Republican Attacks on Kerry Hit New Low
These people really are unbelievable. The rationale for these attacks is so convoluted and harebrained that it'd take paragraphs to sort it out. And I'm just not gonna take that kind of time on a lovely Halloween evening.
These people really are unbelievable. The rationale for these attacks is so convoluted and harebrained that it'd take paragraphs to sort it out. And I'm just not gonna take that kind of time on a lovely Halloween evening.
posted by Winston Smith at
5:19 PM
28 Comments:
I don't believe for one moment Kerry was referring to Bush and not the troops.
Kerry's comment did not sit well even with leading members of his own party. A number of top Democrats told CNN they were upset with the senator for giving the Republicans election-time ammunition -- even if the GOP was hyping the remark.
"He has already cost us one election. The guy just needs to keep his mouth shut until after the election," a top Democratic strategist said Tuesday.
And neither were Kerry's grades any better than Bush's---LINK.
The spin doesn't work either way. And you blame the Republicans????
Spare us. His explanation makes perfect sense. Only when you take his remark completely out of context can you lead yourself to believe that he would make this out-of-left-field statement that dumb uneducated soldiers are the only ones fighting in Iraq.
The only reason Republicans are getting fired up about this is because they are desperately seeking anything to take the attention off of what they've been up to for the past six years.
And tell me, what's more insulting to the troops? Jacking up an insult about Bush, or sending them off to pointless war while simultaneously reducing their benefits? Where's the outrage over that Tom?
Spare me. He screwed up and told us how he really feels.
Upon further review, I've changed my mind.
Thanks, Xan.
Don't be silly, Tom.
Kerry wasn't referring to Bush, he was making a kind of joke that hearkened back to Vietnam days: keep your grades up or you'll end up Over There.
That's just the way it was--no insult against the troops intended. It was just a dated joke that didn't work.
He's trying to turn it around on Bush because the Republicans are--as usual--being such stupid, manipulative assholes. So he seems to think that he might as well engage them on their own slimy, unctuous rhetorical ground.
Jesus these people are loathsome.
But my title was, of course, wrong: this is nowhere near the lowest they've gone. Somehow I temporarily forgot about the swiftboating.
That's an amazing argument, WS, and one that certainly can't be intelligently answered.
But it was Xan who was being silly. I was just trying to agree with him.
But don't worry. Nobody was offended.
Yr link no work.
Oh, I've seen it everywhere since I posted it. It's old news now.
http://www.620wtmj.com/_content/talk/charliesykes/index.asp?id=8&entry=26024
Tom, you're getting truly desparate at this point.
That is not an answer.
Winston, I assure you that if I responded in kind to this sort of thing, our relationship would be over.
Let me be more precise:
Are you serious when you suggest that we take one sign being held up by about ten soldiers as crucial data here?
Sorry, it was funny.
But if decide to believe that nobody was insulted by Kerry's asininity, I can think of nothing that would convince you.
There's no questioning the fact that some folks got riled because they choose to believe that a member of Congress would perform what amounts to political seppuku in American political discourse, but that they have a rational basis to do so is, to quote the old Scottish verdict "Not Proven."
Falsification of the above, anyone?
I dunno. A very intelligent fellow who reliably votes Democrat wrote:
Kerry wasn't referring to Bush, he was making a kind of joke that hearkened back to Vietnam days: keep your grades up or you'll end up Over There.
Now altho this fellow also wrote that it wasn't designed as an insult to the troops in Iraq, the implication would be there that they are dregs.
And altho I meself was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, such sentiments would not be out of character for Jon Cary.
It's quite rational to believe the worst: his record does not lend itself to any benefit of the doubt. I just gave it to him because that's the kind of guy I am.
I would argue this as follows: even if Kerry did mean that being uneducated would get you sent off for cannon fodder, it is not possible that he could have been stupid enough to wish to deliberately insult the people so stuck; therefore he did NOT so intend.
It is impossible that the Repubicons could have been stupid enough to believe that he would intend such self-destructive behavior; therefore they do NOT really believe it.
It is, however, possible that the Repubicons are evil enough to pretend to believe it, in hopes that you are gullible enough to fall in line. Thus the ball is in your court: are you that gullible?
This link shows photos of Kennedy and Kerry attending a soldier's funeral in December 2004. Feel free to post photos of George W. Bush attending a soldier's funeral, if you can find any!
http://coastalrain.tripod.com/legacy/id11.html
And a Reuters photographer just "happened" to be there? Yeah, right. Political opportunism, especially appearing with that friend of national defense, Ted Kennedy.
