IG, I'd be grateful if you'd post Kerry's statements from the Vietnam hearings about all GIs being murderers and rapists, because I'm skeptical he actually said that. Do you think it's possible he might in fact have been referring to the small number of servicemen who have committed atrocities? I do know he asked how a person could ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake. I would very much appreciate seeing what he actually said, if you'll be so kind as to post them. Much in the way I posted Kerry's response to this stupid flack.
And I can't believe this dumb gaffe by a man we KNOW can't tell a joke to save his life is beating out other news, like this awful info. From conservative Andrew Sullivan's website:
<<While the media is obsessed parsing the ad libs of someone on no ballot this fall, something truly ominous has just happened in Iraq. The commander-in-chief has abandoned an American soldier to the tender mercies of a Shiite militia. Yes, there are nuances here, and the NYT fleshes out the story today. But the essential fact is clear. In a showdown for control of Baghdad, the Iraqi prime minister took orders from Moqtada al-Sadr, and instructed the U.S. military to withdraw from Sadr City. The American forces were trying both to stabilize the city but also to find a missing American serviceman. He is still missing. Money quote from the WaPo:
The move lifted a near siege that had stood at least since last Wednesday. U.S. military police imposed the blockade after the kidnapping of an American soldier of Iraqi descent. The soldier's Iraqi in-laws said they believed he had been abducted by the Mahdi Army as he visited his wife at her home in the Karrada area of Baghdad, where U.S. military checkpoints were also removed as a result of Maliki's action.
The crackdown on Sadr City had a second motive, U.S. officers said: the search for Abu Deraa, a man considered one of the most notorious death squad leaders. The soldier and Abu Deraa both were believed by the U.S. military to be in Sadr City.
The U.S. military does not have a tradition of abandoning its own soldiers to foreign militias, or of taking orders from foreign governments. No commander-in-chief who actually walks the walk, rather than swaggering the swagger, would acquiesce to such a thing. The soldier appears to be of Iraqi descent who is married to an Iraqi woman. Who authorized abandoning him to the enemy? Who is really giving the orders to the U.S. military in Iraq? These are real questions about honor and sacrifice and a war that is now careening out of any control. They are not phony questions drummed up by a partisan media machine to appeal to emotions to maintain power.
And where, by the way, is McCain on this? Silent on Cheney's "no-brainer" on waterboarding. Silent recently on Iraq. But vocal - oh, how vocal - on Kerry. It tells you something about what has happened to him. And to America.>>
Pgardn, I do agree with you that Kerry would be a terrible candidate in '08, just as he was in '04. This verbal gaffe of his is dumb and pointless, but the media has jumped on it and quite frankly, he's not capable of shutting it down in two sentences and he needs to be able to. I appreciated his explanation, but then I'll read several paragraphs all at once.
Harold Ford should give Kerry lessons-- his response to that slimy commerical the GOP ran that brought up that whole race-baiting stuff was that the GOP must be getting pretty desperate if all they could come up with was that he likes women.
But most importantly, my thoughts and prayers go to that missing American serviceman and to his family.