RUSSIA ENDORSES KERRY
September 9, 2004
By Toby Westerman
Copyright 2004 International News Analysis Today
www.inatoday.com
Democratic Party candidate for U.S. President, John Forbes Kerry, has earned the support of the Voice of Russia World Service, the official broadcasting service of the Russian government, and formally known as Radio Moscow.
In Russia, where freedom of the press is fast disappearing, positive remarks coming from an overtly controlled source, as is the Voice of Russia, must be considered as having the approval of top Russian officials.
Voice of Russia remarks about Kerry were framed in a positive, laudatory tone, while assessments of U.S. President George W. Bush were negative. The contrast in how the two candidates were handled becomes even more vivid when previous statements about Bush and the Republican Party are recalled.
VOR informed its listeners that Kerry "had hoped" his campaign would be "peaceful" and "without vitriolic polemics." Republicans and Bush, however, are to blame for the presidential campaign turning ugly, according to VOR. "It is now abundantly clear from the message of the Republican National Convention" that Kerry's hope for political gentility "didn't do him any good," VOR asserted.
VOR blithely ignores the actions of Democratic Party surrogates, from the caustic and factually challenged Michael Moore to hyper-liberal Internet sites such as MoveOn.org.
Bush is vulnerable to attack, and the large percentage increase in poll numbers favorable to Bush is "likely to dissipate quickly," VOR opined. Bush has a "dismal record" in Iraq, and at home he is presiding over a "jobless economy," declared VOR.
Moscow then called upon Abraham Lincoln to chastise Bush and the Republicans. In a thinly veiled reference to the Democratic Party charge that the Bush administration intentionally lied to the American people regarding Iraq, VOR closed its segment analyzing the U.S. election by citing the often repeated Lincoln observation that "you can fool some of the people some of the time…"
VOR, as well as the Democratic Party, have often condemned the Bush administration for what they term a "go it alone" foreign policy, or "unilateralism."
VOR and the Democrats prefer that the U.S. use force only after the approval of the United Nations.
Russia's own view on the use of force may change after the terror attack against the school in Beslan. A top Russian general has been quoted as stating that his country is prepared to attack terrorism "anywhere in the world." Russia, like the U.S., may find that prior UN approval may become too great an obstacle in the fight for survival.
Moscow has not only openly condemned the U.S.-led coalition attack, but as late as April 2004 declared that the U.S. would "probably" never permit a civilian government to be formed in Iraq. (An Iraqi civilian administration officially took power in Iraq on June 28, 2004).
From the beginning of the war on terror, Moscow has consistently condemned U.S. policy, and staunchly defended the regime of Saddam Hussein against all charges of aggression and weapons development. VOR has even gone so far as to declare that America's true goal is to make Iraq into an U.S. colony.
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