed an ad from the pro-Bush Progress for America Voter Fund showing Osama bin Laden and John Kerry together, saying it "appeals to fear, and twists Kerry's record on defence, intelligence, Iraq."
It dismisses the suggestion in the ad that Kerry has "a 30-year record of supporting cuts in defence and intelligence" as "misleading charges that we've debunked before." Cheney can be forgiven for concluding he has opened up a can of worms.
It's been a terrible week for George Bush. A US arms inspector, Charles Duelfer, reported to Congress that, not only did Saddam Hussein have no weapons of mass destruction, he couldn't even make them. And the former US consul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, accused the White House of not sending enough troops to Iraq to stop looting (except at the oil ministry).
The hawkish Wall Street Journal editorial page chided Mr Bush yesterday for not doing a better job in explaining his Iraq policy. But the editors of the Journal, whose news coverage is widely admired, have been embarrassed by a leaked e-mail from their Baghdad correspondent, Farnaz Fassihi, meant only for friends in the US.
The Iranian-born, American-
educated reporter, who 10 months ago wrote in an e-mail that Baghdad was getting back on its feet with new restaurants and designer clothing shops, said in her new message that "being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest."
Ms Fassihi said she could not go grocery shopping any more, "can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in anything but a full armoured car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling . . ."
She concluded: "Despite Present Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat', a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come."
The Wall Street Journal announced that Ms Fassihi would not be writing about Iraq for the paper until after the election because of "a long-planned vacation".