I'd Rather Be Insulted by a Botched Joke Than Die in a Botched War...

"I'm sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not debate real policy, who won't take responsibility for their own mistakes, standing up and trying to make other people the butt of those mistakes. It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did."
Sen. John Kerry 10/31/06

"If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq . It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they're afraid to debate real men. And this time it won't work because we're going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq ."

VP Dick Cheney - several deferments, by marriage and timely fatherhood.

Karl Rove, occasional Deputy Chief of Staff and alleged full time smear artist, escaped the draft and did not serve

Secretary of State and former NSA Condaleeza Rice - did not serve

Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist - did not serve.

Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - did not serve.

Republican Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay - did not serve.

Rush Limbaugh - did not serve

Sean Hannity - did not serve

Ann Coulter - did not serve

Bill O'Reilly - did not serve

Sunday, October 15, 2006; Page B04

In the months before the 2004 presidential election, The Washington Post's Bob Woodward sought to interview Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, about how he might have conducted foreign policy in the 18 months between Sept. 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. For his book "Plan of Attack," Woodward had interviewed President Bush on how and why he made decisions during that same period. Woodward gave the Kerry campaign a list of 22 questions based on Bush's actions, asking how Kerry would have responded at each key decision point if he had been president. Kerry declined the interview at the time. More than a year later, on March 7, Kerry agreed to be interviewed by Woodward and answer the 22 questions. Below is an edited version of their two-hour conversation .

John Kerry: Let me start at the beginning, because if I were president and we had been attacked as we were attacked on 9/11, I would have, first of all, created a kind of war cabinet similar to what other presidents have done historically, going back to Roosevelt and others. . . .

Now, you may have an executive committee within that . . . like President Kennedy did. But your war cabinet itself needs to be especially plugged in . . . so the right questions are on the table and the right questions are asked and the right discussion takes place. I mean, if you go back and look at Eisenhower, Eisenhower is smart in that he played less than fully briefed, so to speak, and he would let the staff fight it out in front of him and not let on what he believed or where he wanted to go. I think it's particularly important presidentially not to indicate your policy right up front unless there's such a clarity to it. For instance, in response to 9/11, there's clarity. We've got to go kill al-Qaeda. . . . In fact, I would have thought about starting that war differently.

Bob Woodward: In what way?

I believe that during that particular period of time you knew that they [the Taliban and al-Qaeda] had bad habits. They didn't believe that we would necessarily invade. . . . That is an enormous advantage with which to begin any planning. So they are running around in caravans, which we can see from technical means. They're talking on cellphones, which we can follow with technical means. It gave us time to put assets on the ground.

There are all kinds of things that we could have done with respect to pinpointing their whereabouts.

This is after 9/11?

Absolutely. And my instincts would have been much more inclined to have used feint as subterfuge to indicate you might be doing one thing when you're really doing another. . . . I would have been inclined to have used a greater covert effort to put the pressure on Osama bin Laden, at which point I would have been prepared to move major track divisions into position, whether it's the 101st, the 10th Mountain Division, 82nd Airborne, etc.

. . . Now, I know we had SEALs at Tora Bora. And they wanted to go. I mean, who wouldn't have wanted to go get Osama bin Laden?

[T]he bottom line is there wasn't even a sufficient strategy to do that. I would have guaranteed there was. Period.

What would you have said to your central commander, who's the guy on the ground, about planning for an Iraq war?

First of all, I would have had enough people around who understand and define to me adequately the nature of the threat that we now face. . . . And that requires a pretty extensive outreach effort which includes, in my judgment, not just the Joint Chiefs of Staff and your national security adviser and your intelligence director, but it really includes. . . . President George Herbert Walker Bush, President Jimmy Carter, President Bill Clinton, you know, President Ford, Brent Scowcroft, Zbig Brzezinski, Jim Baker, George Shultz. I mean, you start running the list. I would have had all of those people to some evening sessions, sat up there in the Yellow Room and sat around and said, "What are we facing here? What are the challenges? What's the most important thing we do? How do we win?" Once you define the war on terror, then you can really understand what you've got to do. I think these guys rushed to a definition of the war, saw it the way they wanted to see it, clouded by ideology, and then went out and made people do things accordingly. . . .

