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Associated Press reports that Kerry made this statement to voters in Ohio this week:
“I’ll tell you this—if you’ll trust me with the presidency of the United States, I will pursue a policy that I know can get our troops down in number, *reduced, out of Iraq*. We can change the entire dynamics of what is happening there.”
So Kerry plans to emulate Spain, which cut and ran, pulling it’s troops out of Iraq, acting in fear of terrorists. This is yet another blatant case of Kerry claiming different things to different people. Kerry has no plans to keep us safe from terrorists. His plan is to give the terrorists just what they want.
ScrappleFace suggests this follow-up to tonight’s broadcast.
*Koppel to Read Names of Saddam’s Victims*
(2004-04-30)—ABC-TV journalist Ted Koppel, who caused a firestorm of controversy with his plan to read the names of U.S. troops killed in Iraq, today announced that in the interest of balance and fairness next week he will read another list on his show, Nightline.
“I would never want anyone to accuse me of bias. After all, I’m a journalist, devoted to accurately portraying world events,” said Mr. Koppel. “So, next week I will read the list of Iraqis who were raped, tortured and killed by Saddam Hussein’s regime after President George H.W. Bush declared victory in the Gulf War on February 28, 1991.”
Mr. Koppel said next week’s Nightline will be a “special extended episode starting Friday and running non-stop until the day I retire from ABC.”
This sounds like more comedy, but it’s real:
After almost two and a half decades anchoring ABC News’ “Nightline,” Ted Koppel says he is surprised that anyone could think that his special “The Fallen,” scheduled to air Friday night, is a ratings ploy or an attempt to make a political statement.
Yeah, right! That’s hilarious. Can he even say that with a straight face?
Reminds of a famous line from the movies: “I’m shocked—shocked!—to find out that gambling is going on here!”
There are those on the Left who claim Bush’s actions in Iraq and elsewhere have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The facts prove that Bush’s actions, including the Bush Doctriine of attacking nations such as Iraq that harbor terrorists, are working.
Patterns of Global Terrorism -2003
Released by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism
April 29, 2004The Year in Review
There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight decrease from the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, and a drop of 45 percent from the level in 2001 of 346 attacks. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969.
A total of 307 persons were killed in the attacks of 2003, far fewer than the 725 killed during 2002. A total of 1,593 persons were wounded in the attacks that occurred in 2003, down from 2,013 persons wounded the year before.
In 2003, the highest number of attacks (70) and the highest casualty count (159 persons dead and 951 wounded) occurred in Asia.
There were 82 anti-US attacks in 2003, which is up slightly from the 77 attacks the previous year, and represents a 62-percent decrease from the 219 attacks recorded in 2001.
The lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969.
In Iraq, Bush has taken the fight to the terrorists’ own back yard. They are occupied there fighting our army, desperate to keep Democracy out of the Mid-East.
It’s working. We must stay the course.
I just got back from a Party for President Bush. Have you heard about these yet? It’s very cool. There’s an official campaign web site to support them here. You can go to that link and enter your zip code, and it’ll show you a list of people who are having these parties near you. If you want to host one yourself, the site helps you send out invitations to people.
This one was hosted by Sally (thanks Sal!). And it must be like what politicians see every day: good people from all kinds of different walks of life, brought together by things they have in common. I had a lot of great conversations. Chic was there with his wife Sunshine. Chic’s from Oklahoma. He told me that what the media reports in Oklahoma is 100% different from what the media reports in L.A. They report a much more balanced picture of what’s really going on. I was really surprised to hear that. I turned Chic on to Instapundit, LGF, and Patterico. Sally’s husband Armin was there and he mentioned Roger L. Simon’s site too.
I also had a great conversation with a Minister, James Peyton. We got a little off the subject and talked about the movie THE PASSION OF CHRIST. James told me that in the Christian tradition, Christians believe that they personally killed Christ, and he willingly died for them. And I said, “Oh, that’s why Mel dramatized the complicity of the public in the death of Christ—to make a point of that. Not to make a comment about the Jews.” James said, that’s right—in those days everybody was Jewish. It wasn’t about the Jews, it was about the people, it was about all of us.
I said we’re really blessed in this country to have the Judeo-Christian tradition of wanting to love each other and help each other have better lives and to enjoy life and be good to each other. As opposed to the tradition of some Islamo-fascist localities where they do the reverse—sending their own children off to be blown up.
