From an AP story running this evening …
At the town hall meeting in Rochester, a woman asked Dean why he was complaining about his rivals’ attacks, but distributing fliers against Clark. Dean said he wasn’t aware of the fliers and the decision was made by local staff. But he said he would be happy to defend them.
“If the fliers said that General Clark was originally for the war and now is against it, that’s accurate,” Dean said. “If the fliers said that General Clark said it was perfectly fine to let our software jobs to got to India and replace them with other jobs, he did say that. There is a difference in attack ads and just pointing out the facts.”
This point about the Iraq war is simply false. <$Ad$>I hesitate to call it a lie because I don’t know if Dean knows it’s false, though he should.
The falsity of the claim is well-known to anyone who closely followed the debate over Iraq in the lead-up to the war and particularly Clark’s role in that debate.
There’s a lot of foolishness being peddled to the effect that Clark is claiming he’s an “anti-war” candidate when he’s not. (This is the upshot of the flyers Dean campaign workers are distributing at Clark rallies.) This is a very loaded term. One can believe this whole enterprise was badly misconceived and handled even worse and not have that sentiment diminished by not singing folk songs.
And why doesn’t Dean know his campaign workers are distributing these flyers? Everyone else has known for like a week.
