Ad says Murray made excuses for bin Laden

Osama bin Laden took a prominent role in Washington’s race for the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, as a commercial by challenger George Nethercutt accused incumbent Patty Murray of making excuses for the terrorist leader.

“Winning the war on terrorism means fighting terrorists, not excusing them,” Nethercutt says at the end of a television ad that features photographs of bin Laden and smoldering ruins from Sept. 11.

Murray’s campaign reacted quickly, with Murray and former Senate colleague Max Cleland, a triple amputee from the Vietnam War, calling the ad a disgraceful lie.

“I have always said Osama bin Laden is an evil terrorist who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans,” an incensed Murray said during a hastily called telephone press conference. She added that she had voted for the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

The few seconds of grainy videotape on the ad takes out of context her comments from an hourlong discussion with Vancouver, Wash., high school students, she insisted.

But Murray declined to describe anything in her comments about bin Laden – she said he builds roads, bridges, health care and day-care centers in some countries to make the people’s lives better – as incorrect. Instead, she said she merely “raised questions about why he is supported in Arab countries.”

Alex Conant, a Nethercutt spokesman, denied the Murray charge that the commercial was “playing politics with terrorism.” Even though she voted for the war in Afghanistan, she didn’t vote for the war in Iraq, he said.

Murray should apologize for any suggestion that bin Laden had done things to help people, Conant added.

“At the end of the day, Osama bin Laden hasn’t helped anybody,” he said. “It’s like saying Hitler was good because he built the Autobahn.”

The Murray campaign sent out excerpts from the Sept. 11 commission’s report in an attempt to corroborate some of her assessment of bin Laden’s popularity.

The commission suggested that the United States should encourage economic development to combat terrorism. Bin Laden, the commission said, took advantage of the economic problems in recruiting poor students from religious schools throughout the Muslim world.

Bin Laden and other Arab terrorists have used some of the money they raised through an international web to support schools, mosques and various businesses, the commission’s report said, and bin Laden used his family’s construction company to build a highway in Sudan when he used that country as a base for his operations.

The debate over Murray’s comments isn’t new. She drew fire from Republicans shortly after the question-and-answer session with Vancouver high school students in December 2002, and most Democrats expected an ad would try to resurrect that criticism at some point during the campaign.

Cleland, who lost a 2002 re-election bid in a campaign that also featured a television commercial with an image of bin Laden, called Nethercutt’s commercial part of “slime-machine politics” used against John McCain in the 2000 presidential primaries and against him two years ago.

Cleland also tossed the dart Democrats regularly hurl when the GOP takes aim at Murray, bringing up a comment the Spokane Republican made last October. During a town hall meeting at the University of Washington, Nethercutt criticized the news media’s reports from Iraq as too negative.

“So the story is better than we might be led to believe in the news,” he said. “I’m just indicting the news people, but it’s, it’s a bigger and better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day which, which heaven forbid is awful.”

Cleland said it was Nethercutt, not Murray, who should be ashamed: “There’s no bigger insult to our men and women in uniform than to belittle their sacrifice.”