It's incomprehensible to me. I mean look -- go back to that period. On that November 21st date [Nov. 21, 2001, when Bush first asked Rumsfeld to look at the war plan for an attack on Iraq], we had not yet fought Tora Bora. . . . We were deep in Afghanistan with an enormous priority to kill al-Qaeda. And we also had a very tentative Pakistan that was fragile, which was a country with nuclear weapons, which we were just moving to the place of sort of participation with America. . . . So my instinct, absent evidence of intelligence, would not have been to ask the secretary of defense for war plans on Iraq. I would have said, "Do we have sufficient troops on the ground to trap Osama bin Laden?" . . . It would not have moved me to take the eye off of Osama bin Laden and the fundamental goal, which was destroying al-Qaeda. . . .

You would have gone to Bush's father, even?

Oh, absolutely. You kidding? I would have said, "Come down here and spend the evening at the White House. Let's talk. I want to talk to you. Tell me about your decision. Tell me all the things that went through your head when you were thinking about going into Iraq and you made the decision finally not to go."

In August '02, Powell asked for a two-hour dinner alone with Bush. Condi Rice is there and he says, "The consequences have not been fully examined and if you invade . . . 'you break it, you own it.'" What would you have done at that moment, if you were president?

If I were president and my secretary of state came to me and said, "Mr. President, you're on a bad track," I would slow the baby down and find out if I was on a bad track. Or I'd fire my secretary of state. . . . I mean, if a guy with Colin Powell's credentials who's been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who'd risen up through service to other presidents, who's been to war, and who is your chosen secretary of state, came to me and said that, I'd say, "Okay. What do we need to do? Where are we? What are the downsides? What haven't we done?"

ON THE "AXIS OF EVIL"

Do you think that the idea of lumping North Korea, Iran and Iraq together is, from a policy point of view, possible or wise, as Bush did in his 2002 State of the Union?

No, it's neither wise nor possible because they are different challenges, different cultures, different historical backgrounds to those challenges. And in the case of the Middle East, we really had an opportunity post-9/11. This is what I think was so important. This is what I saw staring us in the face as I went through 2004 . . . a remarkable opportunity to reconnect to the post-9/11 goodwill of the world, which in my judgment this administration squandered. And that goodwill was perhaps one of our greatest assets. Had we taken that goodwill and built it into a larger strategic concept -- I mean, you can go back to Woodrow Wilson. . . . And then you go to Roosevelt. You go to Kennedy . . . and Eisenhower. They all had a larger strategic concept, which -- this is important -- had the ability to bring the world to our side.

Bush thought this was a strategic concept.

This was an ideological concept, not a strategic concept. . . .

I mean, this is what I would have wanted in first discussions. What are we up against? What is this all about? Did these guys just attack us because this is part of Osama bin Laden's strategy for a greater caliphate in the Middle East, or are they attacking us for other reasons? . . . And it seems to me that the transformational aspects of it require a much more massive kind of public diplomacy, global cooperation on religious issues as well as on economic issues and human rights and other issues, as it did the barrel of a gun. These guys could only see it in the context of the military piece.

ON POSTWAR PLANNING

[I]t wasn't really until three months before the war starts that Bush got involved in aftermath planning. And the question is, when do you start, even if you're contemplating war, which clearly they are, when do you start the ball rolling on aftermath?

Day One. And that is not a Monday morning quarterback comment. That is such a fundamental prerequisite to the concept of contemplating going to war, particularly where you are going to occupy another country. One of the first questions, I'd sit there with a bunch of people at the table, I'd say, "Okay, assuming we go into Iraq, what happens after?" Nobody ever doubted this was going to be short and we were going to win. So we knew we were going to win, so once we're in Baghdad, what happens? Who's going to run the country? Will there be electricity? What are the war plans? Can we protect the pipelines on the oil? What's the ability to make sure people have food? Are you going to guard the ammo dump so you make sure there isn't looting?

Remember when Rumsfeld said, "Oh, looting happens."

"Stuff happens."

I was stunned by that. And I said they're going to rue the day that they allowed this stuff to get out of control because they sent a message, "No control." And our kids were being blown up by the very weapons that they didn't even think about securing on the way in. There should have been an elaborate -- in fact it was an elaborate plan and they chose to ignore it. Colin Powell and the State Department had a fairly elaborate plan and I've talked to people who are involved in the making of it.

ON DONALD RUMSFELD

In November-December '02, Rumsfeld's making major force deployments to the area but he says we can't do a big one because it will tell the world diplomacy is over. And he said, "We're sending these forces and they're going to be in top fighting shape for about two or three months but then it will start to degrade." Your reaction?

