Q: Did ABC News misrepresent which candidate troops in Iraq support, as a chain e-mail alleges?
A: No. The e-mail is bogus, and the major general to which it is attributed says he never wrote it.
Stories by Rachel Weisel
Uranium in Iraq
Q: Was it recently revealed that the U.S. found uranium in Iraq after the invasion in 2003?
A: No. Uranium recently shipped from Iraq to Canada was left over from Saddam Hussein’s defunct nuclear weapons program and had been in sealed containers, under guard, since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. Claims that this material is "vindication" for President Bush’s WMD claims in 2003 are completely false.
Average Campaign Contributions
Q: What is the average size of Obama’s contributions and what is the average size of McCain’s contributions?
A: We can’t calculate a precise average for either candidate, but we can say that persons giving less than $200 account for 47 percent of Obama’s donations and 26 percent of McCain’s.
Errors en Espanol
Summary
McCain’s new radio ad, in Spanish, aims to show Florida would benefit from the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which he supports. But every number in the ad is wrong, except one, a prediction of job gains taken from a group favoring the trade deal. And even that number is rounded upward so generously as to flunk third-grade arithmetic.
Analysis
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, is a longtime advocate of free trade.
Polar Bear Population
Q: Are there three times as many polar bears in the Arctic now as there were in the 1970s?
A: The population of polar bears today is larger than it was in the 1970s, due mainly to legislation banning polar bear hunting, but exact numbers are unclear. We couldn’t find any figures showing that the population had tripled.