ABC News poll

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
ABC News poll
80
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 2:56pm




I keep hearing that polls are showing Kerry the winner, but in this poll at least, more people feel it was a tie or that Bush was the winner than that Kerry won.

Personally I thought Kerry was the better debater, but when people go back and think about his responses they'll find that he's not said anything different, just polished up the act a bit. He still wants to put the UN in charge of our national security, he still claims both that Saddam was a threat yet insists that Bush misled the American people on that very issue, he still has no plans for Iraq that differ from the president's, aside from his boasting that he will get other countries to share the burden, even though they have repeatedly said they won't no matter who is president, he still claims to be better at building alliances even as he disrepsects the very allies who supported us and disrespects our vital ally Prime Minister Allawi. He claims nuclear proliferation is our biggest threat but he wants to dismantle one of OUR nuclear programs, a "bunker buster" bomb that could be crucial to deterring nuclear strikes for the folks who actually LIVE in bunkers (aka terrorists), so I guess he's still back with those who felt a nuclear freeze was the best way to end the Cold War. After all these years he still doens't understand the doctrine of peace through strength.

Bush as usual did not express himself very well, but his positions are better for the country IMO.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-23-2004
In reply to: liveanew
Sun, 10-03-2004 - 11:41pm
I pretty much believe the very opposite of every single point you make in that post. A very obvious case of "let's agree to disagree!" LOL! (Tired fingers = I will answer each point later!) But i had to comment on this comment of yours:

"The difference is, Nixon and Clinton were both proven to be liars. Bush has not been proven to have lied about anything. "

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My goodness it takes my breath away. For pete's sake. Wow. Where do I begin? (All are invited to jump in with links here, there are SO many lies to list!)

I first suspected Bush was a liar before he ever became president...

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In 1998, Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater specifically asked Bush about his arrest record after information surfaced that he was arrested for disorderly conduct in 1966 when, as a student at Yale, he was busted for snatching a Christmas wreath in New Haven, Conn. "Asked whether he had been arrested on anything 'after 1968,'" Slater wrote, "the governor replied, 'No.'" Slater recalled that Bush seemed ready to change his response when Karen Hughes, his spokeswoman, stopped the conversation. After a Maine TV reporter broke the DUI story Thursday, Bush initially questioned the story's timing before Hughes stepped in to tell reporters that Dubya had been totally open about his past and hadn't spoken of this bust because he wasn't asked.

http://www.bushwatch.com/dwi2.htm

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Excerpted from

BUSH LIES, MEDIA SWALLOWS

by Eric Alterman

The Nation

Nov 7, 2002

"...To cite just two particularly egregious examples, Bush tried to frighten Americans by claiming that Iraq possesses a fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used 'for missions targeting the United States.' Previously he insisted that a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed the Iraqis to be 'six months away from developing a weapon.' Both of these statements are false, but they are working. Nearly three-quarters of Americans surveyed think that Saddam is currently helping Al Qaeda; 71 percent think it is likely he was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

What I want to know is why this kind of lying is apparently OK. Isn't it worse to refer 'repeatedly to intelligence...that remains largely unverified' -- as the Wall Street Journal puts it -- in order to trick the nation into war, as Bush and other top US officials have done, than to lie about a blowjob? Isn't it worse to put 'pressure...on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates,' as USA Today worded its report? Isn't it more damaging to offer 'cooked information,' in the words of the CIA's former chief of counterterrorism, when you are asking young men and women to die for your lies? Don't we revile Lyndon Johnson for having done just that with his dishonest Gulf of Tonkin resolution?"

" TARGET="_blank">http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=alterman]

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more reading y'all might be interested in, about Bush & his lies:

http://www.riverwoodbooks.com/books/Big-Bush-Lies.html

http://www.politicalstrategy.org/archives/000181.php

http://www.alternet.org/story/16274

http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/5/bennett-d.html

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/07/22_lies.html

http://www.thehill.com/marshall/062503.aspx

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1028-09.htm

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-05-30/pols_hightower.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/science/18CND-RESE.html?ex=1096948800&en=8ff49432abe1869e&ei=5070&oref=login


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
In reply to: liveanew
Mon, 10-04-2004 - 12:37am
I disagreed with most of your post, but I've got to focus on this:

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The whole idea of these "bunker busters" is to have nuclear weapons which we actualy use freely. You don't think it would damage our relations with the entire world if we go around dropping small nuclear devices on people, ironically with the purpose of stopping other people from having nuclear devices, small, large or otherwise? The day we start dropping nuclear bombs as a routine Homeland Security measure is the day I start standing on the Washington mall with a big no-nukes sign and I'm not going home until there's a new president. It's crazy.

As for your second point - that the US dropping nuclear bombs on Muslim cities has some correlation to the mutually assured destruction of the cold war - that's just ridiculous. Besides the fact that would both turn the world against us AND actually promote the use of nuclear weapons... we won the cold war because the Soviet Union was corrupt and we broke their economy by forcing them to spend too much on defense. If that's the magic bullet to bring down a super power then we'd better be rethinking the WOT pretty fast since we're spending more than a BILLION dollars PER WEEK just in Iraq. That doesn't include Afghanistan or security measures at home. What is it costing the terrorists to make car bombs and cut off people's heads? Infinitesimally less. They can keep this up forever.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
In reply to: liveanew
Mon, 10-04-2004 - 12:46am
Thanks, I really don't have the energy to respond to all that stuff either. Suffice it to say that I could post just as many far right wing links that bolster everything Bush has ever claimed as the ones you post that tear those claims down. But it's all been done so many times before that I won't waste the time and effort. I've seen it all, I've read it all, I've just come to different conclusions than you have. I don't doubt that Bush (like all world leaders, IMO) tends to emphasize the info that bolters his position and de-emphasize that which doesn't support him. Not the same thing as lying, John Kerry has done the same thing over and over again. I've seen no proof that as President, Bush has lied about the things that matter.

