Kerry Meets Dean, Slams 'Crooked' Republicans

[IJ Reilly]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic White House candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) slammed his Republican critics as "crooked" liars on Wednesday and met former rival Howard Dean (news - web sites) to discuss working together to beat President Bush (news - web sites) in November.

Kerry and Dean, bitter rivals in the Democratic primaries, met for an hour in Washington after Kerry returned from Illinois, where he criticized Bush's economic record and renewed his promise to repeal tax cuts for the wealthy and boost tax relief for the middle class.

Kerry told a worker in Chicago that he was ready to fight back against his Republican foes, adding in an exchange picked up by television and radio microphones that "these guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen."

Spokesman David Wade said Kerry was referring to "the Republican attack machine" and not specifically to Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites), although he said Bush had "a pattern of standing by while other people ... do his dirty work for him."

Republicans responded quickly, with Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt charging Kerry had run a "a relentlessly negative campaign from the very beginning and this comment is completely consistent with that."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=4&u=/nm/20040310/pl_nm/campaign_kerry_dc

[Thomas Veil]

Well, some Republican policies are as dishonest as the day is long. Bush was just in Ohio telling people the economy is improving and that we need to stay the course. That is either a bold-faced lie or he's just completely out of touch with reality.

However, I don't think Kerry should've made such a sweeping statement about all Republicans. There are guys, like McCain, who get respect even from Democrats and Independents. This overly-broad statement could come back and bite Kerry on the a**, simply by taking the campaign to a whole new, even nastier level.

[mactastic]

I somehow doubt that anything Kerry or Bush for that matter, say about each other will prevent this from becoming the nastiest campaign this country has seen in quite some time.

It's funny when polititians forget the microphones are still on.

[wdlove]

Will the real John Kerry stand up. He should appologize, any real man would.

Here is the other side on his military service, Liberals don't believe in fighting or defending America.

Kerry no hero in ex-crewman's eyes

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 3/11/2004

Steven Michael Gardner served side by side with John Forbes Kerry in Vietnam, was wounded under Kerry's command, and was manning twin .50-caliber machine guns on a night that has forever haunted Kerry -- the night his crew killed a young boy in a sampan.

But unlike many of Kerry's crewmates, Gardner has not appeared at Kerry's side at campaign rallies, and his view of Kerry at war is far different from the heroic view presented by others. "He absolutely did not want to engage the enemy when I was with him," Gardner said in a recent interview. "He wouldn't go in there and search. That is why I have a negative viewpoint of John Kerry."

Gardner's view is dramatically at odds with that of many other crewmates whom the Globe interviewed, who praise Kerry's leadership and say he was one of the most aggressive skippers in the Navy at the time. Gardner, who said he intends to support President Bush for reelection, clashed with Kerry on one of the most memorable and haunting nights that the two sailors spent together in Vietnam. That story, which until recently has been told publicly only in fragmentary form, involved the killing of the young boy.


http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/03/11/kerry_no_hero_in_ex_crewmans_eyes/

[mactastic]

I wonder if Bush ever apologized for calling Adam Clymer of the NY Times a 'major league a$$hole'? Wouldn't any real man do so?

[Sayhey]

Will the real John Kerry stand up. He should appologize, any real man would.[/URL]

Problem is it sure looks like with Halliburton and the Energy task force that this White House is crooked. The sure have set new low standards in lying. Just why should Kerry apologize for saying the truth?

[IJ Reilly]

Speaking of which...

Contract Flaws in Iraq Cited

Rebuilding tasks suffer from poor oversight and questionable spending, agencies find. A delay in equipping the security forces draws criticism.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's effort to rebuild Iraq came under the sharpest fire yet Wednesday from critics who described a process rife with poor oversight, questionable spending and long delays that endanger the country's security.

A government audit memo and a briefing given to congressional Democrats indicated systematic problems in the contracts awarded to Halliburton Inc., the largest contractor in Iraq. And a senior U.S. military officer criticized delays resulting from the recent collapse of a crucial contract to equip Iraqi security forces.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rebuild11mar11,1,2004308.story

[ThomasJefferson]

Here is the other side on his military service, Liberals don't believe in fighting or defending America.

[jayb2000]

[QUOTE=wdlove]Liberals don't believe in fighting or defending America./QUOTE]

Chickenhawk n. A person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person’s youth.
http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=list&category=%20NEWS%3B%20Chickenhawks%3B%20Chickenhawk%20Headquarters

Examples:
Name: Rush Limbaugh
Born: 1951
Employer: Yack Radio
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Where to begin ... a joke about the Hindenburg? No, let's go right to the reason he had to stay home from the war - the world's most famous anal cyst. He's denied it, but www.snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages, has got the goods on him.