One of incredulity that a president would even allow that argument to be persuasive and that a secretary of defense would make it in the first place. And shame on all of them for that. That is insulting to Americans and to all of us, the notion that you have to send people to war simply because you put them there. This is just, you know, it was their rush to war.

And then when Rumsfeld in January started telling the president, "You're losing your options." And you know, you get to a point where we're asking our allies, particularly the Saudis, to make commitments and it's not feasible to back off.

Well, you could always back off it if you haven't committed the troops and there's a reason to back off. I mean, if you don't have intelligence to go to war and you go to war for weapons of mass destruction, you damn well can say, "I'm not giving the order to fire." What is the shame in going back and saying, "We have new intelligence that indicates something different and I intend as president to exercise my responsibility to the world and to our troops to make sure we've exhausted that."

Do you get in a bind, though, where to credibly threaten force you have to deploy all kinds of troops and then once you've deployed them you get into --

The purpose of the deployment of the troops is to get the weapons of mass destruction under control. If at the last moment something indicates to you either there aren't weapons of mass destruction or you have a way to get them under control, you don't use the troops and you don't have to. I mean, those are the tough judgments. Look, what are you going to do? "Oh, gee. We're locked in. We don't have sufficient evidence but I'm going to send this kid from Illinois to die anyway?"

ON DOUBTS

Can a president afford to have doubt in a time of war?

Well, you better have your doubts before the war. And you better explore every doubt before the war. But once you've committed, you better not have a doubt. You better know what you're doing and you better be committed to winning and do everything in your power to do that.

Do you think they had a process of doubt?

No. Clearly they didn't, and that's a reflection of the president.

But Bush says, when I asked him earlier, I said, "You never get everyone to agree on the use of force."

I'm not looking for everybody's agreement. You're never going to get everybody to agree.

What are you looking for?

What I'm looking for is the broadest possible vetting and examination. And let the debate take place in front of me and I'll make my judgment. But nobody will have any doubt that every question was asked. Nobody will have any doubt that the alternative theories were examined, that history was examined, that culture was examined, religion was understood, that the dynamics of the region were explored, that people who've lived there have been inquired of. When I get to that decision I can explain it and there's only one rationale, not a whole bunch of shifting rationales. That's the way you take a nation to war.

ON HISTORY'S VERDICT

I asked Bush in December '03, "How do you think history's going to judge your war?" And that's when he said, "We don't know. We won't know. We'll all be dead."

I think history nowadays judges things much more rapidly, number one. And number two, certain things lend themselves to pretty rapid judgment. Vietnam is an example of that. . . . And history is going to judge this very, very, very rapidly, I think.

And severely?

I think history is going to be very, very tough on not just the way the war has been managed, but on the way in which the decision to go to war was carried out. It's going to be a low moment . . . in the presidency in history.
Source: Washington Post

Sunday, September 10, 2006; Page A09

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday urged the deployment of more U.S. troops to combat the growing Taliban threat in Afghanistan while accusing the administration of trying to salvage its congressional majorities by playing on public fears of future terrorist attacks rather than fixing what he said is a disastrous policy in Iraq.

As the nation prepares to mark the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Kerry offered a pointed rejoinder to President Bush's recent rhetorical offensive on terrorism. He said Bush's policies have turned Iraq into a terrorist breeding ground, unleashed dangerous forces elsewhere in the Middle East and diverted resources from the battle against terrorism at home and in Afghanistan.

"We have a Katrina foreign policy, a succession of blunders and failures that have betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it," Kerry said in a speech at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall.

A copy of the prepared text was distributed by Kerry's office.

The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee also accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who recently spoke of "moral confusion" in the debate about how best to fight the radical Islamic terrorist threat, of smearing those who dissent from the administration's policies by suggesting they are similar to Nazi appeasers in the 1930s.

"It is immoral for old men to send young Americans to fight and die in a conflict without a strategy that can work," he said. "It is immoral to lie about progress in that war to get through a news cycle or an election. It is immoral to treat 9/11 as a political pawn."

Speaking a day after a suicide bomber killed 16 people, including two U.S. soldiers, in Afghanistan, Kerry accused the administration of pursuing "a policy of cut-and-run" in that country and said the Pentagon should deploy at least 5,000 more troops to help suppress the Taliban insurgency. He said allied forces there need more helicopters, drones, heavy equipment and reconstruction funds to help prop up the government in Kabul.

