'McCain a clone of Bush'
2008-06-12 12:39
Los Angeles - Actor John Cusack has jumped into the political arena with a video calling John McCain a clone of President George W Bush who would continue policies the actor says benefit war profiteers.
"I know my opinion doesn't matter more than anyone else's, and I just make films," he told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Wednesday. "But I do feel you have to speak out, and that's what I'm doing."
The 30-second video, which went out to members of the liberal political activist group MoveOn.org on Wednesday, will begin airing on television on Thursday. In it, Cusack offers a "pop quiz" to voters, asking them among other things: "Who supports keeping our troops in harm's way in Iraq but not the bipartisan GI bill of rights to support them when they return home?"
McCain and Bush both do, Cusack says, adding, "Bet you can't tell them apart."
The cost to air the ads is $45 000. They will appear nationally on the Bravo cable channel and in Washington, DC, on CNN, MSNBC and Comedy Central.
War created to profit private businesses
In his latest film, the war satire War Inc, Cusack makes no secret that he believes the Iraq war was created to profit private businesses like Blackwater Worldwide, Bechtel Corp and others that hold war-related contracts worth millions of dollars.
"I'm not going to pretend this thing in Iraq was some kind of free market utopia to spread the gospel of democracy through the Middle East," he told the AP from London, where he's at work on another project.
Cusack says he supports Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential race.
This is the first video Cusack has done for MoveOn.org. In addition to War Inc, Cusack starred in last year's Grace is Gone, in which he plays the husband of a soldier killed in Iraq.
- AP