Monday, September 20, 2004

Kerry doesn't understand the war

from yahoo

Kerry said Monday, "Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is no because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe."

Kerry ignores the pre-war debate about attacking a country before it was an imminent threat. He also fails to acknowledge the evidence that Saddam had ties to al Qaeda (I realize that others on this blog don’t believe any Iraq/al Qaeda links. Too bad that you don’t consider very real circumstantial evidence in such a link to be as credible as fake memos and ax grinding charges from Bill Burkett towards our president).

He said Bush's invasion of Iraq has created a crisis that could lead to unending war and raises questions about whether Bush's judgment is up to presidential standards. He offered his own four-point plan starting with pressing other nations for help.
_ Get more help from other nations.
_ Provide better training for Iraqi security forces.
_ Provide benefits to the Iraqi people.
_ Ensure that democratic elections can be held next year as promised.


? Wow! Kerry is sooo creative!

"By one count, the president offered 23 different rationales for this war," Kerry said. "If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded."

I haven’t counted the reasons, myself, but I know there were more than one. And each one, including WMDs, holds up.

Kerry said Bush's two main rationales — weapons of mass destruction and a connection between al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 attacks — have been proven false by weapons inspectors and the bipartisan commission investigating the attacks.

Again, the deliberate blurring of al Qaeda and 9/11. (Note: even a Saddam-9/11 link hasn’t been proven false. Kerry should know that.)

Conclusion: Not only is the Bush/Cheney ticket the only sane one on the ballot, but I believe Bush is the only elected official in DC that is as patient as the terrorists.

2 comments:

Steve said...

And therein lies the crux, Jeff.

Circumstantial Evidence.
AS it stands, it means that it is information in a certain instance that may be applicable to prove an argument. In short - the "WMD argument"'s (since proven false) validity was suspect from the outset as it was only offered as support for the rationale for war.

There has been nothing that has been presented to the mainstream media that bolsters the circumstantial evidence so far officially put forward by the administration into the realm of hard evidence.

It all comes down to a case of "Because we said so."

AS far as fake memos and axe-grinding...
Hello pot, this is kettle.
Swift Boat Veterans from Bush...er "for Truth" anyone? Lotta credible "evidence" there.
Oooh - well, they're a 527! Therefore totally separate from the Bush campaign!Just concerned citizens, the lot of them! Nevermind the Lawyer and Veteran's affairs advisors from the Bush Campaign! They were just dropping in for a social call... and, um inadvertantly wound up on the rosters! Whoops!

At least Rather and CBS made an effort to verify the veracity of their "faked" memos.
Meanwhile, we're supposed to take the word of the administration that he "fulfilled" his duties. Seems to me if they weren't hiding something, they'd cough up the documents.
And he's not my president. Last time I looked, this country's president was elected and not appointed.

Like I said previously... Answer the questions.

Conclusion: When Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, Ambivalence, Lying and Obfuscation are used by Bush/Cheney it's the right, moral, sane thing to do for the protection of the country.

Jeffrey Hill said...

Gosh, Steve, how far can two people be on the political scale? Oh well, as long as there is good sport in it…
Much of the evidence regarding Iraq and al Qaeda provided in Stephen Hayes piece has been mentioned by the White House, though I’d admit that they haven’t driven the point home as well as they should have.
I must object to your pot and kettle comment.
On one hand, you have the troubled comments of Bill Burkett, long time Bush hater who recently acknowledged deceiving CBS with the four memos. I don’t know about you, but when I lied to my parents, it took a long time to regain their trust. And there’s Killian’s now 86 year-old secretary who denied typing the forged memos, but insisted that they represented the way Killian felt towards Bush. If the case against Bush was so strong, why resort to passing on phony documents?
And to suggest that Dan Rather ‘made an effort to verify the veracity of the “faked” memos’ is absolutely laughable. It took the blogosphere less than an hour to destroy those memos, but Rather stiff-armed any whiff of wrongdoing for a week and a half. It wasn’t until it became very clear that he was hemorrhaging credibility and ratings, that he was forced to grudgingly admit that CBS could not verify the authenticity of the documents. In fact, as of Monday night, after his lip-surface apology, Rather has still not said that the documents were forged. His irresponsible behavior hurts all of CBS and does damage to mainstream media.
On the other hand you have the majority of Swiftboat officers (all Republicans?) and so many others with testimony that has by and large stood up to scrutiny. Granted, there are inconsistencies. But no matter how many times you tell yourself it’s all an absolute lie, it does not make it so. When a relative of mine got hit by a car, there were about as many descriptions of the car as there were witnesses. The fact that the Swiftboat vets’ testimonies are as consistent as they are is pretty remarkable considering it was 35 years ago. Of the charges, the Kerry camp (not Kerry personally, notice) has had to back away from claims regarding the 1st purple heart and “Christmas in Cambodia”. In fact, any Cambodia visits at all are doubtful, though that’s still the Kerry campaign line. Why haven’t the small majority of fellow Swifties that support Kerry come out an say ‘yes, Kerry did go to Cambodia’? The Kerry attitude has been that any fellow vet that doesn’t support him is part of Bush’s smear campaign. I don’t buy that.
Sure, it helps Bush. Sure, there were the two ties that you had mentioned. To listen to you, one would think that it was unethical for a lawyer to have more than one client. I’m still not convinced that Bush had anything to do with the Swiftboat vets. And if he did, he did it smart. Notice how Edwards and the DNC got hip dip in the memo affair. What happens when real diplomacy calls for real dirty work? I prefer a president that can stay ahead of the game.