Everybody got to introduce themselves and say a few words, so I made a short speech about what’s going on in the blogosphere. It’s amazing, but it seems like most people don’t even know about all this yet. I told everyone about Instapundit as a great place to start.
Chic said that his boss at work is a Democrat, but even he (the boss) is saying that Kerry is a nut and can’t be supported. That’s another sign that things may be going in the right direction for this Presidential election.
Back on March 17 I posted that “Kerry’s Gonna Get Hammered in the Election.” But I had no idea things were so going so badly for him already that the Village Voice would print this:
John Kerry Must Go
Note to Democrats: it’s not too late to draft someone—anyone—else
With the air gushing out of John Kerry’s balloon, it may be only a matter of time until political insiders in Washington face the dread reality that the junior senator from Massachusetts doesn’t have what it takes to win and has got to go. As arrogant and out of it as the Democratic political establishment is, even these pols know the party’s got to have someone to run against George Bush. They can’t exactly expect the president to self-destruct into thin air.
With growing issues over his wealth (which makes fellow plutocrat Bush seem a charity case by comparison), the miasma over his medals and ribbons (or ribbons and medals), his uninspiring record in the Senate (yes war, no war), and wishy-washy efforts to mimic Bill Clinton’s triangulation gimmickry (the protractor factor), Kerry sinks day by day. The pros all know that the candidate who starts each morning by having to explain himself is a goner.
Is it possible that Kerry won’t even secure the Democratic nomination?
From This is London:
‘Year of attacks on US’One of the most senior figures in the al Qa’eda terror group has pledged that 2004 will be a year of attacks on America.
The comments appeared in a voice recording on the Dirasat Islamist Website and are believed to have come from Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin.
The tape also warns that that Saudi Arabian rulers will be unable to prevent further attacks.
“The Jews, the Americans and crusaders in general will remain the targets of our coming attacks and this year, God willing, will be fiercer and harsher for them” the tape said.
Yet in the Iowa debates, Kerry takes this position on how to combat terrorism:
The war on terror is less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement operation. And we deserve presidential leadership that knows that and knows how to make America safer, and I will do that.
Al Qaeda’s trying to nuke us, and Kerry wants to use law-enforcement officials to go after them. Our law-enforcement officials have plenty to do here at home. If a hostile nation harbors terrorists and doesn’t permit our law-enforcement people to go after them? If Kerry’s President, that’s game over for us. That stymies Kerry. He has to go to the U.N. to beg them to defend us in a case like that.
For more, see this Winds of Change post on the subject.
Winds of Change has an excellent post today:
A Question For The Doves
OK, here’s a question for all of you who think that it’s the hawks who are moonbats (and I know you’re out there). It stems in part from Henley’s post, as well as much of what I’ve read from people who want to be ‘aggressively chasing terrorists’ while not invading countries.
How – exactly – does that work?
He continues in this comment:
...what does hunting [terrorists] down look like?? I can tell you what deer hunting looks like, I can tell you how police identify and arrest gang members here in Los Angeles. But I can’t figure out how we manage to hunt people down in countries that don’t want us to.
On Good Morning America today, Kerry responded:
GIBSON: 1984, senator, to the present. you have said a number of times, as brian pointed out as recently as friday with the “”los angeles times,”” have you said a number of times that you did not throw away the vietnam medals themselves. but now this interview from 1971 shows up the in which you say that was the medals themselves that were thrown away.KERRY: no, i don’t.
GIBSON: can you explain?
KERRY: absolutely. that’s absolutely incorrect. ...i stood up in front of the country, reached into my shirt, visibly for the nation to see, and took the ribbons off my chest, said a few words and threw them over the fence.
...GIBSON: senator, i was there 33 years ago and i saw you throw medals over the fence and we didn’t find out until later –
KERRY: no, you didn’t see me throw th. charlie, charlie, you are wrong. that’s not what happened. i threw my ribbons across.
...GIBSON: the military makes no distinction between ribbons and medals but you are the one who made the distinction. in 1984—
KERRY: no . we made no distinction back then, charlie. we made no distinction.
...GIBSON: you called them and you made the distinction and said i didn’t throw my medals away. i just threw the ribbons away. you made the distinction.
KERRY: ...i took my ribbons off my chest just as other veterans did.
...GIBSON: when trying to appeal to the anti-war people in 1971, you said as in that interview, it was the medals and then when the people who supported the war were giving you political problems, you then said i didn’t throw the medals away 13 years later.
