[The Bush campaign’s new ad] shows a dense forest from above. Scurrying is heard as the camera plunges deeper into the woods and pans sunlight-speckled trees. Shadows move through the brush before animals are seen amid the forest.
Then, the ad reveals the type of animal: a pack of wolves rest on a hill. As the commercial closes, the cunning and ruthless predators stir, crawling toward the camera.
“In an increasingly dangerous world, even after the first terrorist attack on America, John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America’s intelligence budget by $6 billion,” an ominous voice says in the ad. “Cuts so deep they would have weakened America’s defenses. And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm.”
The Bush campaign’s desperation is becoming more readily apparent every day. Maybe we should compare it to a ravenous wolf, flailing around looking for food.
First, ironically, this comes the same week the president accused Kerry of using “scare tactics.” It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so ridiculous.
Second, and far more importantly, BC04 is, once again, indirectly accusing Republicans of trying to weaken America’s defenses against those who would do us harm. Kerry proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget in 1995 (about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years) dealing exclusively with unspent money. At the same time, it was congressional Republicans who voted for a $3.8 billion cut to the same budget — over twice as big as the cut Kerry recommended. And it was Peter Goss, Bush’s hand-picked CIA director, who pushed for an even bigger cut to the same intelligence budget.
Maybe some enterprising young reporter can ask the Bush campaign why the president chose a CIA director who supported “cuts so deep they would have weakened America’s defenses,” even after “the first terrorist attack on America.”