The Patriot Post® · Bush lied? Actually NOT!
At least, that has been John Kerry’s most oft-repeated assertion for the last six months.
It is no coincidence that Kerry would use such a claim as the foundation of his campaign rhetoric. In fact, it is enlightening. You see, campaign hacks for a challenger use focus groups to determine their candidate’s most distinguished flaw, and then tutor their candidate on how to cast the incumbent with a greater measure of that flaw. Clearly, John Kerry’s most apparent liabilities are his lack of integrity and lack of fitness for command – and there is plenty of evidence for both deficiencies.
Kerry insists, “I’ve never, ever used the harshest word [‘lie’].” But of course, that is a lie. Preceding that remark, he said, “This administration has lied to us. They have misled us.” After it, he said, “[Bush] failed to tell you the truth. … I believe that it is important to tell the truth to the American people.”
A charter member of Kerry’s Leftist cadre, Al Franken, wrote a book a few years back entitled, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.” Apparently, Kerry adopted it as his campaign playbook. While the “F” in JFK may stand for “fib,” “fabrication,” “falsehood,” “fallacy,” “feint,” “forgery,” “fake,” “fraud” and, phonetically speaking, “phony,” it also stands for “flip-flop.” Kerry’s strategy to paint President George W. Bush as a liar is subterfuge to divert attention from Kerry’s own extensive record of fibs and flips. As readers of this column well know, Kerry has been on both sides of just about every issue – which is to say, he has lied to just about everyone at one time or another.
In this, the last Patriot essay before Election Day, 2004, it is worth reviewing a few of Kerry’s lies – in his own words. We don’t have sufficient bandwidth to publish all of them, but those that follow are both representative, and typically transparent, of Kerry’s mendacity.
Who can forget these memorable recollections from Kerry’s “heroics” in Vietnam: “I remember spending Christmas Day of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border. I have that memory which is seared – seared – in me. … [American military personnel in Vietnam] personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, [blew] up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to…the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. … There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed….”
He is still trying to make amends for those lies: “When it comes to war and peace, I will tell the truth to the American people…. For 35 years I have stood up, and fought, and kept faith with my fellow veterans. [Bush has] not kept faith with veterans across this country. And one of the first definitions of patriotism is keeping faith with those who wore the uniform of our country.”
On the economy, Kerry lies: “Now, the president has presided over an economy where we’ve lost 1.6 million jobs. The first president in 72 years to lose jobs. … This is the worst economy since Herbert Hoover. … This president chose a tax cut over homeland security. … We didn’t need that tax cut. … I’m fighting for the middle class.”
On social issues, Kerry lies: “They are going to privatize your Social Security. … They’re taking money from Social Security and transferring it to the wealthiest people in America to drive us into debt. … I believe it’s time to stop viewing innovative approaches as anomalies or threats to traditional public schools and begin seeing them as part of the future of public education. … Public schools need resources and support, and vouchers drain them of both. … I oppose abortion, personally. I don’t like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception. … I have a plan to cover all [make that 25 of 45 million uninsured] Americans. … I am not proposing a government-run [healthcare] program. It is not a government takeover. The government has nothing to do with it.”
On the most important issue of the day, our worldwide war against Jihadi terrorists, and particularly the Jihadi warfront in Iraq, Kerry lies: “We were safer before President Bush came to office. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them. … I sat with the French and British, Germans, with the entire Security Council. … I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. … America must fight and win two wars. The war in Iraq and the war on terror. … President Bush likes to confuse the two. … In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war [on terror] and the battle against the enemy. … I can do a better job of protecting America’s security because the [global] test that I was talking about was a test of legitimacy, not just in the globe, but elsewhere. … If George Bush were to be re-elected … there is great potential [that he would re-instate the draft].”
And there’s much more from Kerry on the war: “Osama bin Laden escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn’t use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords. … We are 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq. … The war costs – $200 billion. And it’s in Iraq. And Iraq is not even the center of the focus on the war on terror. I don’t think any United States Senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That’s irresponsible. … My position on Iraq has been consistent. … I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it…. That’s not a flip-flop. That’s not a flip-flop. … I have no intention of wilting. I’ve never wilted in my life. And I’ve never wavered in my life. … Let me tell you straight up: I’ve never changed my mind about Iraq.”
On the flip-side, Kerry has said of the war in Iraq: “Saddam Hussein has used weapons of mass destruction against his own people…. I think we ought to put the heat on Saddam Hussein. I’ve said that for a number of years. I criticized the Clinton administration for backing off…. I think we need to put the pressure on, no matter what the evidence is about September 11. … I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally. This doesn’t end with Afghanistan by any imagination. And I think the president has made that clear. I think we have made that clear. Terrorism is a global menace. It’s a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue, for instance, Saddam Hussein. I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq. … Saddam Hussein is a renegade and outlaw who turned his back on the tough conditions of his surrender put in place by the United Nations in 1991. … If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community’s already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement…even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act. … The president always reserves the right to act unilaterally to protect the interests of our country. … I do not regret my vote [in support of the Iraq war]. … I think it was the right vote based on what Saddam Hussein had done, and I think it was the right thing to do to hold him accountable. [My position] can’t be clearer.”
And Kerry’s lies keep piling up.
In old news that was slated to be recycled by CBS talkinghead Dan Rather this Sunday (leaving too little time to debunk it), the latest, and perhaps last Kerry prevarication of this campaign (concerning some quantity of HMX and RDX explosives missing at al-Qa Qaa weapons installation south of Baghdad) was printed by The New York Times ahead of schedule. “Our plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn’t hold,” said Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday “60 Minutes” said.
(Memo to CBS News President Andrew Heyward: Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?)