KERRY: that’s the most—with all due respect, that’s the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard. because i stood up in front of the country, in front of cameras, a reporter of the “”boston globe”” got it correct . he wrote about the medals but knew they were my ribbons.
Okay, so to summarize, he didn’t throw medals, he threw ribbons, which was the same as medals at the time, but is a totally different thing from medals today, such that at the time he could say he was throwing medals, and today, he can deny throwing medals.
It reminds me of Clinton’s statement questioning what the definition of the word “is” is. Kerry is saying that the word “medals” referred to ribbons when he wanted it to refer to ribbons, and that it no longer refers to ribbons now that he doesn’t want it to refer to ribbons.
Read the whole thing. You can see this nonsense is even making Kerry uncomfortable. It reminds of me of the speech made by Peter Lorre in THE MALTESE FALCON about the cover story Sam Spade had given him to tell to the police. I recall the speech as being something along these lines: “I wish you had told them something more reasonable. I felt distinctly ridiculous repeating it all night.”
If Bush says something he actually believes, namely that Hussein has WMD (statements also made by leading Democrats and many other nations at the time), and then turns out later to have possibly been incorrect, the Left terms that a “lie.” What is the Left going to do about ABCNEWS.com” href=”http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Politics/Investigation/kerry_vietnam_medals_040425.html”>this ?
Contradicting his statements as a candidate for president, Sen. John Kerry claimed in a 1971 television interview that he threw away as many as nine of his combat medals to protest the war in Vietnam.“I gave back, I can’t remember, 6, 7, 8, 9 medals,” Kerry said in an interview on a Washington, D.C. news program on WRC-TV’s called Viewpoints on November 6, 1971, according to a tape obtained by ABCNEWS.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Kerry has denied that he threw away any of his 11 medals during an anti-war protest in April, 1971.
His campaign Web site calls it a “right wing fiction” and a smear. And in an interview with ABCNEWS’ Peter Jennings last December, he said it was a “myth.”
But Kerry told a much different story on Viewpoints. Asked about the anti-war veterans who threw their medals away, Kerry said “they decided to give them back to their country.”
Kerry was asked if he gave back the Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for combat duty as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam. “Well, and above that, [I] gave back the others,” he said.
The statement directly contradicts Kerry’s most recent claims on the disputed subject to the Los Angeles Times last Friday.
That’s what a actual lie looks like.
I heard recently that Bush has a very poor record on the environment, and in fact has been very bad for the environment. I hadn’t been following this issue, and I was concerned to hear this.
Larry Elder has an interview about this subject. The interview is with Dr. S. Fred Singer. Dr. Singer is a scientist, specifically an atmospheric physicist. He is also the author of books such as “Global Climate Change,” “The Greenhouse Debate Continued,” and “Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate.”
Has the Bush administration trashed the environment?
On the eve of “Earth Day,” the Bush administration stands accused of trashing the nation’s environment. The New York Times similarly indicted the administration in its recent Sunday magazine cover story: “Changing the Rules How the Bush Administration Quietly and Radically Transformed the Nation’s Clean-Air Policy.”
...Larry Elder: John Kerry said that Bush has the worst environmental record in recent history, or in modern history. What’s your reaction to that?
S. Fred Singer: That’s just political hogwash. We have data that the environment is getting better. I mean, I don’t really think it’s because of Bush, but the Environmental Protection Agency has been continually enforcing standards, both on air and water pollution, and as a result, air and water are getting cleaner every year.
Elder: Has Bush quietly and radically transformed the nation’s clean-air policy? And, if so, is that a bad thing?
Singer: I don’t think there has been any such transformation. In fact, since Bush came to the White House, he’s announced a policy to control mercury emissions from power plants, which is something that had not been done previously, and I think he is going to enforce that. So I don’t see why the New York Times complains, but I suppose this is an election year and complaints of this sort are in order.
Elder: Bush has been criticized for, as the Los Angeles Times put it, “turn[ing] his back on [the] global warming treaty.” Remember the global-warming treaty? Congress unanimously passed a resolution saying that if Al Gore goes over to Japan and negotiates a global-warming treaty that excludes Third World countries, it is going to be dead on arrival. John Kerry is one of those who voted for that resolution, saying that we’re not going to ratify it if it excludes Third World countries. It does exclude Third World countries.
Singer: That’ll be a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate.
...Elder: This is a political question, and you may not want to answer it. Why do you suppose the Republicans have such a black eye about the environment?
