In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Links: The MoveOn.org ad, its aftermath, and assessment
Reference Material: The ad, MoveOn.org, and the Iraq reports
Reactions: John Kerry, the rate card, Giuliani, and the president's address
Opinion: The MoveOn ad and the congressional hearings
Analysis: Assessing Petraeus's report and the MoveOn.org ad
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Assessing the Petraeus Attack Ad
by
findingDulcinea Staff
The Senate votes to denounce MoveOn.org for its ad disparaging General Petraeus’s assessment of the U.S. troop “surge”; The New York Times concedes it made a mistake in publishing the advertisement.
30-Second Summary
The Senate resolution admonishing the anti-war organization MoveOn.org passed 72 votes to 25, on Sept. 21.
Appearing on Sept. 10 to coincide with Petraeus’s first day at a congressional hearing into the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the MoveOn.org advertisement made a number of claims that cast doubt on the standards the Pentagon uses to measure violence in Iraq.
But the banner under which those statements were made proved to be more provocative than the accusations of bias and inaccuracy. “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” declared the headline.
One effect of the ad was that coverage of the hearing was increasingly drawn away from Petraeus’s report and his methodology to issues of slander and personal integrity.
The story developed further when it became known that MoveOn.org received a substantial discount on the advertised price of $181,692 for a full-page ad. At first the New York Times Company said that the $65,000 paid was the normal standby rate. However, on Sept. 23, Public Editor Clark Hoyt stated that the Times had broken its own rules on two counts
Hoyt wrote that the standby rate shouldn’t have been awarded to an ad timed to appear on a specific date. He added that according to the Times’s advertising acceptability manual, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.”
As a result of the controversy, Democrats such as Sen. John Kerry (D–Mass.) have distanced themselves from MoveOn.org. With The New York Times having issued an apology, MoveOn.org would appear to be increasingly isolated.
However, Matt Bai argues in the Times that the “stellar publicity” the grass-roots organization has won can only do it good. “Everybody wins in ideological skirmishes like these,” he writes, as Republicans and MoveOn.org have solidified their base support.
Appearing on Sept. 10 to coincide with Petraeus’s first day at a congressional hearing into the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the MoveOn.org advertisement made a number of claims that cast doubt on the standards the Pentagon uses to measure violence in Iraq.
But the banner under which those statements were made proved to be more provocative than the accusations of bias and inaccuracy. “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” declared the headline.
One effect of the ad was that coverage of the hearing was increasingly drawn away from Petraeus’s report and his methodology to issues of slander and personal integrity.
The story developed further when it became known that MoveOn.org received a substantial discount on the advertised price of $181,692 for a full-page ad. At first the New York Times Company said that the $65,000 paid was the normal standby rate. However, on Sept. 23, Public Editor Clark Hoyt stated that the Times had broken its own rules on two counts
Hoyt wrote that the standby rate shouldn’t have been awarded to an ad timed to appear on a specific date. He added that according to the Times’s advertising acceptability manual, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.”
As a result of the controversy, Democrats such as Sen. John Kerry (D–Mass.) have distanced themselves from MoveOn.org. With The New York Times having issued an apology, MoveOn.org would appear to be increasingly isolated.
However, Matt Bai argues in the Times that the “stellar publicity” the grass-roots organization has won can only do it good. “Everybody wins in ideological skirmishes like these,” he writes, as Republicans and MoveOn.org have solidified their base support.
Headline Links: The MoveOn.org ad, its aftermath, and assessment
Sept. 10—MoveOn.org's ad accusing General Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House” has allowed “supporters of the surge strategy in Iraq to change the subject from progress in Iraq to the rhetoric used by war opponents,” according to ABC News. The Democratic candidates are described as being forced to negotiate a difficult path between not alienating an important base of support and defending the general’s personal integrity.
Source: ABC News
Sept. 23—The Senate passed a resolution sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R–Tex.) denouncing the MoveOn.org ad. Earlier, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D–Cal.) had failed to make headway with a similar resolution to “strongly condemn all attacks on the honor, integrity and patriotism” of members of the U.S. military. The New York Times noted that Barack Obama, who abstained from the vote on the Republican-sponsored resolution, supported Boxer’s resolution.
Source: The New York Times
Sept. 23—The New York Times said that it made a mistake in publishing the MoveOn.org ad at a discount rate. In response, MoveOn.org stated that it would pay the difference between the discount and the standard rates. MoveOn.org issued a statement saying that the full $142,083 figure “is above the market rate paid by most organizations, [and] out of an abundance of caution we have decided to pay that rate for this ad.”
Source: The New York Times
Reference Material: The ad, MoveOn.org, and the Iraq reports
MoveOn.org's full-page ad in The New York Times carried the banner “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” According to MoveOn.org, the general's claims regatding a recent reduction in violence are based on "a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence,” one that, for example, discounts deaths by car bombs. The MoveOn.org Web site carries links to the sources used in constructing the ad’s statements.
