More Bush Lies at 3rd Presidential Debate

From factcheck.org

More Bush Lies at 3rd Presidential Debate

Wrong on Tax Cuts

Bush could hardly have been farther off base when he said most of his tax cuts "went to low- and middle-income Americans." That's just not true.

In fact, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center recently calculated that most of the tax cuts -- 53% to be exact -- went to the highest -earning 10% of US individuals and families.Those most affluent Americans got an average tax cut of $7,661.

And as for the "low- and middle-income Americans" Bush mentioned -- the bottom 60% of individuals and families got only 13.7% of the tax cuts, according to the Tax Policy Center, a far cry from "most" of the cuts as claimed by Bush.

Wrong on Osama

Bush stumbled when he denied making some remarks about Osama bin Laden that Kerry had accurately paraphrased. Bush accused Kerry of "one of those exaggerations."

In fact, Bush said almost exactly what Kerry quoted him as saying. It was in a news conference at the White House on March 13, 2002, after US forces had overturned the Taliban regime in Afghanistan:

Q (March 13, 2002): Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? . . .

Bush: So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him , Kelly, to be honest with you. . . .

Q: But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

Bush: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

Wrong on Flu Vaccine

It's not true, as Bush claimed, that "we took the right action" in blocking "contaminated" influenza vaccine from entering the US.

Actually, it was the British and not the US that blocked shipment. The British Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, according to an Oct. 6 news release, suspended the license of Chiron Corp., the manufacturer of approximately 50% of the U.S. supply.

In fact, the Bush administration seems to have been caught by surprise when Chiron Corp. notified the US Center for Disease Control Oct. 5 that the company wouldn't be shipping the vaccine due to the British action. The US Food and Drug Administration didn't begin an investigation until five days later, according to an FDA news release .

It's also not clear how much of the vaccine is actually contaminated. The British agency said it suspended Chiron's license because of "concerns of possible microbial contamination." And the FDA news release refers to "findings concerning the contamination of some lots."

Wrong on Training Iraqis

Bush said that in Iraq "We'll have 125,000 troops trained by the end of this year," which is wrong. Actually, the security forces being trained are a "mixed bag" of soldiers, border guards and even three-week "shake and bake" police officers, according to House testimony by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

Wrong on Medical costs

Bush claimed fear of lawsuits drives doctors to "the defensive practice of medicine that costs the federal government some $28 billion a year and costs our society between $60 billion and $100 billion a year," which is contrary to nearly all academic studies of the matter.

Improvement on statement about Department of Homeland Security

Bush stopped short of talking of his support for creating the Department of Homeland Security, something he actually opposed for nearly nine months before switching to support it. This time Bush confined himself to saying "I signed the homeland security bill," which is quite accurate.