Cross-posted at the BlogsCanada E-Group Election Blog
Are we having fun yet? Hard on the heels of Jack Layton's attack on Paul Martin, now we have Stephen Harper accusing Martin of being anti-American. You'd think there was an election going on or something.
Conservative leader Stephen Harper says some Liberal campaign ads are so offensive, he wants them yanked off the air. Harper says the ads promote anti-Americanism and are inappropriate.The ads asks voters to choose between a country like Canada with generous social programs, or a country like the U.S. with its lower tax rates, referring to tax cuts proposed by Harper.
"I think given the security situation it's not appropriate for any political party to do anything that would encourage anti-Americanism or break down that co-operation at this point," Harper said after U.S. officials announced an increased terrorist threat Wednesday.
Having learned from recent experience, I'll hasten to add that none of the articles I've seen quote Harper actually using the word "offensive" so that may be some journalist's spin, but all the articles agree on the main point. Not only is Harper critical of the ads, he wants them pulled off the air.
Now I'll grant Harper the right to criticize the ads in any way he chooses. If he wants to claim that being critical of the current White House administration's economic policies is anti-American that's up to him. I suspect the majority of American voters who cast their ballots for Al Gore three and a half years ago might disagree, but if the Conservative leader wants to make himself look foolish, so be it. And if being critical of the American health care system is a problem then about half the blogosphere better shut down right now. Most of the bloggers I'm thinking of are American too.
But when he insists that these ads must be pulled because of the current "security situation" he goes a bit far. There are many who think that yesterday's announcement concerning impending terrorist attacks in the US was nothing more than spin on the part of the White House designed to distract from Bush's falling ratings in the polls and any of the several scandals that are heating up all around him. And before Harper accuses me of being anti-American, I read that in the New York Times.
The United States is both our largest trading partner and our biggest foreign policy issue. How can we debate issues during an election if we have to watch what we say in any context where the US might enter the discussion? For Harper to try to stifle debate in this way is just anti-Canadian.
I kid. It's not anti-Canadian. It's just silly. The Globe and Mail's version of the same story has this:
Asked whether any terrorist-related circumstances would justify suspending the election campaign, Mr. Harper said he didn't want to speculate."But terrorists win if we start to disrupt the normal activities of our society," he said.
You said it, Stephen. Now think about it.
You use the NYT as your source for the "it's only spin" assertion? Well that settles it. If the NYT says so, then it has to be true. The NYT is always been so fair and balanced when reporting on the Bush administration. *extreme sarcasm*
Care to elaborate on these "several scandals"?
Btw, have you seen Kerry's poll ratings? Heh.
"I think given the security situation it's not appropriate for any political party to do anything that would encourage anti-Americanism or break down that co-operation at this point," Harper said...
Excluding the Republican Party, of course.
CG:
The NYT was the biggest cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq. Or did you miss that?
Scandals? Abu Ghraib, Plame, Chalabi
The important numbers right now are Bush's negatives and they're not looking good. Actually from my point of view they're looking very good.
"The NYT was the biggest cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq. Or did you miss that?"
Yes I did, unless you are talking about Judith Miller. As a whole, they have been vehemently against it. Look at how they buried the sarin gas shell on Page A-11. Look at the other day when they dismissed it, because it wasn't a "stockpile." Do they really think that only one shell was made?
It is only the media that is making Abu Ghraib a scandal. The polls have shown the public is sick and tired of it already, and the Iraqis are dismayed at the attention it is getting.
Plame is a scandal? Chalabi? Did I miss something? Was he arrested or something? All I heard was that the Iraqi police arrested one of his buddies in Iraq.
Interesting poll on canada.com today.
Which election issue most concerns you?
1) Health - 12%
2) National security - 32%
3) The economy - 29%
4) Democratic reform - 27%
Maybe Canadians ARE waking up.
CG:
Pressed for time right now, but let's deal with the Sarin shell.
"The 155-mm shells containing sarin gas that exploded in Iraq May 17 were manufactured before 1991, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. That was a pre-Gulf War shell, a different category than the weapons being sought by the Iraq Survey Group, Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, the joint staff deputy director for operations, told a Pentagon news briefing."
It isn't big news because it isn't big news. There were probably a lot of them made originally but this is a derelict -- a leftover. And the way it was deployed suggests that whoever deployed it didn't even realize what it was. With everything else going on right now, I wouldn't put this story on page 1 either. With all of the false alarms about WMD in Iraq I would expect the media to be cautious about screaming headlines that will end up being yet another false alarm.