Posted on 06/29/2003 3:48:30 AM PDT by MaineVoter2002
The Gullible Mr. Kerry-The senator gets fooled again.
By Christopher Hitchens
So, the junior senator from Massachusetts has finally come up with a winning line. "Vote for me," says John Kerry. "I'm easily fooled." This appears to be the implication of his claim to have been "misled" by the Bush administration in the matter of WMD. And, considering the way in which Democratic Party activists generally portray the president as a fool and an ignoramus, one might as well go the whole distance and suggest a catchy line for the campaign: "Kerry. Duped by a Dope." Given that Kerry once went all the way to Vietnam under some kind of misapprehension about a war for democracy and launched a political career on the basis of what he finally learned when it was much too late, one might be tempted to discern a pattern here....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.msn.com ...
By Christopher Hitchens
So, the junior senator from Massachusetts has finally come up with a winning line. "Vote for me," says John Kerry. "I'm easily fooled." This appears to be the implication of his claim to have been "misled" by the Bush administration in the matter of WMD. And, considering the way in which Democratic Party activists generally portray the president as a fool and an ignoramus, one might as well go the whole distance and suggest a catchy line for the campaign: "Kerry. Duped by a Dope." Given that Kerry once went all the way to Vietnam under some kind of misapprehension about a war for democracy and launched a political career on the basis of what he finally learned when it was much too late, one might be tempted to discern a pattern here. But that temptation should probably be discarded. The Tonkin Gulf resolution was fabricated out of whole cloth (by a Democratic president, building on the legacy of another JFK from Massachusetts), and not even the most Stalinized of the Vietnamese leadership ever ran a regime, or proposed an ideology, as vile as that of Saddam Hussein. Indeed, Ho Chi Minh in 1945 modeled his declaration of independence on the words of Thomas Jefferson, appealed for American help against France, and might have got it if FDR had lived. Uncle Ho shared in the delusion that there could be an anti-colonial and anti-dictatorial empire. If that is indeed a delusion. … Returning to the banality of Kerry and the simplistic yes/no argument about weaponry, the evidence that the Bush/Blair team was exaggerating or inflating the WMD issue was available long before the, er, lull in inspections that has now befallen us. And it was made available to Kerry, too, as a very mordant article on the Net by his constituent Charles Jenks has recently shown. Thus, for the senator to say that he was deceived along with "all of us" is provably false. He is now belatedly entering the ranks of those who claim never to have been fooled in the first place. Kerry thus joins the phalanx of a rather dubious movement: those who would have left the whole issue of Saddam Hussein alone had Bush not chosen to raise it. This is the whole nub or crux or subtext of the present recriminations. There were those who favored regime change in Iraq in any case, and who thought that the WMD argument would serve as a mobilizing tool. And there were those who opposed regime change in Iraq who would not now change their minds if all the specified weapons had actually been found. (One knows this about the most prominent of the anti-war spokesmen, not only because one knows them but because they continue to carp about the interventions in Afghanistan and Kosovo and Bosnia, even though the evidence against al-Qaida and the Taliban and Milosevic continues to outpace what was known at the time. It seems only yesterday that the "anti-war" forces were complaining about the paucity of mass graves in Kosovo.) Both sides at different times overstated the immediacy of the problem: the administration by rushing into print with some recycled crap and the anti-warriors by scare-mongering that a confrontation with Saddam would bring on a WMD apocalypse. In between these two forces were those who acted as if they had no minds of their own, and no independent sources of information. "Convince me," said Tom Daschle and his weathervane crew. "Make the case," implored various others. The eerie thing about this position was its indifference. All right, it seemed to say, if the president wants it so very badly. But if it was left to us, we'd have let the sleeping dog of Saddam Hussein lie. Kerry, to take the nearest and most recent example of this mindset, was once an active-duty officer and once chaired a Senate investigation into skullduggery in Central America. Could he not have decided to inform himself and reach some conclusions of his own about the possibility