McCain/Palin campaign admits that Palin did NOT visit Iraq -- despite earlier claims she had

As noted in the Washinton Post blog,The Trail, The McCain campaign has been forced to admit their claims that vice-presidential candidate, Sara Palin, whose foreign policy credentials appear to revolve around the fact that one can see Russia (when the visibility is good) from the farthest reaches of the northern Alaskan shore (where she is state governor), had visited Iraq were false.

Palin did make a stop at a border crossing with Iraq while visiting US troops in Kuwait -- but contrary to earlier McCain campaign claims, Palin did not visit Iraq.

The McCain campaign also had to admit that their claim that Palin had visited Ireland was also false (her plane had made a fueling stop there).

Palin made an official visit to see Alaskan troops in Kuwait in July of 2007. There, she made a stop at a border crossing with Iraq, but did not actually visit the country, according to a new report in the Boston Globe.

Earlier, McCain aides had said that Palin visited Iraq, and expressed indignation at questions about her slim foreign travel.

This comes on the heels of reports from Bloomberg that suggest the McCain campaign has been lying about turnouts at events around the country:

Senator John McCain has drawn some of the biggest crowds of his presidential campaign since adding Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to his ticket on Aug. 29. Now officials say they can't substantiate the figures McCain's aides are claiming.

McCain aide Kimmie Lipscomb told reporters on Sept. 10 that an outdoor rally in Fairfax City, Virginia, drew 23,000 people, attributing the crowd estimate to a fire marshal.

Fairfax City Fire Marshal Andrew Wilson said his office did not supply that number to the campaign and could not confirm it. Wilson, in an interview, said the fire department does not monitor attendance at outdoor events.

In recent days, journalists attending the rallies have been raising questions about the crowd estimates with the campaign. In a story on Sept. 11 about Palin's attraction for some Virginia women voters, Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher estimated the crowd to be 8,000, not the 23,000 cited by the campaign.

Media finally recognize John McCain has been playing fast and dirty with the truth...

MSNBC's First Read blog carries an overview of some of the more notable media analyses of John McCain and his campaign's resort to distortion, deception, and outright lies -- abuses that caused the steadfastly non-partisan truth-in-politics organization, FactCheck.org to describe McCain's lies and distortions as a "pattern of deceit."

Their quote from the Associated Press' Charles Babbington gives some historic perspective that makes McCain's descent into lie-telling and distortion seem all the more pathetic:

"Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain's skirting of facts has stood out this week. It has infuriated and flustered Obama's campaign, and campaign pros are watching to see how much voters disregard news reports noting factual holes in the claims. McCain's persistence in pushing dubious claims is all the more notable because many political insiders consider him one of the greatest living victims of underhanded campaigning. Locked in a tight race with George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, McCain was rocked in South Carolina by a whisper campaign claiming he had fathered an illegitimate black child and was mentally unstable."

But their quote from Paul Krugman really hits the nail on the head:

“But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful -- you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.”

Team McCain even lies about FactCheck findings!

The McCain campaign apparently wouldn't know the truth if it was a 6 foot rattler wrapped around their cowboy boots.

Now they are even lying about what nonpartisan truth-in-campaigning organization FactCheck.org said about false emails circulating about GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin, distorting what FactCheck wrote to attempt to tie the emails to the Obama campaign.

FactCheck -- in their circumspect way -- calls the McCain distortions "less than honest":

A McCain-Palin ad has FactCheck.org calling Obama's attacks on Palin "absolutely false" and "misleading." That's what we said, but it wasn't about Obama.

Our article criticized anonymous e-mail falsehoods and bogus claims about Palin posted around the Internet. We have no evidence that any of the claims we found to be false came from the Obama campaign.

FactCheck takes the McCain campaign to task for violating their copyright policy (an increasingly common complaint about the McCain campaign from writers and even musicians whose intellectual property has been misused and modified by McCain's campaign):

We don't object to people reprinting our articles. In fact, our copyright policy encourages it. But we've also asked that "the editorial integrity of the article be preserved" and told those who use our items that "you should not edit the original in such a way as to alter the message."

Less Than Honest

With its latest ad, released Sept. 10, the McCain-Palin campaign has altered our message in a fashion we consider less than honest. The ad strives to convey the message that FactCheck.org said "completely false" attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin had come from Sen. Barack Obama. We said no such thing. We have yet to dispute any claim from the Obama campaign about Palin.

