Debunking the Right Wings Attack on John Kerry’s Face the Nation Interview

[kerrygoddess]

Debunking the Right Wings Attacks on John Kerry’s Face the Nation Interview
December 6th, 2005

Sunday on Face the Nation, John Kerry said: “there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the–of–the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not…Iraqis should be doing that. And after all of these two and a half years, with all of the talk of 210,000 people trained, there just is no excuse for not transferring more of that authority.”

Now, as to be expected, right wingers from Newsmax.Com, the Washington Times, Swift Boat liar John O’Neill on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are twisting Kerry’s words and accusing him of saying that our troops are “terrorists.” Talk about a grandiose stretch of the word “terrorize” which Kerry used to describe the feelings that any woman or child would have under the circumstances described by Kerry.

Once again, what we are seeing here from these Swift Boat Liar enablers, is the same thing we saw during the ‘04 election cycle. Those lying, crooked SOB’s, who John Kerry predicted would say anything to destroy him in 2004, are back.

What this all boils down to in a nutshell, is John Kerry is doing what he has always done and will always do — He is speaking from the gut, speaking the truth to power on behalf of our troops, as he did in 1971 when he earned a place on Richard Nixon’s enemies list. Nothing has changed — John Kerry has spoken out time and time again against the Bush administration, earning himself a place on Bush’s enemies list. The fact is John Kerry has been every Republican president’s worst nightmare since Nixon. With Reagan it was his exposing of Iran Contra, with Bush I, it was BCCI.

Because John Kerry is not afraid to stand and speak the truth to power, the Bush administration sends our their surrogate smear mongers to do their dirty work. They can’t stand to hear the truth, they don’t want the public to know the truth, so they try to cover the truth by spreading lies and smears and take the heat off their mishandling of Iraq. But Kerry isn’t letting up - just yesterday he reiterated his call for Rumsfeld to resign. Kerry has a plan to bring the troops home in 2006 and that doesn’t work with BushCo’s plan to “stay the course.”

John Kerry does not want to see American soldiers put in needless danger on missions that are counter-productive and grow the insurgency. Instead, as he has said, “Iraqis should be police Iraqi streets, Iraqis should be searching Iraqi homes, and Iraqis should be standing up for their own country. ” That is what is in the best interests of American troops and will bring success in Iraq.

The concerns John Kerry spoke about on Sunday have been articulated by American military leaders and reported in the MSM:

MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1325

[fedupinBushcountry]

1. Excellent KG

For some reason I can't post on your site, did you change something?

[kerrygoddess]

2. What do you mean?

Did not change anything. Do you have a login? You don't actually need one. But if you are having a problem logging in I can fix it.

[TayTay]

3. Very good.

You just know the vermin have been crawling back out of the walls because the bankrupt and desperate Bushies have no other recourse. All they know how to do is crank up the smear machine and hope that damn thing works for them again.

bzzzzzzzttt. Not this time. I truly believe that this is not going to play anymore, except among the core 30-35% of the lifetime delusional.

Nice defense. This is great!

[wisteria]

4. Good!! Very forthright and on the mark. Tahnk you for posting.n/t

[WildEyedLiberal]

5. Awesome and true. Thx

[ProSense]

6. It's really hilarious

how quickly and loudly the RW noise grew after Kerry's appearance on FTN.

[karynnj]

7. I was amazed how nasty it is - I had the radio on for about

a half hour while driving to see a play. One nitwit even made the claim that Kerry smeared the SBVT, who were all good men! What's weird is that they were saying that because he lied in the 70s and lied now, he will never be trusted as a leader.

What's strange is that they played part of the tape but left out that he wanted the Iraqis to do this. But it still didn't imply what Donut eating Boy and Mehlman said.

[wisteria]

9. I caught Hannity's radio program today and it was a total

Kerry bashing with some Dean thrown in. SBV O'Neil was on with the rehash of campaign 2004 and some so called Democratic pundit that claimed that Kerry was wrong for saying what he said and that the Dem's should tone down the rhetoric and follow Bidden and Lieberman. I wish I could remember his full name- the first was Bob. I like to write him on my feeling about his non- support of Kerry.

