http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/ en-us Copyright 2008 Thu, 01 May 2008 06:00:00 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Has Hamas endorsed Obama? "It's just a fact that Hamas, apparently their North American spokesperson, is endorsing Senator Obama. People can make their own judgment from that." --Sen. John McCain, conference call with bloggers, April 25, 2008. "What Senator McCain has said repeatedly is that these candidates cannot be held accountable for all the views of people who endorse them or people who befriend them...When somebody endorses you or befriends you, they're embracing your views, the candidates' views, not the other way around." --McCain senior adviser Charlie Black, interview with MSNBC. March 14, 2008. The McCain campaign has been making a lot of Sen. Barack Obama's friends and acquaintances recently, seeking to tar the Illinois senator with the opinions of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright, the former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, and even the radical Islamic group Hamas. The guilt-by-association claims seem to run counter to McCain's own http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/guilt_by_association.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/guilt_by_association.html Candidate Watch Thu, 01 May 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 19, 2008. "Will the next president have the experience? Or will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan?" --John McCain, rally in Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 19, 2008. Senator McCain was clearly referring to Barack Obama on Tuesday night when he lambasted an unnamed rival for his lack of experience on military matters. He depicted the Illinois senator as a foreign policy naif who was willing to attack U.S. allies, while at the same time "sitting down without preconditions" to talk with America's enemies. In the original version of his remarks, distributed to reporters, McCain said that Obama had talked about "invading" Pakistan, but this was changed at the last minute to merely "bombing" the country. Has McCain summarized Obama's position accurately? http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/bombs_away.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/bombs_away.html Candidate Watch Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:00:00 -0400 GOP debate in Florida, Jan. 24 Last night's GOP debate from Boca Raton, Florida, was a generally civil affair. The candidates avoided challenging each other's records directly, and did not get involved in factual disputes. Nevertheless, they still made a number of questionable statements, particularly on foreign policy. A sampler: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/the_gop_debate_in_florida.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/the_gop_debate_in_florida.html Candidate Watch Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:20:57 -0400 Iranian President Ahmadinejad visits nuclear enrichment facility, April 2007. "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program...A growing amount of intelligence indicates Iran was engaged in covert uranium conversion and uranium enrichment activity, but we judge that these efforts probably were halted in response to the fall 2003 halt, and that these efforts probably had not been restarted through at least mid-2007." --National Intelligence Estimate, released December 3, 2007. There has been a lot of loose talk about Iran's nuclear capabilities out on the campaign trail. Here is a sampling of campaign rhetoric undercut by the publication of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, representing the consensus view of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_iran_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_iran_1.html Candidate Watch Tue, 04 Dec 2007 06:00:45 -0400 "If you look back over our history, it will not take you long to realize that our people have shed more blood for other people's liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world." -- Fred Thompson, stump speech in Iowa, September 6, 2007. The Facts A grandiose claim that is hard to justify no matter how you define "other people's liberty." Let's begin by looking at American casualties in foreign wars. (Domestic conflicts such as the Revolutionary War and the Civil War are excluded.) ConflictAmerican Deaths Spanish American War2,446 World War I116,516 World War II405,399 Korean War36,574 Vietnam58,209 Persian Gulf War382 Iraq War and Afghanistan (until 9/18/2007)4,217 TOTAL623,288 SOURCES: Congressional Research Service, DoD, DoD Historical table While heavy, U.S. military casualties are still relatively low in comparison to the military casualties of its World War II and World War I allies. In World War http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/thompsons_wars.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/thompsons_wars.html Candidate Watch Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:30:57 -0400 "In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation. And so Kennedy was killed." -- Osama bin Laden, video, September 2007 The Facts Donald Rumsfeld has been accused of many things, but this may be the first time that he has been accused of murdering "two million villagers" during the Vietnam War, albeit with the assistance of unnamed "aides." The most cursory look at the former defense secretary's biography is sufficient to demonstrate the ludicrousness of the claim. After serving in the U.S. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/bin_laden_rumsfeld_responsible.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/bin_laden_rumsfeld_responsible.html Video Watch Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:00:24 -0400