Source: MoveOn.org
“The number of people killed in Iraq fell to 269 during the monitoring period of 5 to 12 Sept. … It is the lowest figure reported since the surge began,” writes the BBC in a concise overview monitoring the surge compiled from U.S. and Iraqi sources. “The number [of deaths] coincided with a report by the U.S. commander in Iraq,” observes the BBC, referring to the two-day congressional hearing.
Source: The BBC
The testimonies of Genera David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, and video of the hearings, are available from the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Source: Committee on Foreign Affairs
MoveOn.org and Political Financing
Most of MoveOn.org’s revenue is spent in the form of “soft money,” a term that refers to funds used to campaign on issues without directly supporting or opposing any particular politician. The New York Times ad is an example of a political action paid for with soft money.
Funds used to directly support or attack a politician are referred to as “hard money.”
Most of MoveOn.org’s revenue is spent in the form of “soft money,” a term that refers to funds used to campaign on issues without directly supporting or opposing any particular politician. The New York Times ad is an example of a political action paid for with soft money.
Funds used to directly support or attack a politician are referred to as “hard money.”
OpenSecrets.org is dedicated to tracking political donations from citizens and political action committees, and provides a breakdown of donations that MoveOn.org made to individual candidates in 2006. The funds detailed are “hard money” contributions. The recipient to receive the largest amount of money was the unsuccessful senatorial candidate Ned Lamont (D-CT), who stood against Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), a politician MoveOn.org deemed too pro-war.
Source: OpenSecrets.org
OpenSecrets.org also provides a breakdown of soft money contributions made in 2004, in the run-up to the last presidential election. That year this PAC spent a total of $21,346,380.
Source: OpenSecrets.org
Petraeus’s report on the Iraq War follows three others that have appeared in the past several weeks: the Jones Report, the product of a panel of retired senior figures from the military and police; the General Accountability Office report; and the National Intelligence Estimate report. National Public Radio summarizes each document in its “report on reports.”
Source: National Public Radio
After delivering his testimony, Gen. Petraeus released a three-page document entitled “Ethno-sectarian Violence Methodology,” which outlines the definitions used in compiling his statistics.
Source: Talking-Points: Petraeus's methodology
Reactions: John Kerry, the rate card, Giuliani, and the president's address
Reactions to the MoveOn.org Ad
Sen. John Kerry (D–Mass.) distanced himself from the New York Times ad on Monday. The former presidential candidate said to CNN, “I don’t like any kind of characterizations in our politics that call into question any active duty, distinguished general.”
Source: CNN Political Ticker
Reuters covers the reactions to a New York Post story that asked why The New York Times gave a discount rate to MoveOn.org of $65,000, despite the rate card price for a full page being $181,692. The Times has declined to offer figures for other advertisements, a fact that some commentators interpret as an admission of guilt. However, a journalism professor interviewed offers an alternative explanation for the newspaper's demurral: “The quandary the Times gets stuck in is they don’t want to admit you can buy an ad for that rate, no matter who you are.”
Source: Reuters
Speaking at a campaign stop in Atlanta, presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani challenged The New York Times to give him the same advertising rate charged to MoveOn.org so he can run an ad in response.
Source: The Boston Globe
The New York Times has rejected ads from pro-life groups and from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, writes The American Spectator. A coalition of pro-life groups tried to take out a full-page ad during the Terry Schiavo debate in Congress, but were allegedly turned away. A former ad sales staffer is quoted as saying, “I think that such a group would have qualified for our advocacy discount, but perhaps the policies changed in the past couple of years.”
Source: The American Spectator
Figures put together by The Washington Times rank MoveOn.org as the country’s third largest political action committee in terms of receipts, which totaled $14.1 million between Jan. 2005 and June 30, 2006. The organization has so far spent $5 million dollars in the current election cycle.
Source: The Washington Times
President Bush's address to the nation
Sept. 13—President Bush addressed the nation on “The Way Forward in Iraq,” making a speech in which Gen. Petraeus’s testimony featured very prominently. According to the president, Ambassador Crocker and Petraeus had “made clear that our challenge in Iraq is formidable,” the president said. “Yet they concluded that conditions in Iraq are improving … and that the troop surge is working.”
Source: The White House
Independent Web site FactCheck.org assessed the statements in President Bush’s address and concluded that Bush had “played loose with the facts.” Among the assertions that FactCheck.org questioned was the implied claim that successes in Iraq meant that “by July we will be able to reduce our troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15.” This was repeated from Petraeus’s recommendation made at the Senate hearing. But that drawdown may be necessitated by the number of troops coming to the end of the tour and the consequent shortage of personnel.
