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Posted on 06/09/2005 9:48:19 PM PDT by CHARLITE
IT'S NOT EASY for Senator John Kerry these days. Having failed to capture the White House and facing the likely prospect of getting steamrolled by Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nod, Kerry has been doing all he can to stay on the national radar screen. His latest tact, on display at a town hall meeting in Massachusetts on June 2 and eventually reported on by the national media, has been to suggest that he lost the presidential election because too many voters were, basically, ignoramuses and that the major media should now seek his guidance on which issues are worthy of extensive coverage.
According to the New Bedford (MA) Standard Times, Kerry launched the usual partisan attack on Bush administration domestic policies. But he didn't stop there. He also drew on one of the themes put forth in the paperback edition of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book, Crimes Against Nature, recently excerpted in Vanity Fair. In it and in speeches and interviews, RFK, Jr. has claimed that lots of Bush voters actually agreed with Democrats on many issues but "due to an information deficit caused by a breakdown in our national media" they entered the polling booth deeply misinformed, including on the topic of Iraq. Of course, many would argue the opposite: that the national media stacked the deck heavily against Bush; but that's a debate for another day.
To make his point, Kerry cited exit-poll numbers that he claimed showed just how clueless Bush voters were on the facts of Iraq--though he himself frequently spouted misinformation on Iraq to voters while campaigning. He also scolded Americans for not paying sufficient attention to the war today and for failing to recognize the administration's "bait-and-switch" on Iraq.
He then wandered into cuckoo-clock territory by bringing up the latest effort of administration critics to prove the president--and presumably the British prime minister--lied about Iraq. Kerry told the audience he was puzzled as to why Americans and the major news media aren't more interested in the "Downing Street Memo," the leaked minutes from a July 23, 2002 cabinet meeting of Prime Minister Blair published in the Sunday Times of London shortly before British voters reelected him last month. A few days before Kerry's town hall comments, Hollywood activist Tim Robbins wondered the same thing on Chris Matthews's MSNBC show. Without the prompting of the host, he brought up the memo, saying, "there should be more discussion about the Downing Street memo and less about Newsweek."
THE DOCUMENT IN QUESTION was drafted by a Blair policy aide, who summarized his interpretation of the discussion of the July 23 meeting--a meeting which took place in the same month during which there were more incidents of coalition jets being fired on in the no-fly zone and another Iraqi rejection of U.N. efforts to renew inspections after a five-year absence. One particular reference recapped what the chief of British intelligence told the group regarding his impressions from his latest talks with Washington officials: "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." (For an excellent review of the entire memo, see James Robbins article Causing a Commotion.)http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200506060801.asp
Kerry echoed Robbins's concern about more "discussion": "When I go back [to Washington] on Monday, I am going to raise the issue. I think it's a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth and a profoundly important document that raises stunning issues here at home. And it's amazing to me the way it escaped major media discussion. It's not being missed on the Internet." But it hadn't "escaped major media." For instance, on May 20, 2005, the New York Times ran the headline, "British Memo On U.S. Plans Fuels Critics." The Washington Post ran a story on it on May 13, and on May 12, the Los Angeles Times reported on a congressional letter, signed by 89 Democrats in the House, to President Bush regarding the memo. And it's been brought up since Kerry's comments by Tim Russert on Meet the Press last Sunday, for example, and Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer during the June 7 confirmation hearing for Zalmay Khalizad to be U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
Of course, if the issue was really about "the truth" Kerry would have also told the town hall audience to keep in mind that, among other things, on July 23, 2002 "regime change" in Iraq had been the official government policy since 1998, that Saddam still had neither accounted for substantial stocks of WMDs nor had he complied with numerous U.N. resolutions--starting with the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire resolution--and that just two months ago former Democratic Senator Charles Robb, co-chairman of the commission that assessed the intelligence failures related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, stated:
"We looked very closely at that question. We--every member of the commission was sensitive to the number of questions that had been raised with respect to what we'll call politicization or however you want to describe it, and we examined every single instance that had been referred to in print or otherwise to see if there was any occasion where a member of the administration or anyone else had asked an analyst or anybody else associated with the intelligence community to change a position that they were taking, or whether they felt there was any undue influence. And we found absolutely no instance, and we ran to ground everything that we had on the table. . . . We got a fair amount of information that didn't provide us anything more in this area."
With this town hall behind him, Kerry's well on his way to marginalizing himself in much the same manner another failed presidential candidate has done since his general election defeat in 2000.
Daniel McKivergan is deputy director of the Project for the New American Century.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
He WILL have a "He betraaaaaaaayyyyed this country!" moment in this calendar year. Make sure you post saying I said so!
I heard that kerry was in Viet Nam.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Il parle Francais.
We can't all be "D"istinguished scholars from Yale.
He forgot to add that we're all evil, lazy Christians. Kerry and Dean really need to start singing from the same hymnal.
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Why, you may ask?
Well, for one thing, hilarity. Nothing cracks me up more than watching these bozos tirelessly work to keep inserting their foot in their never-closing mouths. And to top it off, to watch Old Media treat these yahoos like wise sages, cooing sycophantic softball questions.
And secondly, many voters tend to forget things quickly (case in point - a dubious recent poll states that 52% think that the War in Iraq was not worth it. HEY! ANYBODY OUT THERE STILL REMEMBER 9/11?). So, I want John "F"-as-in-GPA Kerry to just keep on talking...
Kerry is Al Gore without the charisma.
Al Gore has charisma??? I thought he just had too much iced tea?
Did you know that Elizabeth Dole sent out an email to repubs telling them that Reid is in contact every day with the DailyKOS. And .. that is also where Kerry and Kennedy are getting some of their garbage information.
These people are digging themselves into a deeper hole everyday.
I'm not sure what it is about Bush's oppenents but everyone of them falls off the deep end to some extent or another when he beats them.
Gore, Kerry, McCain...Richards may be the sanest of the bunch. That would be saying something.
Though there was one other he faced as Governor but I don't remember the name. I suppose there is the chance that person could be the long shot exception to the rule.
Then you look at the Parties. Look at what people from the Texas Dems were willing to do to take Bush out during the election. Straight up the chain to Rather. Then look at the National Dem Party's hysteria.
I wish we could keep the Prez longer. Look what his presence has done to Democrats nationwide. LOL
[These people are digging themselves into a deeper hole everyday.]
If they dig any deeper they're going to be drowning their sorrows with Foster's Lager.
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