Guide to What's IN and OUT

Daily Reality Check
© Copyright 2004, American Family Voices  
Guide to What's IN and OUT
10/18/2004
http://www.americanfamilyvoices.org/projects/DailyRealityCheck.asp?ID=255It's time for another edition of The Daily Reality Check's Guide to What's IN and OUT.

IN (need of supplies): This is what results from a lack of proper planning: A new official document reveals that the top US commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, complained to the Pentagon last winter that the supply situation was so dire that it threatened the troops' ability to fight.

"I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates [of spare parts for tanks, helicopters, etc.] this low," Sanchez wrote, noting that units were waiting an average of 40 days for critical spare parts in Iraq – almost three times the Army's average. He also bemoaned the lack of protective inserts to upgrade 36,000 sets of body armor.

The Army now maintains that the readiness issues have been addressed. On the campaign trail, President Bush repeatedly attempts to parry such questions by stating that he listens to his generals. But the breadth of the lack of preparedness detailed in Sanchez's letter indicates that such a reactive posture from the president isn't a sufficient response.

The fact remains that this administration's rush to war severely amplified these shortages, placing troops into harm's way without proper preparation. Read more here.

OUT (of allies): Of course, the other major negative repercussion of the Bush administration's rush to war has been frosty relationships with our traditional allies due to this president's unilateralist tendencies and belittling rhetoric. The Bush team continues to spout its divisive agenda and remind everyone of Poland's generous contributions, but now it appears that fewer and fewer people are buying it. Now even Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser under the first President Bush, and current mentor to Condoleezza Rice, has openly denounced this administration's foreign policy.

Scowcroft partially blamed the Bush team's "unilateralist" position for the fraying of the post-9/11 trans-Atlantic relationship, stating: "It's in general bad. It's not really hostile, but there's an edge to it."

"We had gotten contemptuous of Europeans and their weaknesses. We had really turned unilateral," Scowcroft continued. He also referred to Iraq as a "failing venture."

President Bush hasn't given any indication that he will change course with his foreign policy. On the campaign trail, he still denounces and ridicules his opponents instead of offering a plan or even simply admitting his own mistakes. That is undoubtedly a recipe to continue the same "bad" policies Scowcroft and others have condemned. Read more here.

IN (creasing the gap): President Bush often mentions that minority home-ownership is at an all-time high as proof that his administration's economy has benefited everyone. Here's what he doesn't mention: the enormous wealth gap that exists between white families and black and Hispanic families actually increased during the recession that occurred under his watch, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Black families were particularly hard hit by the recession – they lost almost 27 percent of their net worth from 1999-2001, then gained only about five percent of that back during the Bush administration's magical "recovery." Read more here.

OUT (of the picture): Roughly 1.6 million households in Oregon received the 2004 Oregon Voters' Pamphlet this week, a 40-page booklet containing information about both presidential candidates, but only one vice presidential candidate – it seems that information about Vice President Dick Cheney was omitted because the Bush campaign repeatedly failed to supply the requisite photo or biography.

"We were told they were not going to submit the information," said an elections division official, even though Cheney appeared on the 2000 version of the same pamphlet.