VIETNAM ALLUSION TK (Kerry took BOTH sides on Gulf War in letters to same constituent! ROTFL ALERT)

The New Republic (&c. Blog) ^ | 28 January 2004 | Noam Scheiber

[Stultis]

VIETNAM ALLUSION TK: Monday I dwelled a bit on one of John Kerry's many yet-to-be-exploited-but-blindingly-obvious vulnerabilities: his vote on the 1991 Gulf war. I noted in that post that the vote could be potentially devastating to Kerry, not so much because it portrays him as soft on national security, but because it makes him look like he takes whichever side of whatever issue happens to be most politically advantageous. (Or, as Mickey Kaus would have it, whichever side he thinks is most politically advantageous, however wrong he turns out to be.)

Turns out I was giving Kerry too much credit. Rather than take a side--albeit the one he thought was most expedient--Kerry actually stood on both sides of the first Gulf war, much like he did this time around. Consider this "Notebook" item from TNR's March 25, 1991 issue, which ran under the headline "Same Senator, Same Constituent":

"Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition ... to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war."

--letter from Senator John Kerry to Wallace Carter of Newton Centre, Massachusetts, dated January 22 [1991]

"Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf."

--Senator Kerry to Wallace Carter, January 31 [1991]

Will someone PLEASE put this guy out of his misery? Please?

NOTE: Special thanks to TNR reporter-researcher Josh Benson for dredging up this item.

UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru was all over this story back in October of 2002. (As he points out, eerily self-consciously, what better evidence is there that conservatives will use this stuff against Kerry in the general election?)

[Stultis]

Kerry Kontradiktion Ping!

[Sacajaweau]

This is typical Kerry. He's a good orator though and you will pick out what YOU want and ignore his counter view.

[Stultis]

Actually it's not really that contradictory. There's a weirdly coherent philosophy here.

Kerry is gung-ho for deploying hundreds of thousands of troops and billions of dollars worth of armaments, to sit in a desert somewhere, so long as they don't actually do anything, at least until "sanctions" (or whatever) have been allowed to work.

Apparently Kerry thinks genocidal, terror sponsoring, warmongering dictators can be swayed by his lugubrious posturing as easily as flocks of disillusioned Deaniacs. But considering that sanctions didn't work after 12 years in Iraq, have lasted 18 years in Libya, and that even the dimmest dictator will easily cotton on to Kerry's "strategy," our armies are apt to spend some long spells in those desert bivouacs. If Kerry should be elected President (God forbid) the Pentagon better stock up on sunblock.

[Stultis]

Ooops! I duped. (Although the other thread is excerpted and doesn't have the embeded links.)

[samtheman]

We've all been so blinded by the Dean rise-in-the-polls. We spent months wondering/worrying how beatable Dean would turn out to be. We convinced ourselves that Dean would be hugely beatable (correct) and then when Dean flopped in the primaries we felt let down, that the most beatable candidate was no longer going to be challenging Bush.

But think back to before the Dean bubble and how we all felt about those candidates, those nine nimrods in their silly (seemingly nightly) "debates". The debates that nobody watched. The debates about which Bill O'Reilly said: "I'll tell you why nobody's paying attention. Those people are boring."

No one thought back then that Kerry was anything to cheer about. No one was worried then about Kerry's ability to beat Bush. Back then, such a notion would have been laughable.

But then came the Dean bubble. It distracted us. It actually made the race somewhat interesting. And after the bubble popped, suddenly Kerry's some kind of a rising star.

But he's no more of a rising star now than he was then. He's no less boring now than he was then. He's no less of a clueless Massachussettes Kennedy Liberal now than he was then.

It's just that the Dean bubble caught the media glare, and Kerry's bursting of was hence a media event, so that now we've lost sight of the main fact here: Kerry is a loser.

That fact was obvious at the beginning of this nominating process and --- though it's being ignored by the media --- it should be just as obvious now.