Name: William "Bill" O'Reilly
Born: 1949
Employer: Rupert Murdoch
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Bill O’Reilly loves to come off as a straight-talking, blue-collar kind of guy. Funny, a lot of guys who fit that description and graduated high school the same year he did - 1967 - went straight to Vietnam. Not our Bill - he went to college. And he didn’t just go to college, he spent his junior year, 1969-1970, in London. He graduated in 1971, briefly exposing him to the draft again, but Bill was miraculously spared.

Name: Rep. Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich (R-GA)
Born: June 17, 1943
Employer: Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: A virtuoso in the art of hypocrisy, the former Speaker of the House now claims the Vietnam War was a splendid idea, but at the time he opposed going himself. Newtie also speaks highly of morality, but as a serial adulterer he doesn’t want to get too close to it himself.

Name: Gary Bauer
Born: 1946
Employer: ouramericanvalues.org
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: A reliable cog in the Republican machine, a bureaucrat under Reagan, and later a preposterous candidate for president, Gary Bauer isn’t particularly combative - he’s no Ann Coulter. Diminutive and cherubic even in his fifties, he’s hardly the sort of recruit a drill sargent would see as a potential soldier. Which is just as well, because when he otherwise would have qualified for the Vietnam draft, he had a “vague physical problem” that got him a 1-Y draft classification - “draft only if the Canadians are crossing the border shooting.”

and, of course...


Name: George W. Bush (R-TX)
Born: 1946
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: You know when a guy walks away from a National Guard obligation during wartime and gets away with it, he must come from "a good family." Not that his daddy had anything to do with his getting a Guard slot in the first place - oh, no ...

[mactastic]

Liberals don't believe in fighting or defending America.


Conservatives all worship the dollar. All black people look the same. Women don't make good drivers. Mexicans are shiftless and lazy. All Arabs are terrorists. Native Americans are all alchoholics.

Generalizations like that are counterproductive.

BTW Wdlove, would it surprise you to know that I am a liberal AND a trained martial artist? That's right, I fight and fight well. I'm trained in armed and unarmed combat. Pseudo carries a mean hockey stick, and from what I hear hockey players tend to fight every so often. Do you think every soldier in the US military is a conservative?

[pseudobrit]

Will the real John Kerry stand up. He should appologize, any real man would.

Here is the other side on his military service, Liberals don't believe in fighting or defending America.

Why deflect?

Kerry was talking about the GOP machine being crooked and you've attacked Kerry's military service.

Why do you refuse to address the points that are up for debate because of these comments?

Why don't you apologise for questioning liberals' belief in fighting and defending their nation? That's the only insult I see here.


THIS ---> "Liberals don't believe in fighting or defending America."

Is disgusting hate speech.

[mactastic]

Hey, I think that qualifies as political hate speech. And I was informed that only liberals were capable of that!

[pseudobrit]

Pseudo carries a mean hockey stick, and from what I hear hockey players tend to fight every so often.

I go to the gym and put in a lot of time on the heavy bags. Practice makes perfect.

Anyone who's ever been on a team of mine will tell you I will and do stick up for them the same as I would my own blood.

But what do I know? I'm just a cowardly, unAmerican peacenik liberal hippie communist lefty.

[zimv20]

link (http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/main/index.html)


"I have no intention whatsoever of apologizing for my remarks," Kerry said during his appearance with Democratic senators. "I think the Republicans need to start talking about the real issues before the country."

He said Republicans are launching a series of attack ads against him that have nothing to do with issues such health care, the economy and "making America safer in this world."


good for kerry. i'm glad he's not backing down from his remarks. i like his fight.

[parrothead]

Liberals don't believe in fighting or defending America.




You actually made me laugh with this comment. Stuff like this is why Bush had been such a dividing force. This is like saying all conservatives don't believe in protecting the environment or they all hate gay people or they all are rich. Anyway, this comment is wrong. Franklin Roosevelt was a Democrat. He declared war on Japan and Germany. Kennedy was a liberal Democrat. He did'nt shy away from war, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs, etc, etc, come to mind.

Sometimes the best way to defend yourself is to not go out and fight but to work to make people your allies.

To reply to the topic at hand, Kerry is right Bush, and his administration have blatantly lied and been crooked about many things. And if anyone dared point that out, they label them as terrorists, unpatriotic, traitors, etc.