January 17, 2007 -- 6:01 PM EST // //
MCCAIN'S ASSAULT ON MOVEON.ORG FALLS APART RAPIDLY UNDER SCRUTINY.
Paging Wolf Blitzer: Please read this the next time you feel inclined to say that John McCain "likes straight talk."
Today MoveOn launched a TV ad slamming John McCain for his escalation plan for Iraq. As Atrios noted earlier today, the McCain campaign responded to the ad with a counter-attack on the organization.
But it turns out McCain's response (surprise!) is at best unproven and at worst completely false. It certainly doesn't constitute "straight talk." Here's what McCain said:
Danny Diaz, a McCain spokesperson, responded to MoveOn's ad by telling ABC News: "MoveOn.Org is an out-of-the-mainstream organization that has a long history of airing inflammatory material, even comparing the President to Hitler. It is not surprising that a liberal group opposed to military action after September 11th would attack Senator McCain's conservative values, as well as changing strategy and securing victory in Iraq."
Did MoveOn compare the President to Hitler, and did the group oppose military action after Sept. 11, as the McCain campaign is charging?
I emailed McCain's spokesman Diaz and asked for substantiation of these two charges. For the first one -- that MoveOn compared Bush to Hitler -- Diaz sent over a quote from a January 6, 2004 article in the Washington Post. It said that "videos" appeared on MoveOn's web site comparing Bush to Hitler as part of a contest for an anti-Bush TV ad. Here's what Diaz didn't quote but also appeared in the same article (via Nexis):
The Hitler spots were among more than 1,500 submissions; MoveOn members have selected 15 finalists. The Hitler ads "lost miserably," said Eli Pariser, the fund's campaign director. Pariser said: "Anyone in the public could submit an ad."...Voter Fund President Wes Boyd said the group's officials "deeply regret" that the ads "slipped through our screening process."
So, no reasonable person could continue to pretend that the organization itself made the Bush-Hitler comparison. One down.
What about the second charge -- that MoveOn opposed military action after Sept. 11?
To back that one up, Diaz pointed to a September 21, 2001 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. It said MoveOn founder Joan Blades claimed her group had collected 30,000 signatures since the attacks on a statement calling for "justice, not escalating violence that would only play into the terrorists' hands."
This is ambiguous at best, barring a look at the full statement. I called MoveOn and they claimed adamantly that the group hadn't opposed military action. They sent over this statement, which they said was their most forceful petition on what the U.S. should do in responding to the attacks. Here's the key part:
We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of the United States of America and of countries around the world, appeal to the President of The United States, George W. Bush; to the NATO Secretary General, Lord Robertson; to the President of the European Union, Romano Prodi; and to all leaders internationally to use moderation and restraint in responding to the recent terrorist attacks against the United States. We implore the powers that be to use, wherever possible, international judicial institutions and international human rights law to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks, rather than the instruments of war, violence or destruction.
This is not outright opposition to military action. Rather, it's a request that the U.S. and other powers avoid war "wherever possible" in pursuit of the goal of "bringing to justice those responsible for the attacks," a goal that the group clearly endorses here. What's more, MoveOn founders Eli Pariser and Joan Blades strongly denied ever opposing military action as early as December of 2004. At the time they wrote in The New Republic that "we never in fact opposed targeted military action against Al Qaeda and its Taliban backers in Afghanistan." Barring better evidence, this second McCain charge could be true, but remains unproven.
So: The first McCain charge is completely, demonstrably false. The second: Unclear, but without question as yet unproven.
One thing is clear: This statement from the McCain camp is anything but straight talk. So McCain wouldn't like it or sanction it.
Right, Wolf?