Is the GOP being opportunistic with Kerry's gaffe? Sure. But I was inclined to believe the worst at first (and so were some Democrats, including Hillary), because it was in character, as I illustrate in the link above that you apparently didn't read. (Why do I bother, DA?)
I also think there's something to Dick Morris' opinion that it was a Freudian slip, and the link indicates that Kerry perhaps really does think that the military are the dregs.
Did he think he was insulting the troops? No, he didn't think at all.
Uh, look:
If my guess about the closest possible interpretation of Kerry's intentions is right, then there's absolutely no hint of insult there, *contra* Tom(tvd)'s suggestion--*it's just a fact* that during Vietnam, college students who failed out became eligible for the draft. Those are the facts, that's the way it was, it was common knowledge, and that's--or so I'm told--the way everybody talked about it.
Incidentally--many think that Vietnam marked the beginning of the "grade inflation" problem that now plagues universities. Teachers, esp. anti-war liberals and lefties--were hesitant to give students bad grades that would land them in Vietnam.
So to slip back into this old way of talking reveals no intention to insult anybody.
It's like this: suppose I say to you "don't eat at McDonald's consistently, because that stuff will make you fat"--and then the Organization of Overweight Americans begins attacking me on the grounds that I think that everyone who is overweight eats too much.
But that, of course, isn't what I said. I said that ONE way to become overweight is to eat to much, not that *everybody* who is overweight got that way by eating too much.
There are only a few things that are certain here:
1. Kerry did not suggest and does not think that all soldiers are stupid.
2. The Republicans are simply pushing this line as a cynical, desparate attempt to avert electoral defeat.
3. Consequently, it is the Republicans, not Kerry, who are most responsible for offending soldiers--if, indeed, any were offended. If they'd have let this inconsequential bit of misstatement pass like 99.99% of the misstatements made by politicians, no one in Iraq would ever even have heard about it.
Tom, you really shouldn't engage in mind-reading tricks by telling us that 'so-and-so didn't click the links', as it is possible that people have a different take on the 'information' you post here, and that's why they don't respond in the ways you envision they should.
Anyway this one is for you.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
Considering that his prepared remarks paint a completely different picture, methinks the Republicans are distorting this, as they do everything else:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/01/AR2006110102513.html
"Kerry said yesterday that he meant it as a dig at Bush, and his office released a copy of the prepared remarks he was supposed to deliver: "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.""
However, I will say this. It is indeed ironic that in attempting to lambaste Bush, Kerry clearly *misunderestimated* his speaking ability, something for which Bush has long been known.
I don't believe the assertion that those were the prepared remarks. Don't disbelieve it either, but I don't accept it as fact.
When the links are ignored, DA, I can draw no other conclusion. Sen. Kerry has a history of antipathy for the military, and it's mutual.
Thanks for your link. I have no idea what it means, but thanks just the same.
And WS, if your interpretation of Kerry's remarks, which is less generous than my revised version, is correct, the insult is there, if you think about it. Which neither Kerry or apparently you have.
Even using your logical formulation, did all troops in Iraq get bad grades? No. It is insult enough that the implication is that some did.
Shorter Tom Van Dyke: I believe what I want to believe.
Nice drive-by, Anonymous.
You know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up writing stupid drive-bys like that one.
Since you haven't mastered clicking links, here's the story in toto. It's even worse than calling them stupid---he said they'd be more likely to be war criminals.
Has Kerry changed his mind since? As Dark Avenger likes to say, "Not Proven."
Falsification of the below, anyone?
Kerry's '72 campaign comments on Army mirror latest flap
By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press
RESOURCES
Document
1972 Kerry candidate questionnaire WASHINGTON — During a Vietnam-era run for Congress three decades ago, John Kerry said he opposed a volunteer Army because it would be dominated by the underprivileged, be less accountable and be more prone to "the perpetuation of war crimes."
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who turned against the war, made the observations in answers to a a 1972 candidate questionnaire from a Massachusetts peace group.
After Kerry caused a firestorm this week with what he termed a botched campaign joke that Republicans said insulted current soldiers, The Associated Press was alerted to the historical comments by a former law enforcement official who monitored 1970s anti-war activities
Kerry apologized Wednesday for the 2006 campaign trail gaffe that some took as suggesting U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq were undereducated. He contended the remark was aimed at Bush, not the soldiers.
In 1972, as he ran for the House, he was less apologetic in his comments about the merits of a volunteer army. He declared in the questionnaire that he opposed the draft but considered a volunteer army "a greater anathema."