Kerry restated his call for the withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Iraq by next July, a recommendation that most of his fellow Democratic senators have already rejected. He also urged new policies to free the United States from its dependence on Middle East oil, which he described as the "great treasury of jihadist terrorism."

"There is simply no way to overstate how Iraq has subverted our efforts to free the world from global terror," Kerry said, according to the prepared text. "It has overstretched our military. It has served as an essential recruitment tool for terrorists. It has divided and pushed away our traditional allies. It has diverted critical billions of dollars from the real front lines against terrorism and from homeland security."

Kerry, in a rhetorical twist that invoked one of the worst moments of his 2004 campaign, also took note of Bush's speech this week about the treatment of terrorist suspects who have been held at secret CIA prisons abroad. "Let me say it plainly," he said. "No American president should be for torture before he's against it."

A Republican National Committee spokeswoman, Tara Wall, called Kerry's criticism ill-timed on the eve of the commemoration of the Sept. 11 attacks and charged that Kerry's blueprint would embolden terrorists and diminish domestic efforts to prevent future attacks.
Source: Dan Balz Washington Post

August 20, 2006

Kerry Calls Lieberman the New Cheney,
Senator Labels Bush Iraq Policy 'Disaster,'
Lieberman Bid 'Huge Mistake'

By ED O'KEEFE

Aug. 20, 2006 -- Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., blasted "former" Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, for continuing his bid in the Connecticut Senate race despite a narrow loss to newcomer Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary earlier this month.

"I'm concerned that [Lieberman] is making a Republican case," Kerry told ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" in an exclusive appearance.

Kerry accused the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate of "adopting the rhetoric of Dick Cheney," on the issue of Iraq.

"Joe Lieberman is out of step with the people of Connecticut," Kerry added, insisting Lieberman's stance on Iraq, "shows you just why he got in trouble with the Democrats there."

Kerry called Lieberman's independent bid a "huge mistake" and applauded businessman-turned-politician Lamont as "courageous" for challenging Lieberman on the war.

On Bush's Iraq policy in general, Kerry also pulled no punches: Of his own views on Iraq, Kerry stated forthrightly, "The course of this country in Iraq is making the world more dangerous."

... Kerry told chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos, "Iraq is not the center of the war on terror," while also asserting, "Iraq is in a civil war; of course it's in a civil war."

Kerry said he supports the efforts of Senator John Warner, R-Va., to introduce a second resolution on Iraq if and when the country descends into outright civil war. Kerry believes that moment has come and reiterated, "We have to set a date for the withdrawal," before concluding, "The absence of diplomacy is putting our troops at greater risk and is reducing our ability for success."
Source: ABC News

April 5, 2006

Dear ABQ4Kerry.com,

WE are now in the third war in Iraq in as many years. The first was against Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction. The second was against terrorists whom, the administration said, it was better to fight over there than here. Now we find our troops in the middle of an escalating civil war.

Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion. We want democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our valiant soldiers can't bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq's leaders are unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires.

As our generals have said, the war cannot be won militarily. It must be won politically. No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences.

So far, Iraqi leaders have responded only to deadlines - a deadline to transfer authority to a provisional government, and a deadline to hold three elections.

Now we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get Iraq up on its own two feet.

Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military. If Iraqis aren't willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they're probably not willing to build one at all. The civil war will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave.

If Iraq's leaders succeed in putting together a government, then we must agree on another deadline: a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end. Doing so will empower the new Iraqi leadership, put Iraqis in the position of running their own country and undermine support for the insurgency, which is fueled in large measure by the majority of Iraqis who want us to leave their country. Only troops essential to finishing the job of training Iraqi forces should remain.

For this transition to work, we must finally begin to engage in genuine diplomacy. We must immediately bring the leaders of the Iraqi factions together at a Dayton Accords-like summit meeting. In a neutral setting, Iraqis, working with our allies, the Arab League and the United Nations, would be compelled to reach a political agreement that includes security guarantees, the dismantling of the militias and shared goals for reconstruction.

To increase the pressure on Iraq's leaders, we must redeploy American forces to garrisoned status. Troops should be used for security backup, training and emergency response; we should leave routine patrols to Iraqi forces. Special operations against Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists in Iraq should be initiated only on hard intelligence leads.

We will defeat Al Qaeda faster when we stop serving as its best recruitment tool. Iraqis ultimately will not tolerate foreign jihadists on their soil, and the United States will be able to maintain an over-the-horizon troop presence with rapid response capacity. An exit from Iraq will also strengthen our hand in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat and allow us to repair the damage of repeated deployments, which flag officers believe has strained military readiness and morale.

