Kerry Insults Troops.

Is John Kerry the Problem...or the Iraq War?

Below is a posting of mine from The Guardian's Comment Is Free group-blog....

During the 2004 presidential race, George W. Bush had a problem. If voters viewed the election as a match-up between Bush and the Iraq war, things looked bad for the Republicans. The war wasn't going well; Bush had hyped the threat from Iraq; there were no signs of final victory, the public was justifiably unenthused by the ongoing military action.

But the Republicans won that election because the face-off was not Bush versus his unpopular war but Bush versus Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. It was far easier for the Bush campaign and its allies to pummel Kerry than to defend the no-end-in-sight war. And now the Bush White House - facing what may be a political tidal wave that washes Republicans out of control of at least one house of Congress - has reprised that act, with the media providing much-needed assistance.

As the final week of the campaign began, the Bush White House and Republican spinners were not focusing on Iraq, gay marriage or illegal immigrants. They were zeroing in on a muffed joke that Kerry had made during a campaign rally on Monday. The Massachusetts Democrat had told students that if "you study hard, do your homework and make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." "He meant to say, according to his prepared text, that if you don't work hard in school, "you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.")

The Republicans had a field day with Kerry's quip -- even if there was some truth to his actual remark. After all, US troops are "stuck" in Iraq, and many young Americans join the military because they do not have the career opportunities that would come with a better education. Still, Republicans in search of an issue attacked Kerry, claiming he had suggested US soldiers were dumb, and they demanded an apology, which Kerry, who is not up for reelection this year, eventually provided (after canceling several campaign appearances with Democratic congressional candidates).

What was absurd about this chapter was that Kerry's comment drew more media attention than a New York Times story that disclosed an October 18 classified briefing of the US Central Command reporting that Iraq was edging toward "chaos."

A week after that briefing, Bush had declared publicly that the United States was "winning" in Iraq. This revelation -- and the contradiction between Bush's rosy statement and Central Command's pessimistic view -- should have been driving the news. Yet Tony Snow, Bush's press secretary, spent far more time at the White House daily briefing, assailing Kerry than responding to questions about the bad-news briefing.

And when Vice President Dick Cheney appeared at a Wednesday campaign rally for Senator Conrad Burns -- an endangered Montana Republican linked to convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- he did not feel compelled to address the Times story. Instead, Cheney's brief remarks about the Iraq war focused mainly on Kerry's comment. He used Kerry's misdelivered joke to attack all Democrats for wanting to leave Iraq "before the job is done" and thus validating the "al Qaeda strategy."

For two days, the Kerry matter dominated cable news coverage of the elections. On Thursday, it was the lead story in The Washington Post. That edition of the Post had nothing on the front page about what was happening with the actual war in Iraq.
Republicans have little to say about Bush's policy in Iraq, for there is little to the policy. Bush's attempt last week to assuage public concern by announcing there will be "benchmarks" in Iraq fell flat, for the White House could not define the benchmarks and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki immediately dismissed the notion of creating hard-and-fast markers. Days later, Maliki even assailed US military efforts to set up security checkpoints in a Shiite stronghold in Baghdad. So when it comes to Iraq, Republican candidates are left mainly with rhetoric, certainly not results.

Meanwhile, Republicans are buckling under the weight of serial scandals -- beyond the congressional page affair. A Republican congressman running for governor in Nevada (Jim Gibbons) was accused by a cocktail waitress of assaulting her. A Republican congressman running for reelection in upstate New York (John Sweeney) has had to answer questions about a leaked police report alleging he beat up his wife. (He claims the report is a fake.) A Republican congresswoman running for reelection in Wyoming (Barbara Cubin) told an opponent with multiple sclerosis who is in a wheelchair that she wanted to slap him. And campaign aides to Republican Senator George Allen - who has imperiled his own election by using a racist term and engaging in other bone-headed moves -- tackled and punched a blogger who had asked Allen an indelicate question about his first marriage. (The divorce records are sealed.)

Generalizing about congressional elections is a risky enterprise. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that with the war in Iraq and these less weighty episodes, the wheels have popped off the Republican bandwagon. It may be that Karl Rove and other Republican strategists are able to beat back the tide-just barely. But it's unlikely that the GOP attacks on Kerry will make the difference. If anything, this assault only filled up time for a few days and allowed Republicans to feel like they were back in the good ol' days of 2004. But nostalgia, they should keep in mind, is usually a short-lived phenomenon.

http://www.davidcorn.com/

 

Z,

A lot of what you talk about is just plain politics. Do you really expect the Republicans to ignore Kerry's comment? Look what the Dems did with Foley. When your opponent gives you an opening like that, you'd better take advantage of it. If they can't take it, don't dish it out.

Kerry comes across as arrogant. Hell, even the CNN couldn't ignore this story.

 

Like Cheney said, Kerry was for the joke before he was against it.

 

LOL...

And he complains about Bush apologists

 

Bush botched three wars, Katrina Response, the hunt for Osama, border security, port security and quite a few other things. Do you still not understand why he complains about Bush apologists?

 

How many funerals of Soldiers KIA in Iraq or Afghanistan has Bush attended?

How many war widows has he visited?

AAA should know.

 

The problem isn't the mental midget. The problem is America is over run by hypocritical sickos like harakiri and putz. They are the result of rampant inbreeding resulting is genetically inferior species incapable of original thought!

Add to their genetic inferiority a explosive violent religion like American southern evangelicalism and corrupt leaders have something to work with to get selected.

 

Talking about SICKOS

Do a Google search on "Haggard + Bush" and you'll see the Harper's article, "Soldiers of Christ."

Here are a few passages from that article:

<<< Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation's most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life's “free market” approach to the divine. >>>

<<< The press tends to regard Dobson as the most powerful evangelical Christian in America, but Pastor Ted is at least his equal. Whereas Dobson plays the part of national scold, promising to destroy politicians who defy the Bible, Pastor Ted quietly guides those politicians through the ritual of acquiescence required to save face. He doesn't strut, like Dobson; he gushes. When Bush invited him to the Oval Office to discuss policy with seven other chieftains of the Christian right in late 2003, Pastor Ted regaled his whole congregation with the story via email. “Well, on Monday I was in the World Prayer Center”—New Life's high-tech, twenty-four-hour-a-day prayer chapel —“and my cell phone rang.” It was a presidential aide; “the President,” says Pastor Ted, wanted him on hand for the signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Pastor Ted was on a plane the next morning and in the President's office the following afternoon. “It was incredible,” wrote Pastor Ted. He left it to the press to note that Dobson wasn't there.

No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life. >>>

<<< Pastor Ted is aware that his martial plans alarm some outsiders; in Primary Purpose he writes that when he began his campaign for Colorado Springs, “spiritual warfare was not a popular subject. . . . I didn't speak publicly about my own experiences.” Even today, in his more mainstream position atop the NAE, Ted's belief in less than full disclosure persists. Last fall, when the evangelical journalist Ayelish McGarvey asked Pastor Ted why President Bush, as a Christian, had not apologized for the false assertions used to justify the Iraq war, or for the dishonest smears marshaled on his campaign's behalf, Ted said: “I think if you asked the President these questions once he's out of office, he'd say, ‘You're right. We shouldn't have done it.’ But right now if he said something like that, well, the world would spin out of control! . . . Listen, I think [we Christian believers] are responsible not to lie, but I don't think we're responsible to say everything we know.” >>>

 

though it might be that some prefer not to lose
another son or daughter, which is not really what
bush stands for, right?