Source: FactCheck.org
Opinion: The MoveOn ad and the congressional hearings
Opinions on MoveOn.org and its Attack Ad
Ronald Brownstein of The LA Times sees the “unseemly” ad as only another example of how partisan divisions blind both parties to the national interest: in this instance, ending the war in Iraq. Whereas MoveOn.org is polling its members as to whether the group should refuse to fund Democrats who “side with the president on Iraq,” Republicans “have recklessly charged” that Democrats who support a timetable for withdrawal are setting a “date for surrender.”
Source: The LA Times (free registration required)
A USA Today columnist Byron York evaluates the damage done to the Democrats by MoveOn.org’s ad, and judges that the organization “simply has too much fundraising clout … for many in the party to take it on.” However, York judges that what “should trouble party leaders is not that MoveOn is capable of silly stunts,” but that it is opposed not only to “action in Iraq, but the war on terror in general, and, in a larger sense, America’s use of military power in its own defense.”
Source: USA Today
The Washington Post expresses admiration for Petraeus’s calm, collected demeanor as his part in the war grows in the public perception. “More than ever before,” writes the Post, “the U.S. venture in Iraq has become his own.” The paper notes that the White House has been pleased to dub the troop buildup “the Patraeus plan,” for the reason that “the general had more credibility than the president.” However, the Post also observes that Democrats backed this shift in attention away from the president “by mandating in legislation that he report to Congress in September.”
Source: The Washington Post
Ed Koch writes that the Democratic candidates who have refrained from distancing themselves from MoveOn.org did so “because they fear themselves becoming the victims of a similar onslaught from the radical left.
Source: The New York Post
In an op-ed piece appearing in The New York Times on the same day the paper conceded its mistake in running the MoveOn.org ad, Matt Bai described the advertisement as a gift to Republicans. He argues that the ad was an opportunity to shift “attention away from General Petraeus’s depressing testimony [by] branding the administration’s opponents as a bunch of radical, pierced-nose pacifist thugs.”
Source: The New York Times
Approval for Petraeus's Testimony
Looking back on the reactions to Monday and Tuesday’s congressional hearings at the end of the week, Kimberley Strassel concludes that Petraeus’s testimony has left Republicans on “the political front-foot.” She writes that this turn of events has surprised many commentators, and that there is a lesson to be drawn: “Good military policy is good politics.” In Strassel’s estimation, the surge has paid off, and those who backed the surge are going to reap the political rewards not only now but come the ’08 election.
Source: The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription may be required)
Skepticism for Petraeus's Testimony
In the opinion of a senior political analyst at Al-Jazeera, “Asking the general to assess the so-called ‘surge’ policy is like asking a student to grade his own exam paper.” Marwan Bishara argues that Petraeus’s optimistic evaluation of recent American successes betrays a highly selective reading of the facts. Leading Bishara’s list of criticisms is his observation that the 20 percent drop in U.S. fatalities in July coincided by a 23 percent rise in death of Iraqi civilians.
Source: Al-Jazeera
Tom Englehart, author and teaching fellow at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, published a highly skeptical analysis of Petraeus’s report before the hearings. He argues that “the most political general in recent memory has been asked to assess his own work … and then present ‘recommendations’ to the White House in a ‘report’ that is actually being written in the White House.” Englehart's conviction that the White House wrote the report stems The LA Times's article below.
Source: TomDispatch.com
According to The LA Times, “despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House.”
Source: The LA Times
Analysis: Assessing Petraeus's report and the MoveOn.org ad
Breaking down the MoveOn.org claims, the Fact-Checker finds much that is questionable in the MoveOn.org's ad, as well as some statements that are simply wrong. For example, according to The Wasington Post is not true, as the advertisement claimed, that Petraeus's research into violence excluded figures for car bombs. Move.On.org also wrote that civilian deaths have risen in the last three months. This is judged to be "controversial." Petraeus reports a drop in civilian deaths, and Fact-Checker states that "it is difficult to reconcile this reported decline with an Aug. 25 Associated Press report that war-related deaths in Iraq have nearly doubled over the last year." On the other hand, Iraq Body Count, an independent group tracking deaths in Iraq, records that "overall levels of violence against Iraqi civilians have decreased since the last six months of 2006." Overall the Washington Post's Fact-Checker judges the MoveOn.org ad to contain "significant factual error."
Source: The Washington Post's Fact-Checker
As the MoveOn.org ad stated, the Pentagon counts a killing in Iraq as sectarian only if the victim is shot in the back of the head or tied up, according to The Washington Post. Such distinctions show how complex assessing the success of the U.S. operation in Iraq can be. Interestingly, the article quotes the Government Accountability Office as saying that it “could not determine if sectarian violence had declined” since the troop surge began in the spring, and that it had not detected any decrease in violence against civilians as of July.
Source: The Washington Post
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