For three years now, the administration has told us that terrible things will happen if we get tough with the Iraqis. In fact, terrible things are happening now because we haven't gotten tough enough. With two deadlines, we can change all that. We can put the American leadership on the side of our soldiers and push the Iraqi leadership to do what only it can do: build a democracy.

John F. Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004.

Pundits claim the Christian Right made the difference in this year's election. Really? Then why is George W. Bush bombing kids in Falluja today?

Jesus wouldn't bomb kids. We challenge experts on Christian doctrine to send us Biblical scripture showing where Jesus advocated killing kids.

Muhammad Abbud, speaking to Aljazeera, said he watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death at their Falluja home, unable to take him to hospital as fighting raged in the streets and bombs rained down on the Iraqi city.

To the point, Jesus never authorized the use of violence to settle grievances. If we are incorrect, send us passages where Jesus instructed his followers to allocate resources for weapon systems, rather than use that money to feed, clothe or assist the poor and needy.

War has been part of human society since historians have recorded history. What makes our current situation different is that we have a president in the White House who claims to be a "Born-again" Christian. George W. Bush makes it clear he is a man of principle, a man who follows his convictions rather than listening to the polls, and he told all of us he takes his directions from God.

Former president Jimmy Carter, for example, is a Baptist preacher. While he is deeply spiritual, he separated his religious life from secular role as Commander-in-Chief. Senator Kerry is a Roman Catholic, yet he believes religiousity should not be openly displayed in the White House.

We don't criticize George W. Bush for holding religious principles. We don't ridicule him for claiming to have deep convictions about the teachings of Jesus Christ. We simply challenge him now to live by his beliefs. Jesus did not kill kids. Jesus did not "flip flop" or waiver on this principle.

Mr. Bush, if you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, as you claim, then stop the murderous bombing and violence that is going on in Falluja. Jesus did not bomb kids!

We have heard numerous Republicans and their assigned pundits saying George W. Bush won a "mandate" in this election. To this additional distortion of the truth, we say, "Mandate, My Ass!"

*****
[UPDATE: 11.4.06] Two Years Ago today, about 121,480,019 voters went to the polls. The dust had not settled on the narrowest election victory by an incumbent president in the history of the country. Bush's edge was 2.5 percent, smaller even than Woodrow Wilson's pathetic 1916 victory margin of 3.2 percent, yet he claimed a mandate (which we answered at the time). We highlight some of the statements at the time...

[It] really chapped my ass when Cheney claimed a "broad nationwide victory" and a "mandate" for Bush's "clear agenda."
---From Al Franken's The Truth (with jokes)

Looking at the utter train wreck that has become Bush's second term (and "legacy"), all this just seems downright silly...

"Bush now has a mandate."
---Bill Bennett

"This time, of course, his claim of a popular mandate is incontrovertible."
---TIME magazine

"It is a mandate."
---Tucker Carlson

"He has, I would argue, a mandate now."
---Peggy Noonan

"The president's people are calling this a mandate. By any definition I think you could call this a mandate."
---NPR's Morning Edition

"He's going to say he's got a mandate from the American people, and by all accounts he does."
---Wolf Blitzer, CNN

"Mr. Bush has been given the kind of mandate that few politicians are ever fortunate enough to receive."
---The Wall Street Journal

"In one sense, we think it an even larger and clearer mandate than those won in the landslide reelection campaigns of Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984, and Clinton in 1996."
---William Kristol

"This time, Bush can claim a solid mandate of 51% of the vote..."
---Los Angeles Times

For his part, Bush displayed his trademark modesty:
Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign---political capital---and now I intend to spend it.

*****
While it is accurate that a majority of Americans cast their vote for George W. Bush on November 2nd, this was the most hotly contested election in recent memory, and Mr. Bush won re-election by the narrowest margin in history on a percentage basis. While the final tally is not yet available, Bush appears to have garnered about 51 percent of the popular vote to Senator Kerry's 48 percent.

We will not forget that the Bush administration believes they can create their own "reality." We will not surrender to the continual distortion of facts and truths. Mr. Bush, you do not have a mandate. Instead, you should look to strengthen this nation by extending an offer those who opposed you. By claiming that you have a broad mandate, additional political capital to use your term, to enforce your radically right and fundamentalist agenda, you only distance us further from each other. That is not leadership.