Cheney, Edwards have made claims not supported by facts

WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards square off Tuesday night at 9… WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards square off Tuesday night at 9 p.m. in their first and only debate, and both have made charges on the campaign trail that have run afoul of the facts.

Here are some of the claims that both sides might make and the facts behind them:

Vice President Cheney is benefiting financially from Halliburton, a major defense contractor.

Cheney was Halliburton’s chief executive from 1995 until 2000, when he left to join George W. Bush on the Republican presidential ticket. Time and again, Edwards and Kerry have suggested that Halliburton has benefited from the war in Iraq thanks to its ties to Cheney. In an ad last month, the Kerry camp said that as vice president, Cheney has received $2 million from Halliburton.

In fact, Cheney hasn’t received any such amount while in office. Pay statements obtained by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Political Fact Check show that Halliburton paid Cheney $1.45 million on Jan. 18, 2001, two days before he was sworn in as vice president. The money was a bonus for Halliburton’s performance in 2000.

While in office, Cheney has received nearly $400,000 in deferred compensation based on an agreement with the company to extend his previous salary over several years. The independent Congressional Research Service said such compensation amounts to a “continuing financial interest” in the company, but Cheney has abided by all conflict of interest rules. He has insurance for his deferred compensation in case Halliburton goes bankrupt.

Still, there’s no question that Halliburton benefited from the war in Iraq. Halliburton ranked 37th on the list of recipients of Pentagon contracts in 2001. By 2003, it ranked seventh, according to Pentagon procurement statistics.

Halliburton won some Pentagon contracts for Iraq without competing. Pentagon auditors have said the company overcharged the government for fuel and food, a charge Halliburton denies but which remains in dispute.

Kerry and Edwards would require allies to approve before launching U.S. military operations.

Cheney and President Bush have long tried to portray Kerry as giving the United Nations or allies a veto over U.S. military operations. But throughout his campaign, Kerry has consistently said that he wouldn’t let any international body or foreign government have veto power over U.S. military actions.

In the presidential debate last week, Kerry said:

“No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it . . . you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.”

Bush and Cheney charge that Kerry’s “global test” phrase is evidence of a new “Kerry doctrine” on foreign policy. But the phrase is taken out of its broader context.

Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaida and harbored an al-Qaida leader.

Bush and the vice president have repeatedly suggested that there were links between Saddam and al-Qaida, though they stop short of claiming that Saddam had a role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But in remarks at the Air National Guard Senior Leadership Conference on Dec. 2, 2002, before the war, Cheney came close. “If we’re successful in Iraq we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11,” he said.

The independent Sept. 11 commission concluded that Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s asked to establish training camps in Iraq, but that Iraqi officials never responded. Further contacts between bin Laden and Baghdad “do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship,” the commission’s staff concluded. “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States.”

Bush supports tax policies that drive jobs overseas.

Kerry and Edwards maintain that tax deferrals for corporations that derive income from overseas operations encourage them to shut down U.S. production and move jobs overseas.

Those tax policies, however, have been in place for years through both Republican and Democratic administrations. What’s more, economists say moving jobs overseas, or “off-shoring,” isn’t a big problem and the tax consequences are only a small factor in corporate decision-making.

Kerry’s health-care plan would require a massive expansion of government bureaucracy and result in increased taxes for the middle class.

In stump speeches and in ads, Bush has argued that Kerry’s health-care plan would cost as much as $1.5 trillion over 10 years and result in government “dictating” health-care decisions.

One Emory University analyst put the cost of Kerry’s program at about $650 billion over 10 years; the conservative American Enterprise Institute estimates $1.5 trillion. But no reputable analysis concludes that it would put the government in control of Americans’ health care.

Kerry would retain the current employer-based health-insurance system. He would reduce the cost of health insurance for companies and their workers by having the government underwrite the cost of so-called catastrophic care expenses greater than $50,000. He also would provide tax incentives and allow people under age 65 to participate in Medicare.

Kerry has said he’d pay for it by increasing taxes on those earning more than $200,000 a year, in effect rolling their tax level back to what it was under President Clinton. That would generate about $860 billion, according to Kerry staff estimates.

Kerry, however, also wants to increase spending on education and to cut the record $422 billion federal budget deficit in half over four years. His proposed tax increase on the wealthy alone wouldn’t cover all that and his healthcare plan, too. —–

(c) 2004, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. —–

GRAPHIC (from KRT Graphics, 202-383-6064): 20041004 VPDEBATE