Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
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It is no secret that Former Sen. John Edwards has spent a lot of time in Iowa since the 2004 election campaigning, but where else has he been? In a May 27 campaign stop in Manchester, IA, Edwards shed some light on the subject, claiming, “I have spent over half my time since the last elections, the 2004 election, either overseas or, or doing work overseas, and I’ve seen the same thing you’ve seen.” Iowa Independent has obtained mp3 audio of Edwards answering an event attendee’s question about foreign policy, and he makes the claim about three minutes into it.
Edwards, who has made short trips overseas to China, Uganda, Belgium, Russia, England, and the United Arab Emirates (all documented in the press) since the 2004 election, has worked hard to build a profile on international issues. When he returned from his trip to Uganda last fall, for instance, he published this blog post highlighting the trip, including a conversation he had with Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. A quick glance at his campaign blog shows that this is the only foreign trip he made that he personally documented there.
Whether Edwards’s claim was an intentional exaggeration or simply a mistake remains to be seen. But with the 24 visits Edwards has made to Iowa since November 2004, the former Senator would have had to spend almost all of the rest of his time outside the country for his claim to be true.
6:30PM Update: Because of our timeline, the Edwards campaign was not able to comment before the story went live. This evening, Iowa Communications Director Dan Leistikow said via email, “It’s fairly obvious that [Sen. Edwards] wasn’t saying he spent a year and a half overseas; that would be absurd. He was talking about how much time he spends on foreign policy issues.”
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