Walking it back a bit? Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made a bit of news the other day in Warsaw when he told reporters that insurgents in Iraq are stepping up their attacks because "they are trying to influence the election against President Bush."
"Does that mean they are working for Senator [ John F.] Kerry?" a reporter asked.
_____In the Loop_____
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Red Stars Over Washington (The Washington Post, Sep 27, 2004)
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British Diplomat Ducks His Gaffe (The Washington Post, Sep 24, 2004)
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Thompson's Trading Spaces (The Washington Post, Sep 22, 2004)
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State Dept. Web Site Still Out of the Loop (The Washington Post, Sep 20, 2004)
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A Late Development in Fontgate (The Washington Post, Sep 15, 2004)
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More In the Loop
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Friday's Question:
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"I didn't say that," Armitage replied. "What I said was that they were trying to influence the election against President Bush. That's all I said."
Alarms went off among the diplo crowd, but State Department officials later said Armitage did not wish to amend his remarks, according to an account in the Chicago Tribune.
But on Friday, Armitage, testifying on the Hill, did the old "revise and extend" tango.
"I do expect an increase in attacks," Armitage said. "The intelligence will show that they're planning to get more virulent. They don't want the Iraqi government to become democratically elected. I think -- I personally think that they want to disrupt our election, and they want to do that no matter who was president -- it's not a matter of George Bush, it's just president of the United States -- that's what they want, just as they think they interfered with Spain -- and apparently they did."
Maybe he pulled back after new polls showed the insurgents closely divided with a huge undecided bloc waiting for the debates?
A Balancing Act at Honest Abe's
The National Park Service, under pressure from conservative religious groups, promised last year to unveil what a spokesman said was a "more balanced" version of an eight-minute video for visitors to the Lincoln Memorial.
The video, shown since 1995, opens with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and President Abraham Lincoln's condemnation of slavery. But it also shows demonstrations there against the Vietnam War and others favoring abortion, gay and women's rights. NPS promised to make the requisite political changes.
Since then NPS has spent nearly $200,000 to make two new versions of the video, but the agency is sitting on the finished product until after the elections, according to a group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
PEER, citing NPS employees and agency documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, says Park Service folks dutifully sifted through archival material and found pictures of additional GOP presidents -- underrepresented in the original -- and some pro-Gulf War demonstrations and inserted those, adding about a minute to the video.
The new version was done months ago but apparently failed to pass muster with higher officials, said Jeff Ruch, PEER's executive director. So a new version, presumably slashing "feminists, war protesters and gays from American history," was worked up. Meanwhile, NPS won't release either version.
It's not just the video that's being "updated," NPS spokesman Bill Line said yesterday, but "the entire exhibit [and] the Park Service has not finalized any plans." Around election time, "people throw a lot of things" around claiming electoral shenanigans, but there's "no basis in fact" to claim NPS is stalling until after the election, Line said.
"When it's ready, we'll let people know," he said.
