"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. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. 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.
Oh hell yes. More: The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.
Tony Snow and now John McCain are calling for an apology from Senator Kerry. Instead of an apology, Kerry just made the following statement in a press conference: Let me make it crystal clear. I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy. If anyone owes the troops in the field an aplogy, it is the president and his failed team.
He went on to call his statement yesterday "a botched joke about the president...not about the troops"; that he meant that he was ripping on those that took us into Iraq, not those fighting there. Kerry is clearly purging the demons of 2004. I'm not going to give them one ounce of daylight for their distortions. I learned that hard and deep lesson two years ago.
Not surprisingly, Fox News is trying to make this, as Carl Cameron put it, "a moment" such as Senator Wellstone's funeral, during which Democrats' behavior may have contributed to Walter Mondale's loss in his attempt to replace Wellstone. They will do their best to make sure this story has legs since, as Britt Hume said in post news conference analysis, "this clearly helps Republicans." But even the Fox News anchor seemed impressed with Kerry's tough stance and his refusal to apologize. Over at CNN, there was a different take altogether. The anchor put conservative Bay Buchanan on the defensive: So you're saying the president did his homework when he took us into Iraq?
The first thing out of Buchanan's mouth: No...
I couldn't believe it. They were adopting Kerry's frame of his statement, literally calling into question whether Bush was adequately educated about Iraq before he took us in. That is the frame that needs to emerge from this story. That, and the toughness of John Kerry. The big question though is whether Phil Angelides will implicate himself into the fray, getting more play and having Kerry's tough talk rub off on him. Phil's biggest goal this final stretch as I see it is not to win new voters, but to make sure Democrats show up for him on Tuesday. That is what John Kerry's antics yesterday and today can do for Phil if he plays it right. |
