In the summer of 2000, Democratic campaign strategist JAMES CARVILLE was sitting on a gold-mine... an EXPLOSIVE ISSUE that would have been incredibly useful to undercut the Republican camapign of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney to claim that the Republican ticket was one of "MORAL VALUES."
But Mr. Carville, the Democrat's most outspoken critic of Republican hypocrisy in the 1992 election, couldn't bring himself to even MENTION Mr. Cheney BUSINESS DEALINGS WITH IRAQ all through the late 1990s... at a time when the Republican media attack machine was so well oiled and effective, that it made the Clinton's White House overnight guest list into a synonym for SCANDAL, the so-called "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL" that had plenty of FRONT-PAGE, ABOVE THE FOLD coverage in the NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, and leading the networks' nightly newscasts.
Perhaps the reason the Democrats' one-time most outspoken Republican-bashing critic WENT SILENT on the CAMPAIGN GOLD issue of DICK CHENEY's BUSINESS TIES TO SADDAM HUSSEIN was because... Mr. Carville's wife, MARY MATALIN.... WAS DICK CHENEY's CAMPAIGN SPOKESPERSON!
The FAILURE of the Gore-Lieberman campaign to follow THE MOST BASIC RULE of political campaign electioneering - USE YOUR OPPONENTS' WEAKNESSES AGAINST THEM! - is what allowed the Bush-Cheney campaign to be close enough to STEAL Florida's electoral votes in November of 2000, George W. Bush's brother Jeb Bush having overseen the sytematic DISENFRANCHISEMENT of THOUSANDS of legal Florida voters, through the actions of his Secretary of State Katherine Harris (who was then state co-chair of the "Florida for Bush" campaign!) and her use of CHOICEPOINT Data Co. and other tactics to knock qualified, mostly minority voters off the voting roles by the thousands.
Well, Mr. and Mrs. Carville got their lucrative tag-team speaking fees through that long 2000 campaign...
But Mr. Carville, if you haven't noticed, the HALLIBURTON CHAIRMAN who had NO problem DEALING WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN, also has NO problem selling AMERICA's PORT SECURITY TO DUBAI, and in 2001 did NOTHING to hinder a potential al Qaida attack in America, even after the Director of the CIA (Mr. George Tenent), the nation's Counter-Terror Czar (Richard Clarke), and the National Security Advisor (then Condoleeza Rice) PERSONALLY WARNED HIM, former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, that "al Qaida was DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA."
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The issue the Democrats REFUSED TO USE in campaign 2000: DICK CHENEY's BUSINESS DEALINGS with SADDAM HUSSEIN's IRAQ:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35751-2001Jun22
<< Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they knew, there was no policy against doing business with Iraq. One of the executives also says that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts, he is certain Cheney knew about them.
MARY MATALIN, CHENEY'S COUNSELOR, said that if he "was ever in a conversation or meeting where there was a question of pursuing a project with someone in Iraq, he said, 'No.' "
"In a joint venture, he would not have reviewed all their existing contracts," MATALIN SAID. "The nature of those joint ventures was that they had a separate governing structure, so he had no control over them." >>
