Bush: The Secret History of a Reelection -Traps, marketing, & dirty tricks

[pbartch]

I've only posted the first few paragraphs. READ THE REST TO GET A LOW DOWN ON THE PEOPLE WHO PUT BUSH BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE...... Forward this to your friends.
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012405H.shtml

Bush: The Secret History of a Reelection
By Vincent Jauvert
Le Nouvel Observateur
Week of 20 January 2005

Traps, marketing, and dirty tricks... Today one of his team's strategists confesses: "In July 2004, we thought we were done for." And yet, in spite of the Iraqi disaster, in spite of abysmal deficits and social breakdown, Bush turned the situation around. And beat Kerry by 3.5 million votes. Vincent Jauvert describes the underbelly of a campaign as incredibly sophisticated as it was devoid of any scruples.

That Wednesday, August 4, 2004, John Kerry believed he was protected from any low blow. He had just been nominated by the Democratic convention and all the polls gave him the advantage. He could breathe for a few days. Relax his attention. The opposing side would not attack before September - not in full midsummer. So he thought.

But Bush's men are extremely skillful killers. They chose to strike August 4 precisely because no one expected it. And to strike where it would do the most harm. The surprise attack was a series of advertisements, financed underhandedly by a rich Texas real estate developer, a close friend of "W." There one saw suppositious Kerry comrades-in-arms from Vietnam. They are full of hatred. They utter cries of rage. They assert that the Senator from Massachusetts didn't deserve the prestigious decorations he received in 1971, that he is not the war hero America had respected for thirty years, but a liar and a coward. To hear them, Kerry had not saved his comrades as he claimed. He had, on the contrary, abandoned and betrayed them.

All that is nothing but a barefaced lie, a put-up, a pitch. So gross that Kerry didn't react right away. He hemmed and hawed. He waited for the maneuver to turn against its instigators. But his silence instilled a doubt among hesitant voters. The manipulators hit their mark. Their prey was wounded: mortally: in a few days, Kerry's odds fell. They never returned to their August 4 level. And Bush will remain at the head of America for four more years - to the despair of millions of Democrats and the rest of the planet.

Kerry went up against a remarkable political marketing team - the best in the history of the United States, they say in Washington. A team composed essentially of Texans, disciplined and welded together. Totally devoted to George Bush for more than ten years. A team without scruples and formidably organized. A few days before George Bush's swearing-in ceremony this January 20, we interviewed a few of the artisans of this reelection.



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Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
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