[joesnuffy]

Fair and balanced meets fairly imbalanced

[MEG33]

Kerryspeak!

[dfwgator]

Kerry is the Dems version of Bob Dole, they are only going to him because it is "his turn."

[Petronski]

Oddly enough, both letters translate into French exactly the same.

[Paul_B]

Kerry's theme song: "Both Sides Now"

[PhiKapMom]

Thanks for the ping! This is hilarious! How dumb can one office be -- looks like Kerry and his flip flopping got caught big time.

[cookcounty]

John Kerry is the only man in history to be on both sides of 3 wars.

1.Vietnam, which we all know about,
2. GWII (see above).
3. He also tried to play both sides in Gulf War I, voting against the Senate resolution, but then, after quick US success, he said he voted against it because Bush41 wasn't going to remove Saddam.

So Kerry, who claims he wants to act in accordance with UN SecCouncil permission slips, was all for stuffing the Council in 1991!!

We don't need the Muddle-Minded Man from Massachussetts!!

Don't laugh, your face would look like that too if you spent 35 years using your head for a weather vane!

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.

'JOHN KERRY = Enemy of Vietnam Vet'

http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1320

.

[Stultis]

Senator Kerry's crack (addled?) staff had an explanation, for what it's worth, related in Ramesh Ponnuru's linked NRO article. (They said the pro-Bush letter, though sent last, was Kerry's outdated initial response to the invasion of Kuwait.)

One other funny thing about this is that the same office innundating this constituent with wildly divergent positions on matters in Iraq and Kuwait had developed a reputation for failing to address basic constituent services and local issues:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068109/posts
John Kerry And Home Groan Politics (he ignores local pols, issues, constituent services)
The New Republic via CBS News ^ | 26 January 2004 | Michael Crowley

[Stultis]

2. GWII (see above).
3. He also tried to play both sides in Gulf War I, voting against the Senate resolution, but then, after quick US success, he said he voted against it because Bush41 wasn't going to remove Saddam.

You read too quickly. The letters above are from Gulf War I (1991).

So you're saying Kerry had (at least!) three positions. First he was behind Bush 100 percent, then he was opposed to the war as precipitous (and in favor of sanctions which would only have incentivised Saddam to leave Kuwait at best), and then he claims he would have been in favor of the war if only it gone farther and lasted longer (removing Saddam from power).

[4integrity]

'If Kerry should be elected President (God forbid), the Pentagon better stock up on sunblock'.

Puts it all into perspective.

[Just mythoughts]

Posted on 03/03/2004 3:22:05 PM PST by cody32127


Here's a creepy coincidence. Remember Wallace Carter? He's the Massachusetts man who in 1991 received two letters, nine days apart, from Sen. John Kerry, one opposing the Gulf War and the other supporting it. The New Republic published excerpts from both two months later. It turns out that soon thereafter, one of Kerry's colleagues gave a speech in which he mocked the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, for the Carter letters. Dennis Roddy, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, tells the story:

It happened at the annual Lincoln Day Dinner of the Allegheny County Republican Party, March 20, 1991, at the William Penn Hotel.

At the time the first George Bush was still flush with victory in the Persian Gulf, and dinnergoers chortled over a videotaped presentation of assorted senate Democrats backpedaling in the wake of a war they'd opposed. Ted Kennedy was shown. News clips were shown. But for Kerry, the speaker simply read the two letters, to everyone's amazement.

"It's like those before-and-after pictures they print in the papers," the speaker said. "If they didn't tell you so themselves, you'd think they were different people."

Kerry has to remember that one. The speaker was Sen. John Heinz. Two weeks later, he would die in a plane crash. Four years after that, Kerry would marry his widow.

If only the political parties were reversed, this would have the makings of a great Angry Left conspiracy theory.

[Just mythoughts]

http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110004763


Sorry this did not get included.

[js1138]

Saving the TNR pafe offline...