President Obama sometimes strayed from the facts or made dubious claims during his hour-long evening news conference March 24. He said his budget projections are based on economic assumptions that “are perfectly consistent with what Blue Chip forecasters out there are saying.” Not true. The average projection by leading …
Issues: military
Tiny Iran
Feb. 26 marked the beginning of the Conservative Political Action Committee (or CPAC) annual convention. Conference speakers include leading figures from the Republican Party as well as conservative columnists, pundits and activists. Among yesterday’s speakers was John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush and now a senior fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. During his speech, Bolton repeated a bit of old bunk from the 2008 campaign, falsely claiming that Obama called Iran “a tiny threat.”
Ride into the Danger Zone
The Air Force’s much-criticized F-22 has been a favorite subject of much of the blogosphere, particularly since Mark Bowden’s feature article praising the fighter appeared in the March issue of The Atlantic . Tuesday night the discussion went mainstream, with Obama’s oblique reference to “Cold War weapons we don’t use.” As we said in our article over on the main site, Obama is right to describe the F-22 this way. Development on the fighter began in 1981,
Military Oath
Q: Is President Obama planning to have the military swear an oath to him rather than to the Constitution?
A: No, the "news report" that makes this claim is intended as satire.
Nancy Pelosi’s Personal Jet
Q: Did Nancy Pelosi order up a 200-seat jet for her personal use?
A: The Democratic House speaker normally flies in a 12-seat Air Force jet, just as her Republican predecessor did. This rumor stems from a request by the House sergeant at arms, not Pelosi, for a jet large enough to reach California without refueling.
Virginia’s Military Absentee Ballots
Q: Was the deadline for absentee ballots from military members extended in Virginia?
A: A hearing is scheduled Dec. 8 to decide whether Virginia election officials should count absentee ballots that arrived late. In response to a lawsuit filed before Election Day by John McCain’s campaign, a judge had ordered officials to keep such ballots until the matter was resolved.
The $79 Billion Iraqi Surplus, Reconsidered
We’ve criticized both Barack Obama and Joe Biden several times now for claiming that the U.S. is spending $10 billion a month to Iraq while that nation is sitting on a $79 billion surplus. We wrote that the $79 billion figure was out of date because Iraq had since passed a $22.3 billion supplemental spending bill. Our criticism was based on a report from the Government Accountability Office. But we misread the report. The figure that Obama and Biden use is probably still too high,
McCain’s $6.8 Billion Boast
McCain repeated a questionable boast when he said, “I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion” by reining in a defense contract.
As we mentioned in our analysis of the first debate, there is more to the story. McCain certainly did lead a fight to kill the contract, and the effort ended in prison sentences for defense contractors. The contract is still up in the air, however, and questions have been raised about the role McCain played in helping a Boeing rival secure the new contract.
Obama Voted Against Troop Funding?
Palin repeated the claim that Obama “voted against funding our troops.” The claim refers to a single 2007 vote against a war funding bill. Obama voted for a version of the bill that included language calling for withdrawing troops from Iraq. President Bush vetoed it. (McCain supported that veto, but didn’t call it “vetoing support for our troops.”) What Obama voted against was the same bill without withdrawal language. And he had voted yes on at least 10 other war funding bills prior to that single 2007 no vote.
McCain and the 1967 Forrestal Fire
There is a nasty claim making the rounds in virulently anti-McCain circles, accusing him of responsibility for the terrible 1967 disaster aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. That claim is bunk, and we said so in our Sept. 5 Ask FactCheck item, “Did McCain crash five planes?” Now we are saying so again – even more emphatically – based on additional research.
Among the new details: We question McCain’s widely accepted story that it was his own A-4 Skyhawk that was first hit by the errant missile that touched off the disaster.