Singer: I think it has to do with the fact that the green organizations tend to be oriented toward the Democratic Party. It’s as simple as that. It’s been this way now for many, many years. They have been strong supporters of Al Gore, and they simply haven’t forgiven George Bush for beating Al Gore.
Read the whole thing. The interview also goes into the environmental legislation currently before Congress.
It’s not like they’re just running a boring radio show, although they are doing that.
So at 6 a.m. on Good Friday the first anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, the day after Condoleezza Rice testified before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks I tuned in to 1580, turned on my computer to take notes and sat with both until 11 p.m.It may have been the most boring day of my life.
My fellow liberals have long argued that they haven’t been able to match the conservative success on talk radio because the medium is ideally suited to conservatives. According to this self-serving argument, conservatives are more willing than liberals to engage in nasty name-calling and to see everything in black and white, while liberals concerned with nuance and complexity are inevitably reasonable, willing to consider both sides of an issue. But President W’s policies especially in Iraq have now so enraged liberals that they are willing to play dirty too. Hence, Air America.
Not.
It’s that they can’t even manage the bare minimum business relationships necessary to keep it on the air.
The Liberals cannot stop telling us how smart they are, and how much better they know how to do everything than Bush does. They’re full of clever quips and satirical insults for those who disagree with them.
But when it comes to actually accomplishing something in the real world, they come up short. The real world is so different from their ivory-tower notions of it, that they can’t even manage the bare minimum business necessities required to keep a radio show on the air.
Liberal talk radio must find new Los Angeles, Chicago stations
It was on, then it was off, then it was on again, and now it will be off again.
Al Franken and the gang at Air America Radio, the recently launched liberal talk-radio network that became embroiled last week in a financial dispute with the owner of its Chicago and Los Angeles stations, will broadcast over WNTD-950 AM in Chicago for the last time on April 30, the CHICAGO TRIBUNE is reporting in fresh runs.
...Air America must seek new homes in the nation’s second and third-largest markets less than three weeks into its short life.”
They can’t run a radio show—but they want to tell everybody how to run the country.
Check, please.
An opinion piece appears in today’s LA TIMES by Mansoor Ijaz, chairman of a New York-based private equity investment firm:
In the United States, Muslim citizens who want to help rid their communities of extremist elements are afraid and increasingly angry. Those who venture into the nearest Federal Bureau of Investigation office to offer a helping hand are often met with suspicion about their motives. Also, their communities often brand them “Uncle Abdullahs” for betraying the Muslim cause.
It sounds as though he’s saying that Muslim communities in America consider it a betrayal of the Muslim cause, to want to help rid those communities of extremist elements.
I really hope I’m reading too much into it.
Ijaz does seem to be on the right side of things. He concludes:
Islam’s lunatic fringe, embodied by Al Qaeda’s message of hate and fear, has never respected state boundaries or the duties imposed by citizenship in free and democratic societies. It is time for European and American political leaders to redress this disconcerting trend by inspiring their Muslim citizens to join the fight against terror and extremism before more of our youth fall into the abyss of fanaticism.
That headlne is no exaggeration. Kerry said on national TV that he would make all his military records available; immediately thereafter his campaign staff refused to do so.
The day after Kerry told MEET THE PRESS he would make all of his military records available for inspection at his campaign headquarters, a spokesman said the senator would not release any new documents, leaving undisclosed many of Kerry’s evaluations by his Navy commanding officers, some medical records, and possibly other material.
We all remember the huge fuss the press made about Bush’s military records recently. Will they let Kerry slide on the same issue?
From her latest article:
Last week, 9/11 commissioner John Lehman revealed that “it was the policy (before 9/11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that’s discriminatory.” Hmmm … Is 19 more than two? Why, yes, I believe it is. So if two Jordanian cab drivers are searched before boarding a flight out of Newark, Osama bin Laden could then board that plane without being questioned. I’m no security expert, but I’m pretty sure this gives terrorists an opening for an attack.
...The only rap against the Bush administration is that it failed to unravel the entire 9/11 terrorism plot based on a memo titled: “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.”
I have news for liberals: Bin Laden is still determined to attack inside the United States! Could they please tell us when and where the next attack will be? Because unless we know that, it’s going to be difficult to stop it if we can’t search Arabs.
This morning the LA TIMES appears to me to be almost a different newspaper. Perhaps it’s a one-time fluke; it seems too much to hope for that this would be a new direction for it.
Several front-page stories report on the achievements of a number of leaders, rather than slamming everything that moves, which has often been the way in the past; rather than slanting all stories to a Leftist agenda.