They call the ad "Fact Check." It says "the attacks on Gov. Palin have been called 'completely false' ... 'misleading.' " On screen is a still photo of a grim-faced Obama. Our words are accurately quoted, but they had nothing to do with Obama.

More on McCain's "Truth Problem"

Finally, a few folks in the mainstream media are picking up on what scrupulously nonpartisan truth-in-capmaigning advocates FactCheck.org called John McCain's "pattern of deceit":

Washinton Post opinion writer, E.J. Dionne, writing in that paper's PostPartisan blog:

I am genuinely surprised that John McCain and his campaign keep throwing out false charges and making false claims without any qualms. They keep talking about Sarah Palin’s opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere without any embarrassment over the fact that she once supported it. They keep saying that Barack Obama will raise taxes, suggesting he’d raise them on everybody, when Obama’s plan, according to the Tax Policy Institute, would cut taxes for “about 80 percent of households” while “only about 10 percent would owe more.” And as Sebastian Mallaby pointed out in his recent column, Obama would cut taxes for middle-income taxpayers “more aggressively” than McCain would.

And now comes a truly vile McCain ad accusing Obama of supporting legislation to offer "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer declares: "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

Margaret Talev of McClatchy newspapers called the ad a “deliberate low blow.” Here’s what she wrote in an excellent fact check: “This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain's votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12. But the legislation allowed local school boards to teach ‘age-appropriate’ sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.”

Dionne concludes by reminiscing about the "old" John McCain:

McCain once campaigned on the idea that the war on terrorism is the “transcendent” issue of our time. Now, he’s stooping to cheap advertising that would be condemned as trivial and misleading in a state legislative race. Boy, do I miss the old John McCain and wonder what became of him. And I wonder if the media will really take on this onslaught of half-truths and outright deception.

When does a 'pattern of deceit' become a 'pack of lies' -- and when will the media start reporting McCain's 'Truth Problem'?

Steadfastly nonpartisan public affairs organization FactCheck.org (from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania) keeps track of the truth -- or inaccuracy -- behind public utterances of political candidates, their campaigns, and other operatives and organizations.

A check of the FactCheck home page will show that the final leg of the 2008 Presidential election is now in full swing -- as evidenced by article after article about inaccuracies, spinning, and outright lies by the campaigns, their sympathizers, and others.

First off this morning, you'll find them dealing with inaccuracies and outright untruths about GOP VP candidate Sara Palin in unattributed emails currently circulating. You'll also find an article from Aug 29 suggesting that Democratic candidate Obama "stuck to the facts -- except when he stretched them," a brief compendium of gray area statements by the candidate, in addition to an article chiding Obama for an ad that refers to a position that McCain had subsequently changed his mind about and reversed.


But most of the articles on the front page are devoted to what FactCheck has called a "pattern of deceit" by John McCain and his campaign. (A New Stitch in a Bad Pattern, September 2, 2008)

McCain, his campaign, his adverts, VP candidate, and his operatives have consistently engaged in a pattern of big lie tactics seemingly designed to confuse voters and plant false "facts" in their minds.

FactChecking McCain

GOP Convention Spin, Part II

Maverick Misleads
("A McCain ad comparing Palin to Obama isn't all above board.")

GOP Convention Spin
("Lieberman and Thompson make misleading claims about Obama on Day Two of the party in St. Paul.")

A New Stitch in a Bad Pattern
("A McCain ad wrongly claims Obama plans "painful tax increases" for working families. And who's talking about deficits?")

Context Included: Obama on Iran
("McCain ad cherry-picks Obama remarks on Iran, twisting his meaning.")

Rezko Reality
("McCain misfires as he attacks Obama's home purchase.")


The McCain campaign got a lot of mileage out of their loud and whiney complaints that the media wasn't playing "fair" with them and repeatedly playing the "sexism card" at every turn. (The "sexism card" is one that the McCain campaign feels is one they can play with impunity, since the last thing Obama wants to do is play the corresponding "racism card" -- which his campaign sees as something that alienates many of the very voters he must win over and, of course, reminds "social conservatives" [ahem] that Obama is black.)

But the mainstream media have been largely silent on the subject of McCain's painfully obvious problems with the truth.

Just when does a pattern of deceit become a pack o flies?

And what will it take to get the media to start investigating?