Freedoms Watch Videos Part #2
Online NewHour has the transcript of an interview done with Brad Blakeman, the president of this group, Freedoms Watch. (via memeorandum)
Below this post I will once again post all four of their current videos that are being seen on television throughout the country.
Excerpts:JUDY WOODRUFF: You are spending, what, $15 million, some 20 states, because you're worried that Republican support for the war is falling away?
BRADLEY BLAKEMAN: No, not at all. What we're doing is we're giving voice to those people, ordinary people, Americans, who have either lost somebody in the war or have served and been injured themselves. There's no editorializing in our advertising. It's their own words.
And the only mention of Freedom's Watch, Judy, is to tell the American people who paid for it and to urge people, if you agree with the advertisements, then to call your congressperson. We're not singling out in our ads anyone by name; that is not our intent.
[...]
JUDY WOODRUFF: But your goal then, isn't it, to influence especially Republican members of Congress to stick with the president on the war?
BRADLEY BLAKEMAN: Judy, we are running these ads nationwide. They're running in Republican and Democratic districts. And a fair reading of these ads by anyone will see we're not targeting anyone by name. We haven't singled out anybody.
But what we will do is we'll give the American people the facts that there's another side of this story, and that is that Americans should not cut and run. We don't surrender in America. And switching votes for political reasons is not the way to go, and it will only embolden our enemies to do us further harm, and our allies.
A little further down he answers a question about declining to appear with a member of MoveOn.org:JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we are going to hear from a spokesman from their group, from MoveOn.org. And by the way, I want to ask you, Brad Blakeman, we had asked you to appear with Tom Matzzie of MoveOn.org, and you declined to do so. And I'm just curious about why that is.
BRADLEY BLAKEMAN: Well, first of all, I don't put our organization on a par, and we don't have anything in common with MoveOn.org or their affiliates, certainly don't believe that they're a credible group, as we are. So I am not going to share a discussion with a group that I, quite frankly, don't take seriously, and I think the American people in a fair reading of their information will say that they are incredible.
Read the whole transcript of the interview.
[Update]More media coverage for these Freedoms Watch ads over at Daily news Nation/World.
These videos are the first ones aired, I have seen them on television already and there are four of them, each 30 second videos.
Wounded Veteran:
Wife who has lost her husband:
Another Wounded Veteran speaks about anger at Congress and Victory:
Gold Star Mother:
They are touching and they are from a group that has been under represented in the debate...until now.
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Now according to Bloomberg:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has begun running radio advertisements against 12 Republican representatives, urging voters to oppose them over the war. Republican groups are counterattacking, saying the U.S. military is making progress. The conflict is fueling record campaign spending 14 months before the 2008 elections.
``There are no longer any off years in political advertising,'' said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, an Arlington, Virginia, company that tracks such ads. ``The strategy of the groups is to use the Iraq issue as an early framer of those very competitive races.''
Two outside groups, one in favor of the U.S. policy, one against, said they will spend $27 million between them just weeks before the top American commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, addresses Congress on the situation in the Arab nation.
The Democrats and the pro-war and antiwar groups are focusing on many of the same Republican lawmakers, some of whom narrowly won re-election last year.
All 12 Republicans voted against a Democratic measure in July that would have required the U.S. to begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq within 120 days. At the same time, some of the Republicans signed a letter to President George W. Bush asking him to bring Iraqi factions to Camp David.
The Democratic politicians now understand that with the recent success and progress in Iraq that has been reported to the American people, they cannot get a bill passed to force defeat upon America, as witnessed by Harry "Baghdad" Reid trying to negotiate different terms from those that he was insistent on and could not get enough support for with the Defense Authorization bill that he ended up shelving because he could not get the amendment to include time lines passed.
They cannot get it passed and even if they could they fall far short of what is needed to override the presidential veto that would follow.
September promises to be an explosive month as we showed you earlier regarding the Move America Forward and their 4,384 miles caravan with 27 stops, starting at Harry Reid's Office and ending on the Capitol, in support of the troops and their mission.
Vets For Freedom, Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, are also going to be converging on the Capitol on September 17 & 18 to show support fro General Petraeus, our troops and their mission.
The Democratic party is trying to do everything in their power to stop the progress that is being seen in Iraq over the last 3 months and proving once again that their political agendas are more important to them than America's fight in the war on terror.
They wonder why their poll numbers are so low? They wonder why they have held the stigma of being weak on national security for decades, they have no one to blame but themselves and their message of surrender and defeat.
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