SubscribeNYT Tries To Spin Kerry’s Anti-US Troops “Joke”
The "Paper Of Treason," the New York Times does its best to spin their poster boy’s latest America-hating remarks:
Kerry and G.O.P. Spar Over Iraq Remarks
By DAVID STOUT
October 31, 2006WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — Debate over the Iraq war seemed to reach a new intensity today, with Republicans accusing Senator John Kerry of insulting rank-and-file American troops and Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, lashing back at some of his tormentors as “assorted right-wing nut jobs.”
The latest flap, over what Mr. Kerry said on the West Coast on Monday, was another example of the heated rhetoric surrounding the war issue as the Congressional elections approach. President Bush said Monday that a Democratic triumph in the races for the House and Senate would amount to a victory for terrorists.
Mr. Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate who is believed to be considering another run for the White House in 2008, set the stage for bitter back-and-forth as he addressed a gathering at Pasadena City College in California. The senator opened with several one-liners, joking at one point that President Bush had lived in Texas but now “lives in a state of denial.”
Then, Mr. Kerry said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
Those remarks were denounced first by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and, like Mr. Kerry, a veteran of the Vietnam conflict. “ Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country’s call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education,” Mr. McCain said today.
Mr. McCain said any suggestion that only the poorly educated would agree to serve in Iraq is “an insult to every soldier serving in combat.”
The White house spokesman, Tony Snow, went further, asserting that Mr. Kerry’s speech “sort of fits a pattern” of criticizing American troops in Iraq. “This is an absolute insult, and I’m a little astonished that he didn’t figure it out already,” Mr. Snow said. “If I say something stupid, I apologize as quickly as possible.”
But if anyone should apologize, Mr. Kerry said, it is President Bush and his administration officials who started the ill-conceived war, Mr. Kerry said. He called the criticism directed at him the work of “assorted right-wing nut jobs and right-wing talk show hosts.”
“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement. “ I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.”
“ I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed-suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq,”
Mr. Kerry went on. “ It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.” …
You see, The Times has explained it. It was just a joke. (Which, coincidentally, is what Kerry’s handlers are all now claiming.)
Mr. Kerry didn’t mean it at all. He would never disparage our brave fighting men.
Perhaps because he was such a poor student all of his life, and he ended up in Vietnam, Mr. Kerry believes a similar fate awaits everyone else.
But Mr. Kerry could have just as easily have said, "if you don’t do well in school you could end up marrying a string of rich women and never having to work a day in your life."
Instead, he attacked the people who are risking their lives to protect our country — much to his chagrin. And to add add insult to injury, Kerry has now gone on to add:
It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.
Yet it seems like only yesterday Senator Kerry was pronouncing this from the floor of the Senate:
Speech of John F. Kerry
February 27, 1992
Page S2479 Congressional Record…What is missing and what cries out to be said is that neither one group nor the other from that difficult period of time has cornered the market on virtue or rectitude or love of country…
We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting in it…
Are we now to descend, like latter-day Spiro Agnews, and play, as he did, to the worst instincts of divisiveness and reaction that still haunt America? Are we now going to create a new scarlet letter in the context of Vietnam? Certainly, those who went to Vietnam suffered greatly…
But while those who served are owed special recognition, that recognition should not come at the expense of others; nor does it require that others be victimized or criticized or said to have settled for a lesser standard. To divide our party or our country over this issue today, in 1992, simply does not do justice to what all of us went through during that tragic and turbulent time….
Of course back then Mr. Kerry was campaigning for the draft-dodger Bill Clinton, so his words can’t be used against him today.
But who on earth has "lied and distorted" the record of our military more than John Kerry?
Lest we forget, it was libeling our troops in Vietnam that made Kerry famous and started him on his brilliant career.
And he hasn’t let up since. In fact, it was only a few months ago Kerry called our troops in Iraq "terrorists."
Mr. Kerry hates our country and our military so much he almost makes John Murtha seem patriotic.
Almost.