of continued coexistence with the Saddam regime? Did he have to wait for permission to think, let alone permission to speak? Does he only turn his attention to these matters when there is a "drumbeat"? And when does he decide that the evidence is all in? When he votes in the Senate on a major resolution? Or when he looks at the shifts of opinion among core Democratic voters? He could easily turn out to have been wrong twice: It is amazingly unlikely that the Saddam regime had no plan to preserve or restart its long-standing WMD scheme, though the evidence for this may involve some complex study and not take a "gotcha" or "smoking gun" form. The overwhelming consensus among inspectors and monitors, including Hans Blix's sidekick Mohammed ElBaradei, is now to the effect that Iran's mullahs have indeed been concealing an enriched-uranium program. For good measure, it is a sure thing that they are harboring al-Qaida activists on their territory. Will the "peace" camp ever admit that Bush was right about this? Or about the "evil" of North Korea: a demented starvation regime now threatening to export ready-to-use nuclear weapons (which Saddam Hussein, say, might have been interested in buying)? Don't make me laugh: The furthest the peaceniks will go is to say that Bush's rhetoric made these people turn nasty. I am not teasing here: The best of the anti-war polemicists is Jonathan Schell, who advanced this very claim in a debate with me earlier this month. Meanwhile, the overwhelming moral case for regime change in both countries is once again being left to the forces of neoconservatism, with the liberals pulling a long face while they wait to be reluctantly "persuaded." This is serious stuff and will engage us for a long time. Meanwhile we have learned that Sen. Kerry considers himself to be gullible both ways, which ought to mean that he is ineligible for the nomination, let alone the presidency.
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2084753
Socialism at it's finest.
On another note, could anyone direct me to sources on Bush lying about his drunk driving record right before the 2000 vote. Apparently this is coming up from the Fugly, because of the WMD thing.
They are all trying to say he lied about his arrest for DWI in 1976. If he lied, I never heard about it?
Eternally grateful.
Wait a minute... that's Hitlary's line.
Do they ALL get to use it?
Gullible liberalism...pretty much says it all...they were sold on a pipe dream, in the early 1900s' by the Marxists...they can't/will not admit they were taken by a bunch of European (the french?) grifters...now many millions of lives lost, by the followers/victims of a obscure economic theoretician?
the "I'm easily fooled."line. Yes...and, Please No Shrillary pic., too early in the morning.
Hitchens nails Kerry.
Though I doubt Hitchens recall of the old adage will sway Kerry. Kerry is armed to his teeny tiny teeth with Teresa's money, and it's now or never for his presidential run, thanks to Hillary.
Kerry will have to go with Graham as his running mate, for geographical reasons, but isn't it funny that just this week-end, Bill Clinton praises Wesley Clark as a viable candidate? Sitting senators haven't been very successful running for the presidency, it may be that the democrats decide two sitting senators simply can't run on the same ticket.
It's up to the person claiming he lied to provide evidence of it, in the form of a quote. You cannot prove a negative; it is up to the person making the claim to provide evidence that the claim is true.
Sure..the source is Salon.com.
Come on..that one was too easy.
May a thousand belly dancers that look like Pam Anderson give you pleasure...
...oh and for you ladies, May Mel Gibson be your personal maid for a week and do the housework in a thong....
What point are you trying to make?
This is being brought up in connection with the WMD case. These people are mostly Libertians and Bush Bashers.
They are claiming Bush lies and breaks promises and they provided all the leftwing sources they can, (There is MUCH crap out there people) so I have that part under control, it's this one thing really that I notice I can't get beyond.
They are branding me as dellusional, which is only partly true ;-) however, the main theme seems to revolve around Bush lied before so he's lying about WMD.
My point is he is not lying at all and these things are being brought up just because people don't like Bush...This one paticular person says he has no feelings either way, but is the strongest in calling Bush a liar.
I didn't want to Post a whole vainity on it...now maybe I should have.
I will appropriatly curse myself....May a plethra of mosiqtoes invade my shorts.
Two pages of FR articles here sorted by date.
May I offer you a cocktail?
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