FactCheck USA: 10 of the best
Updated on 02 April 2008
Hillary Clinton's admission that she "misspoke" about her adventures in Serbia back in 1996 has put political fact checking on the front page.
Channel 4 FactCheck selects its 10 favourites from the primary campaign so far.
1. Hillary under fire
"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."
Hillary Clinton, George Washington University, 17 March 2008.
The mood music was clear - Hillary Clinton as the brave and experienced commander in chief in-waiting.
The only problem? Clinton's arrival at the Tuzla airbase, Bosnia in March 1996 was anything but dramatic.
No sniper fire, no running with heads down - just the usual greeting ceremony, hands to shake, children to kiss and Sheryl Crow thrown in for good measure.
And as FactCheck.org subsequently explained, it was just one example among many of Clinton overstating her diplomatic prowess.
More: Washington Post FactChecker
More: FactCheck.org
2. Me, my dad and MLK
"I saw my father march with Martin Luther King."
Mitt Romney, December 2007
If it's reflected glory you're after, there are few who trump Martin Luther King - civil rights champion and hero to much of the nation. Shame the claim wasn't true.
Newspaper reports from the time indicate that Romney Snr and King were in different parts of the country on the day they were apparently marching together.
More: Washington Post Fact Checker
3. Obama and the oil men
"I don't take money from oil companies."
Barack Obama, TV advert, March 2008
A new kind of politics? Well, no actually. It's been illegal for more than 100 years for corporations to give money directly to a federal candidate.
And anyway, Obama has accepted more than $213,000 from individuals - and their spouses - who work for companies in the oil and gas industry.
And, two of Obama's bundlers are top executives at oil companies and are listed on his Web site as rising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the presidential hopeful.
More: FactCheck.org
4. The McCain mailer
"Romney provided taxpayer-funded abortions."
McCain campaign mailer, South Carolina, January 2008
John McCain appealed to the conservative core when he campaigned in South Carolina earlier this year. In this mailer he accused his Republican rival Mitt Romney of providing "taxpayer-funded abortions".
This claim is misleading, at best. Romney did introduce a state-subsidised healthcare plan in Massachusetts but had no influence beyond that.
A mighty combination of the state Supreme Court, the Massachusetts Constitution and the US Constitution ensures the women of that state have a right to abortion, regardless of what Mitt Romney or John McCain may wish.
More: FactCheck.org
5. Far from Rudi health
" My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44 per cent under socialized medicine."
Rudi Giuliani, TV advert, October 2007
The former mayor of New York tried to use his own personal history to score a political point.
As a survivor of prostate cancer, Giuliani said he was lucky to have been born in the United States because his chances of survival were much higher than in a country like England that has "socialised medicine".
Unfortunately for Rudi, the maths is plain wrong. Survival rates in the UK are in fact 74.4 per cent.
More: FactCheck.org
6. A man for a crisis
"Romney was at his best in crisis mode."
TV Advert for Mitt Romney quoting The Boston Globe, 30 June 2007.
The use of partial quotes - a trick long used on movie posters - has become a mainstay of the campaign trail. This TV advert is perhaps the best of the lot.
Read the quote from June 2007 above and then read it in context:
"Many other observers say Romney was at his best in crisis mode, taking charge of an issue and seeing it through to resolution. At other times, though, Romney seemed conscious of little other than political image."
More: Washington Post Fact Checker
7. Obama on Obama
"The Obama Plan: Saves $2,500 for typical family.
Source: The Washington Post 5/30/07."
Obama campaign TV advert, January 2008.
"Selective, embellished and out-of-context quotes from newspapers pump up Obama's health plan," was FactCheck.org's verdict on a January campaign advertisement from the Obama camp.
Here's one example - a boast that his plan would save families $2,500. The figure is sourced to the Washington Post. But these are not the Post's numbers. The paper merely reported the figures as supplied by the Obama camp. No analysis, no independent verification.
The Democrat frontrunner would have been more honest if the quote had carried "Source: me".
More: FactCheck.org
8. The Obama bomber
"[Sen. Barack Obama] basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don't think was a particularly wise position to take."
Hillary Clinton, debate in Cleveland, Ohio, 26 February 2008
Clinton borrowed this line of attack from Republican John McCain. Both are alluding to comments Obama made last August.
This is what he actually said: "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."
Regardless of whether or not this is a sensible foreign policy stance, it's more than a reach to suggest that Obama is threatening to bomb Pakistan.
PolitiFact.com verdict: 'Pants on Fire'.
More: St Petersburg Times PolitiFact.com
9. Right said Fred?
"The Iraq Study Group reported that [Saddam Hussein] had designs on reviving his nuclear program."
Fred Thompson, debate in Dearborn, Michigan, 9 October 2007
The Iraq Study Groups 2006 report, The Way Forward: A New Approach, ran to 142 pages. On none of those pages did it address whether Saddam wanted to restart a nuclear program.
More: St Petersburg Times PolitiFact.com
10. More campus than cell
"I don't want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college."
Barack Obama, fund-raiser in Harlem, New York, 29 November 2007.
Obama needn't worry unduly given it's not even the case now.
Bureau of Justice show there were 106,000 African-American males aged between 18 and 24 were in federal or state prisons at the end of 2005.
A sizeable number for sure. But not in the same league as the 530,000 African-American males of this age group, according to the 2005 US Census.
More: Washington Post Fact Checker
