David Sanger of The New York Times obviously hasn’t bookmarked Factcheck.org. If he had, with the flick of a finger he could have saved himself from reporting, without correction, John Kerry’s inaccurate claim that the Iraq war has cost $200 billion.
Sanger today quotes Kerry: “Two-hundred-billion dollars later this president still won’t admit the mistakes, he just says he miscalculated.”
But as Factcheck.org has shown, the current cost of the war is $120 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget. To get to $200 billion, says the site, Kerry counts “money scheduled to be spent next fiscal year, plus additional funds for the future that haven’t even been requested yet.”
Mike Allen of The Washington Post did a better job with the issue. Reporting yesterday on President Bush’s speech to the National Guard Association, Allen referred to “a speech last week in which Kerry said the more than $144 billion the United States has spent on the Iraq conflict — the senator put the figure at $200 billion — has hurt jobs, health care and education at home.” (Allen didn’t say where he got his figure of $144 billion, so we can’t say what expenses it includes that are omitted from Factcheck.org’s $120 billion. But at least he takes a stab at correcting Kerry’s inflated figure, which is more than The Times manages.)
Ever since Al Gore invented the Internet, vetting candidates’ assertions is easier than ever. Do we need to wait until the 2008 campaign before reporters figure that out?
–Zachary Roth