[WildEyedLiberal]

8. And also the DU bashing...

... hmm. Correlation? :crazy:

[_dynamicdems]

10. Judging by where the attacks are coming from, both right and left

wings, I'd say it is a safe bet to say that Senator Kerry is doing something right.

Amazing how both sides have their myopic nut-balls. Contort, distort and as last resort, lie.

[karynnj]

11. It may be too early, but it looks like this is just the myopic nut-balls

I can't find any print MSM covering it. (Although during the campaign, the SBVT were out on hate radio for months before it was on cable then it spread everywhere.)

The MSM is covering Dean's "can't win" statement - which is another "nothing" story. What are we going to win? We can't even break even at this point - even if Lieberman is still sold on spreading democracy.

[Mass]

12. Please sont call them left. Most of them would not recognize their

left and their right.

They are ready to support the most conservative person if they see him as "touch-speaking". They dont care about issues. They just have named themselves political strategists and have decided that some people could win and some could not. This is all.

I have no problems with people who actually disagree with Kerry on issues, but most of the Kerry bashing on DU is not on this basis. It is all in the perceived "electability" factor (funny considering that most of them also say that Kerry won the primary because he was perceived as electable). These people are not that different from the DLC. All they worry is how things will be seen by others.

[TayTay]

13. I agree with that Mass.

It is possible to have an objection to something Sen. Kerry (or any other elected official, for that matter) has said. It would be nice to have that objection placed in terms that are better than what we normally hear on DU. Saying, 'He conceded too soon' as the answer to every single post is just dumb. (Honestly, I have to work to actually see those anymore.)

I had problems, way back in 2002 when Kerry voted for the IWR. It was one of 3 votes that I had real trouble with in the long years that Kerry has been my Senator. Ahm, he has cast thousands of votes in the Senate. Although I wish he had voted otherwise, I certainly was not going to stop supporting him based on one vote.

There is no public official that has cast votes that I have agreed with 100%, and that includes my own husband on local issues. I view people in their totality, and their votes in their totality. Any vote on IWR was more than offset by voting against DOMA or against the Flag-Burning Amendment. It took real courage to vote against those and that went into the 'totality of the votes cast,' idea that I use in figuring out who I am going to support for office.

Others in MA felt differently. They are single-issue people. Nothing else matters, just the immediacy of whatever issue motivates them. (I am not knocking this, but I don't share that sentiment when it comes to who I do or don't support for office.) DU is filled with single-issue voters. The biggest problem and advantage with forums like DU or dKos is that they respond to things on an immediate basis. The format is not really conducive to reflective postings that view things with any kind of perspective. It can drive you crazy, but there really is no way to really change this, not without destroying the forum itself. It's a sort of 'necessary evil' sigh!

[beachmom]

14. But the good thing, Tay Tay, on the IWR vote anyway, is that

Kerry has come around to your way of thinking. He says now that it was a mistake. So although you can be sore that he cast the vote at that time, you can still be heartened that JK is man enough to say when he's made a mistake and to learn from it.

I agree that voting based on one issue -- war or abortion or a particular tax cut -- is really simple minded. I would almost call such folks "swing voters" since if a right wing Republican stood up and said "Troops out of Iraq now!!", they would vote for him, even if he was planning on dismantling social security and the environment.

[Dr Ron]

15. Plus the vote didn't accurately describe his overall view on the war

"I had problems, way back in 2002 when Kerry voted for the IWR. It was one of 3 votes that I had real trouble with in the long years that Kerry has been my Senator. Ahm, he has cast thousands of votes in the Senate. Although I wish he had voted otherwise, I certainly was not going to stop supporting him based on one vote."

I also disagreed with the vote, but the real issue was going to war. If Kerry had supported going to war I would feel differently about him, but Kerry made his opposition to going to war clear. This included anti-war statements in his Senate floor statement at the time of the vote, his NY Times op-ed at the time of the vote (also published in Foreign Affairs), as well as many other statements leading up to the war.

If Dean had not turned the IWR vote into a litmus test (which he conveniently didn't have to vote in, considering his support for the Biden Lugar resolution) we would not be hearing about that one vote endlessly.