Here are the stories I’m referring to:
Israel Kills New Leader of Hamas
I knew yesterday that Israel had killed, as Drudge had reported “Another Hamas Leader.” But this story reports that Rantisi was the new head of Hamas.
The TIMES captions a photo of Rantisi, “FIREBRAND: Abdulaziz Rantisi sometimes took a harder line on Israel than did his predecessor,” which appears to support Israel’s move by saying Rantisi was even more of an enemy of Israel than his predecessor.
The second paragraph of the story says:
The airstrike came four hours after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed an Israeli border police officer at the main crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Again, that supports Israel’s move, rather than slams it.
Later in the story:
Frenzied crowds of young men swarmed over the twisted, smoldering wreckage of Rantisi’s car, which was struck just after 8:30 p.m. a block from his family home in the Sheik Radwan district of Gaza City.
Previously I’d only seen the phrase “car swarm” on LGF, which has frequently noted this ghoulish behavior common to some nations that support terrorism. This is the first time I’ve seen it reported on in the LA TIMES.
All of this adds up to a story that supports efforts to eradicate terrorism from the Earth. It puts the TIMES on the right side of America and of history.
Okay, here’s another story that impressed me. Reports on all the good news coming out of Iraq have been absent from the TIMES for months. Yet this morning, one such story is on the front page:
Disfigured Iraqis Are No Longer Scarred for Life
BAGHDAD Rolling on a gurney toward the dank operating room of Al Kindi Hospital recently, Khalid Abid Nimer flashed back to a decade earlier, when he had made a similar trip in the same hospital for a far different operation. Back then, Nimer’s arms were bound and his eyes were blindfolded to prevent him from seeing the reluctant surgeon who was ordered to carry out one of Saddam Hussein’s sadistic punishments: cutting off the right ears of Iraqi men deemed to be traitors. Nimer awoke alone in a recovery room that day, a solitary start to a life of shame and isolation. An estimated 3,600 Iraqis suffered the same fate, according to the newly formed National Iraqi Assn. for the Defense of Human Rights. Now hundreds of them are rushing to get plastic surgery to repair the physical wounds and the psychological ones.... “These operations will help the men retrieve some of their dignity, to return to more normal lives,” said Mohammed Hussein, co-founder of the Iraqi human rights group, which was formed after the fall of the regime and has helped fund the surgeries.
And then there’s this:
Bold Risks Mark Bush’s Policy on Middle East
WASHINGTON Last fall, delegations began shuttling between Washington and Jerusalem to discuss a secret Israeli proposal that would overturn decades of Middle East diplomacy: a U.S. recognition of Israel’s claims to portions of the West Bank seized in the 1967 war and an acknowledgment that Palestinian refugees would never be able to exercise the “right of return” to lost land in Israel. At least some U.S. officials were anxious. How would the Arab world, already inflamed, react? But by late February, word had come down from the Oval Office: President Bush wanted to break with his predecessors. “The president said, ‘Find a way to make it happen,’ ” said an official with a pro-Israel group close to the negotiations.
Look at that: a TIMES story that supports President Bush. It’s like an entirely different newspaper.
And there’s still more. In the California section, the paper reports on the achievements of Gov. Schwarzenegger, whose election the paper had opposed with blatantly slanted coverage.
Some Are Unsettled by Gov.’s Victory
SACRAMENTO He has used his celebrity to flatter lawmakers into reaching deals, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger deployed a new tactic in pushing through an overhaul of the state’s costly workers’ compensation system: muscle.
Over the six weeks that talks unfolded, the governor set tight deadlines for lawmakers to act, used the prospect of a November ballot initiative as a weapon to keep negotiations moving, and mused about curbing the Legislature’s clout by pushing for a part-time body.In the end, it worked. Schwarzenegger is to sign a bill in Long Beach on Monday that is expected to wring billions in savings from an insurance system often blamed for causing businesses to flee the state.
... “I like the idea of using the stick,” he said at a news conference Friday. “And I like the idea of using deadlines. Because why would we hang here for the next two years and negotiate and debate over this issue?”
The article is no puff piece; it reports on reasonable concerns some have about Schwarzenegger’s methods. But you come away appreciating his accomplishments and achievements—things the paper in the past has refused to cover.
One day is not enough to show that the TIMES has chosen a new direction for its coverage; but today’s edition shows the way the paper can go to help celebrate our achievements, as well as pointing out our errors.