<"...To cite just two particularly egregious examples, Bush tried to frighten Americans by claiming that Iraq possesses a fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used 'for missions targeting the United States.' Previously he insisted that a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed the Iraqis to be 'six months away from developing a weapon.' Both of these statements are false, but they are working.>

Sorry, but we didn't know at the time that either of these statements were false-and neither did President Bush (nor John Kerry for that matter).

Nearly three-quarters of Americans surveyed think that Saddam is currently helping Al Qaeda; 71 percent think it is likely he was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

I can't explain why so many people believed that-I never heard Bush claim that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and I never believed that Saddam was directly involved in 9/11. We do know that Saddam's officials met with al quaeda, that al quaeda was being harbored in Iraq, and that Saddam was funding terrorist organizations (BTW, what Kerry and a lot of Dems seem to forget is that al quaeda is not the only terrorist organization out there). The case made was always about not taking the risk that someone with Saddam's money and weapons (or as we now know weapons capabilities)WOULD collaborate on an attck with al quaeda, not that he HAD. Is that enough to go in? No, but Saddam gave us justification for going in by defying years of UN resolutions, something else Kerry seems to conveniently forget. Saddam had the power to stop our action by cooperating with inspections-he chose not to. I agree with the president that we could not afford to take the unverified risk that he was telling the truth.


Referring to intelligence that remains unverified is not lying-everyone in the world saw the same intelligence, everyone in the world believed it was true. Was Bush supposed to be the only one with the mystical powers to discern that it was false? Since he wasn't, does that make him a liar? I don't think so. If it turns out Bush was lying about everything all along, is that worse than what Clinton lied about? Yes, but that's not been proven to me.

Yes, Clinton only lied about a blowjob. But he not only lied to the public, he lied under oath in a civil proceeding against him. He, an attorney and the president of the United States, tried to deny a woman her civil right to pursue an action against him. As far as Bush answering a reporter's DUI question no and then being whisked away before changing his answer, yes, that's a lie (perhaps a mistake he intended ot correct but a lie nonetheless) I'll grant you, but it doesn't rise to the level of lying under oath while one is president in a civil action.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
In reply to: liveanew
Mon, 10-04-2004 - 11:32am
Which is why John Zogby said this weekend that people should not hold too much insight into polls like Newsweek, Gallup or Pew that have shown drastic swings in the polling results in a matter of 2 or 3 days.

Zogby said that a swing of 3 points or 4 points across 3 or 4 days is possible, but 8 points or more, then there is something wrong with how the poll is being conducted.

Do you recall the Pew poll from about 10 days ago (or so). It showed Bush with a 16 point lead (I think), and then two days later showed Bush with a one or two point lead. Something really wrong with that poll. The numbers may be a little off, but I know that the swing was something like 13 points in 2 days.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
In reply to: liveanew
Mon, 10-04-2004 - 11:38am
I respect Zogby, but... he also has a vested interest in skewering other polls as well. Both campaigns have polls better than anything out there, because they are within fairly small margins of error by state... many more in the sampling. And given how vicious Bush was the last few days, my guess is his polls are saying it ain't looking good.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
In reply to: liveanew
Mon, 10-04-2004 - 11:41am
Of course he has reason to attack the other polls, but his argument makes sense.

There is no way, unless something along the lines of Watergate were to be revealed and proven in a 3 day span that polls could swing as much as they did, especially since the polls that show Kerry won the debate also show that more people found Bush more likeable, more trustworthy, and more likely to keep American safer from terrorist attacks....(CNN polls showed this)

The polls are a mixed message if you truly read into them.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-11-2004
In reply to: liveanew
Mon, 10-04-2004 - 11:59am
Iraq harbors terrorists. They have a back door to Syria which is one of the speculations of where the weapons of mass destruction went. Remember we are hunting down terrorists all over the world and not just in Afghanistan. If you want to prevent another 9/11 you must rid the world of these cowards. We have to send a message that we will not tolerate these madmen. You might not like it but lives are being saved by us putting terrorists on notice that they will be hunted down like the dogs they are.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
In reply to: liveanew
Mon, 10-04-2004 - 12:16pm
<<... we won the cold war because the Soviet Union was corrupt and we broke their economy by forcing them to spend too much on defense. If that's the magic bullet to bring down a super power then we'd better be rethinking the WOT pretty fast since we're spending more than a BILLION dollars PER WEEK just in Iraq. That doesn't include Afghanistan or security measures at home. What is it costing the terrorists to make car bombs and cut off people's heads? Infinitesimally less. They can keep this up forever.>>

Yikes!

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
In reply to: liveanew
Mon, 10-04-2004 - 12:45pm
Been a long time since I sat in a research methods class, but polls can be skewed easily by how questions are asked. And I don't believe for a minute that a sampling of a thousand or so is in any way accurate in reflecting the opinion of 275 million.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
In reply to: liveanew
Mon, 10-04-2004 - 12:47pm
You only can be rid of them if you stop creating reasons for them to hate you. As for Syria, shall we attack them? Shall we deploy a million troops to seal the border? It's more open now than when Saddam was in power.

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