George Bush - Crooked Liar!!

OK, so that might be a bit provacative. But how else do you respond to this type of nonsense - "Bush Exaggerates Kerry's Position on Intelligence Budget (washingtonpost.com)"

"President Bush, in his first major assault on Sen. John F. Kerry's legislative record, said this week that his Democratic opponent proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, a proposal that would "gut the intelligence services," and one that had no co-sponsors because it was "deeply irresponsible."

In terms of accuracy, the parry by the president is about half right. Bush is correct that Kerry on Sept. 29, 1995, proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget. But Bush appears to be wrong when he said the proposed Kerry cut -- about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years -- would have "gutted" intelligence. In fact, the Republican-led Congress that year approved legislation that resulted in $3.8 billion being cut over five years from the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office -- the same program Kerry said he was targeting."

I think the Washington Post was being kind to use the term "exaggerates" rather than saying what it really was - a blatant lie. The $1.5 billion over five years ($300 million annually) that Kerry proposed cutting was the surplus amount left unspent that year in the intelligence budget. So all that Kerry was proposing to do was to give that unspent money back to the taxpayers - something that Republicans are typically in favor of. It would hardly have "gut the intelligence services," as Bush well knows.

But this blatant lie about Kerry trying to "gut the intelligence services" is currently being spread all across the country by our president as he attempts to divert attention from his own domestic and foreign policy failures.

But that kind of dirty pool campaigning, while despicable, is not even the worst thing that came out about the Bush administration this past week. There was also this story about how the Bush administration lied to members of its own party and threatened to fire the government's top expert on Medicare if he didn't keep quiet about how the administration's prescription drug plan would cost $100 billion more than what they were telling everybody it would cost.

"When the House of Representatives passed the controversial benefit by five votes last November, the White House was embracing an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But for months the administration's own analysts in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had concluded repeatedly that the drug benefit could cost upward of $100 billion more than that.
Withholding the higher cost projections was important because the White House was facing a revolt from 13 conservative House Republicans who'd vowed to vote against the Medicare drug bill if it cost more than $400 billion."

The Bush folks knew they didn't have the votes to pass their version of the Medicare drug bill, so they simply lied about it. They LIED about it!

And they want John Kerry to apologize for what? Stating the obvious??