And speaking of decency – or the egregious lack thereof – Kerry was quick to spin the “story,” blaming our military forces in Iraq, and their commander in chief, with dereliction of duty. Of the latter, Kerry said: “Now we know that our country and our troops are less safe because this president failed to do the basics. This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration. The incredible incompetence of this president and his administration has put our troops at risk and put our country at greater risk than we ought to be. After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this administration failed to guard those stockpiles – where nearly 377 tons of highly explosive weapons were kept. The missing explosives could very likely be in the hands of terrorists and insurgents, who are actually attacking our forces now 80 times a day on average.”
Unfortunately for Kerry, et al., it only took a few hours to debunk this feeble crack at an October surprise.
As The Patriot previously noted in October, 2002, our well-placed sources in the region, and intelligence sources with the NSA and NRO, estimated that the UN Security Council’s foot-dragging provided a large window for Saddam to export some or all of his deadliest WMD materials and components. At that time, we reported Allied Forces would be unlikely to discover Iraq’s WMD stores, noting, “Our sources estimate that Saddam shipped Iraq’s chemical, biological (weapons-grade anthrax) and nuclear WMD stores and components to Syria and into Lebanon’s heavily fortified Bekaa Valley, for points beyond.” In December of 2002, our senior-level intelligence sources re-confirmed estimates that some of Iraq’s biological and nuclear WMD material and components had, in fact, been moved into Syria and Iran. That movement continued until President Bush finally pulled the plug on the UN’s ruse.
Indeed, Kerry and his Leftmedia minions have it all wrong – again. The NRO released photos of heavy trucks loading materials from the bunker in question at al-Qa Qaa Explosive Storage Complex on 17 March 2003, three days prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And Kerry and company may have gotten additional facts all wrong. U.S. forces did find conventional weapons in the bunker in question but did not find what the UN’s IAEA estimated to be three tons of HMX and RDX – not 377 tons as claimed by Kerry.
Of course, 6,000 pounds of HMX and RDX is significant – it only took one pound of this substance in the hands of Libyan agents to bring down PanAm 103 in 1988. Of course, we all know by now how accurate these weapons estimates have been – and the UN was one step removed from the best intelligence available.
President Bush responded to Kerry’s allegations, “Now the Senator is making wild charges about missing explosives, when his top foreign-policy adviser admits, quote, ‘We do not know the facts.’ Think about that: The senator is denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts….”
Which brings us to the greatest of Kerry’s lies this campaign season: “It is vital for us not to confuse the war, ever, with the warriors. That happened before.”
Indeed, it did happen before – Vietnam. Swift Boat Vet Robert Elder notes, “It is a fact that in the entire Vietnam War we did not lose one major battle. We lost the war at home, and at home John Kerry was the field general.” (Kerry’s extensive and well-documented record of anti-American activities over the past three decades are covered in “Aid and comfort to the enemy: The Kerry record…” and “John Kerry: More aid and comfort…” at http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2004/10/08/john-kerry-more-aid-and-comfort/)
Again, as President Bush noted, Kerry is “denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts….”
Kerry can’t have it both ways. There is a direct correlation between his undermining of U.S. and Allied resolve in the war against terrorism – specifically on the Iraqi warfront with Jihadistan – and American and Allied causalities on that front. Those forces, including countless Iraqis, are being injured and killed in larger numbers because of the political dissent Kerry and his ilk are fomenting.
A few weeks ago, John Edwards unwittingly provided the evidence for this very correlation: “We lost more troops in September than we lost in August; lost more in August than we lost in July; lost more in July than we lost in June.”
As Kerry’s use of the war for political fodder has increased in tenor, so too has the spirit of our Jihadi enemies. As noted recently by Mohammad Amin Bashar, a professor at Baghdad’s Islamic University, “If the U.S. Army suffered numerous humiliating losses, Kerry would emerge as the superman of the American people.” Abu Jalal, an Iraqi resistance leader, added, “American elections and Iraq are linked tightly together. We’ve got to work to change the election, and we’ve done so. With our strikes, we’ve dragged Bush into the mud.”
The net effect can certainly be felt in terms of increased numbers of American and Allied casualties. Those casualties equal more votes for John Kerry. This was, and remains, the unavoidable consequence of Kerry’s reckless campaign rhetoric. The blood of those American Patriots (like the blood of his “brothers” in Vietnam, after he used that war as fodder for his 1972 congressional campaign), is on John Kerry’s hands. To be sure, this is the harshest of all condemnations. But it is also the truth.
Both Kerry and Edwards know the consequences of their actions. Fact is, they think the lives of American military personnel on the warfront with Jihadistan are second-rate to their political ambitions. He should be held accountable.
As for Kerry’s lie: “I’ve met with foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly. But, boy, they look at you and say: ‘You’ve got to win this. You’ve got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.’ Things like that.”
Indeed, Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il, Mohammad Khatami, Moammar al-Ghadafi, Hu Jingtao, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder and Kofi Annan are all rooting for John Kerry to beat George W. Bush on Tuesday. What does that tell you, fellow Patriots?
A vote for John Kerry is a vote for a lie – a fraud. It is a vote against liberty and freedom. But if the Democrat Party has been fully co-opted by Kerry’s deceit, that assertion may be purely academic.
We agree with President Bush: “John Kerry is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time.”
And a final note. Election seasons are always hard on The Patriot’s editorial staff and contributors – we are doing double time, covering both the news, policy and opinion outlets we always cover, plus all the election news. But one feature section, “The BIG Lie,” has been easy to fill every week since John Kerry won the Democrat primaries last March. The challenge with that section has been choosing which of Kerry’s comments in any given week constitute the BIGGEST lie!
On that note, a word from the wise Mr. Kerry: “It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition.” –Thomas Jefferson
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