Substance will always trump spin

Britain’s Channel 4 just aired cockpit footage from an American fighter that bombed civilians in Fallujah in April. He asked mission control whether he should “take them out.” The Indy points out: “At no point during the exchange between the pilot and controllers does anyone ask whether the Iraqis are armed or posing a threat.”

Thought you’d like to see the amusing rhetoric in the email sent by the Bush-Cheney campaign to supporters--and my cat:

“Even as one of the nation’s best trial lawyers, Edwards could not explain the inexplicable - the deficiencies of Kerry’s record. Edwards failed as a credible advocate for John Kerry last night and Dick Cheney proved that substance will always trump spin. There’s no evidence that John Kerry has any convictions - despite Edwards’ best attempt at political spin. Every time Edwards had an opportunity to explain John Kerry’s record to the American people, he chose to attack the Vice President, and his low moment came 40 minutes into the debate when a befuddled-looking John Edwards latched onto Halliburton - a political attack proven false by the nonpartisan FactCheck.org.”

Befuddled-looking. Love it. So the argument here is that Edwards, I guess because he was a defense lawyer, was supposed to be “defending” Kerry, and it was simply a dirty trick to question Cheney’s record. The article at FactCheck.org is about Kerry ads overstating the significance of the fact that Cheney continues to receive more per year from Halliburton than his VP salary, an issue Edwards never brought up, so the reference is beside the point. Still, they wouldn’t be Republicans if they didn’t leap to the defense of an evil multinational corporation.