"I am convinced a volunteer army would be an army of the poor and the black and the brown," Kerry wrote. "We must not repeat the travesty of the inequities present during Vietnam. I also fear having a professional army that views the perpetuation of war crimes as simply 'doing its job.'
"Equally as important, a volunteer army with our present constitutional crisis takes accountability away from the president and put the people further from control over military activities," he wrote.
Kerry's spokesman, David Wade, said Wednesday the historical document needed to be viewed in the era in which it was written but that it nonetheless raised a "bedrock question in a time of war when sacrifice should be shared by all Americans."
"These are the words 34 years ago of a 28-year-old veteran home from a war gone wrong, wondering who in America will bear the cost of battle and shoulder the responsibility of military service," Wade said.
Kerry filled out the candidate questionnaire at the request of Massachusetts Political Action for Peace, an anti-war group that decades later turned over its historical documents to university researchers.
AP obtained the document from someone who gathered it from archives during Kerry's unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign against President Bush. Republicans in that election relentlessly assailed Kerry's role in the anti-war movement decades earlier.
Kerry and Bush renewed their rivalry again this week, with the president accusing Kerry of offending troops. Kerry said he botched the text of a joke and didn't mean to insult troops.
On Wednesday, Kerry canceled campaign appearance on behalf of Democratic congressional candidates and issued an apology.
"Since you haven't mastered clicking links, here's the story in toto. It's even worse than calling them stupid---he said they'd be more likely to be war criminals."
Only if one presupposes that the comments he made recently were referring the troops, something which smart and non-intellectually lazy people call affirming the consequent. And since you're an Ivy League-educated genius, I'm sure you'd do no such thing.
Not only that, the army has in fact become made up more and more of the underprivileged, AS HE PREDICTED, and Abu Ghraib was war crimes writ large, although not necessarily because of the all-volunteer army. More because of a lack of leadership and discipline in the chain of command.
And I'm also supposed to believe that Kerry viewed the troops with such disgust that he volunteered to serve with them and attempts to see to it that they're properly equipped and that the VA is adequately funded. All things which George W. Bush clearly has not done. He only gives a rat's ass about them to the extent he can get a good photo op with them.
P.S. My guess is that those quotes from his 1972 questionnaire are heavily ellipsed anyway. Want to know why? Go to this site below, click on the link 'Click Here to Read Kerry's 1972 Candidate Questionnaire' and see what you get. But if you doubt it, I'm sure with years of research you can track down the original document.
http://www.gop.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=6703
All of which, by the way, would be of a piece with removing the entire context of any thinly sliced statement they can distort so you decide.
Some people, like the guy below, actually pay attention to everything Kerry said, especially before the botched joke. But presuming everyone else is as intellectually lazy as he is is just easier for Bush.
http://www.thepoorman.net/2006/11/01/olbermann-shrill/
But you go ahead and believe what you wish; I hear cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
Actually, I posted a link where I changed my mind on Kerry intending to insult the troops.
But (and I have DA as a witness here) there's no way you'd have written the above if you'd followed the link.
So get off my back, anonymous, and get a name instead of taking potshots from behind the duckblind.
there's no way you'd have written the above if you'd followed the link.
Sorry, Tom, but my crystal ball is in the dishwasher. With such a gift of prophecy that I sorely lack, you should be playing the lotto these days.
I do have my welders' goggles ready in case you have something of interest from Powershineblog.com :)
From the wikipedia entry:
"During his Senate career, Kerry has sponsored or cosponsored dozens of bills. Some of his notable bills have addressed small business concerns, education, terrorism, veterans' and POW-MIA issues, marine resource protection and other topics. Of those bills with his sponsorship, as of December 2004, 11 have been signed into law."
Actions speak louder than words, I always say.
All your article shows is that the greatest antipathy Kerry showed back in the day was towards the idea of a volunteer army, not towards all who serve in a military capacity per se.
Reasonable people can disagree on such an issue without one side being labled "anti-military", just as people can disagree on the merits of French culture without lapsing into xenophobia.
So, your attempt at falsification has failed. The verdict now for John Kerry, hater of all things military, is:
INNOCENT
True, as stated. But that's not what I wrote.
Look, y'all. In case everybody everywhere has forgotten, the attacks on Kerry's military record were motivated by the need to deflect attention away from Bush's DESERTION from the Texas Air National Guard.
http://www.awolbush.com/
There's an uncollected $50,000 reward for anyone who can prove Bush ever showed up for duty at Dannelly AFB.
You could use fifty large, couldn'tcha, TVD??? Hmmm?
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