They tell us we’re making progress in Iraq and that there is no civil war. That is a lie. There is a civil war and it is costing American and Iraqi lives every single day and we must change course in Iraq.
They tell us the Congressional Page scandal is a Democratic plot to win the mid term elections. That is a lie. This issue is here because of a Republican cover-up. And those from the Party that preaches moral values that covered this up, have no right to preach moral values any more.
They say we must support the war in order to support the troops. I say the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, oppose a course that dishonors their sacrifice, and oppose a course that disserves our principles. They say we would dishonor the lives that have been lost by changing course in Iraq. How immoral and shameful to use lives already given as an excuse to take even more. How immoral to say that more must die because others already have. When soldiers suffer and die on the altar of an Administration’s stubborn pride, when they lose limbs because of the incompetence and arrogance of mere politicians, then the only patriotic choice is to take back the moral authority abused by those in high office – take it back and throw them out.
In New Hampshire, Congressmen Bass and Congressman Bradley have failed to ask the tough questions, failed to demand the answers, and rubberstamped a willful president’s wrongful course. That failure demands the independent voice of New Hampshire be represented by the independent voices of Paul Hodes and Carol Shea Porter!
Let me tell you, presidents and politicians may worry about losing face, or losing votes, or losing legacy – I believe we ought to worry about young Americans who are losing their lives.
It’s immoral for old men to send young Americans to fight and die in a conflict without a strategy that can work – on a mission that has not weakened terrorism but worsened it.
Well I think Americans see through this charade. Americans now know the truth:
We have a Katrina foreign policy – blunders and failures that have betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it.
We deserve leaders who know we have “nothing to fear but fear itself” not politicians who have nothing to offer but fear itself…
No Democrat should be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan, a do nothing policy in North Korea and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq. We need to stand up to them because staying the course isn’t far-sighted; it’s blind. Leaving our troops in the middle of a civil war isn’t resolute; it’s reckless. Remember: half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America’s leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion.
We need to once again start treating our moral authority as a national asset that does not tie our hands but extends our reach. We must never excuse an Abu Ghraib or a Guantanamo. And let me say it plainly: No American president should be for torture before he’s against it.
So more than anything, we need to make America, America again –we need to restore America’s moral authority in the world and the United States needs to make some friends on this planet.
There are more Katrinas. Take health care – health care is a slow-motion Katrina that’s ruining lives and bankrupting families all over the country. In the almost six Bush years, health insurance premiums have gone up 73 percent.
You want a test of family values? Here’s a really simple test: Instead of people earning a million dollars a year getting another tax cut, give every child in America health care – now!
So our job as Democrats is to fight until we stop allowing the richest country on the face of the planet to be the only one that doesn’t have health care for every man, woman, and child. The Democratic Party must stand for health care for all Americans—or we don’t stand for anything at all.
20 Comments
Isn’t he just a little late to the party with this?
I sure hope Kerry implements a health care program in 2008 for whoever gets the Democratic nomination and, hopefully, the White House.
he’s a tad late.
for Kerry during the ’04 general election. I put my misgivings aside to get Bush out of there. But with ’08 on the horizon I can’t get past my gut feeling that Kerry voted for the Iraq war in ’02 out of political expediency and not conviction. I can understand how some Democrats made a mistake given the circumstances at the time. I was against it from the beginning but I can understand how one may have erred. Kerry is different. I can’t prove it but I believe he stuck his finger in the air.
Now, in fairness to him, John Edwards may be sticking his finger to the wind when he renounced his previous support for the war.
I’d say that’s fair, and it also fair not to forgive him. On the other hand, without knowing for sure in advance that we would find no WMD, and not knowing in advance that the insurgency would begin after about six months, rather than the more typical one year, it was tantamount to gambling on the Chicago Cubs to vote against authorizing force.
We knew we would win the war and that it would take some time for the war to become unpopular (normally it would have just started to make people uncomfotable around the summer 2004, instead of the fall of 2003).
He wasn’t willing to bet everything on principle.
I am surprised at you Booman. If by “forgive” you mean giving Kerry’s sincerity the benefit of the doubt, that is fine. If you mean you would be willing to support another run for the presidency by him I am befuddled. You are passionate about the election fraud issue. Kerry has shown that he will let them steal an election out from under him with nary a whimper. I hope you are not willing to give him a chance to take that route again.
Personally I’d be willing to forgive him only if he renounced any presidential ambitions and conceded that failing to contest the 2004 election was a mistake.
Oh, and I also don’t buy that stuff about no one knowing there were no wmd in Iraq before the war. The inspectors were given free access, despite revisionist talk that they weren’t; occasionally the media did its job and reported that the evidence strongly suggested that Saddam’s wmd stockpiles had been destroyed and/or had lost their toxicity; Scott Ritter eloquently made the case that there were no wmd; etc., etc. You could make the case that Bush’s then lofty poll numbers made it risky to oppose him (that is expediency, not sincerity), but I knew there were no wmd, and if I knew it Kerry knew it, or should have.
“I can understand how some Democrats made a mistake given the circumstances at the time.”
I cannot understand how Democrats or any intelligent Republicans voted to make war on Iraq. Nor can I consider their votes “mistakes.”
This was a pre-emptive, all-out planned war. That is wrong. Considering the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the consequences, it is not only wrong morally, but strategically. The stated goal of regime change via military means is wrong. The whole “Saddam Hussein is a bad man and must be replaced” just stank to high heaven as there was not even minimal lip service to “regime” change in countries with people living under much more repressive governments.
I was able at the time to sit at my computer and read reports from the UN and the War College and about Iraq’s history and internal divisions. I am not that skilled at computer research nor that learned about military maneuvers. I could recognize that the motivation to go to war was not solid and there was no serious discussion on alternatives to military action. If I could recognize the rush to go to war was not reasonable, then Senators and Representatives with staffs to do research and access to all kinds of knowledgeable people, the excuse of “I didn’t know” is just unacceptable to me.
I believe all who voted for the war had their fingers in the wind, weighing their votes not on what is right or even good for the country, but on how this would fit in their self-promotional marketing plans and who would benefit in their district or state. It was and is sickening.
This administration has had many “jump-the-shark” moments, but Katrina stripped away the illusion for most Americans. Katrina demonstrated that not only does this administration not care about keeping us safe – they aren’t capable of it. Since then, and as Iraq has worsened, the lies have unraveled with increasing speed. So yes, Kerry is late – but better late than never.
That is one hell of an impressive speech. Late? Oh yes. Can he be believed and or/trusted to carry through this time, if he gets the 08 nod? Who knows, given how the game is played in Washington and the fact that NO politician can be believed anymore, in my jaded view.
But when I ask myself who I would feel safer with as my President, Kerry or some Bush Clone, there is NO contest. And other than Feingold, I can’t see any other candidate on the horizan that I’d feel any safer with.
He learns slowly, but he is thorough. I won’t complain that he didn’t do this before because I didn’t do a damn thing. He of all people knows the risks involved.
We like to jest about being hauled off to detention when we say the wrong thing, we have seen leaders and reporters killed. Then when someone stands up we find him inadequate. I just don’t get it.
I like this man and I’m grateful for his work.
Just as he did in ’04, he is simply taking orders. Playing the angles.
Reject him and everything he says, whether it is “correct” as far as you are concerned or not. He proved himself the day he cut and ran after that fraud of an election.
Small K kerry?
Never again.
AG
Notwithstanding some elegant pleas and apologies in the comments above, I agree with you AG.
I have NEVER felt worse about a politician or the prospects for my country than the minutes, hours, and days after Kerry conceded in the face of such obvious election stealing as happened in Ohio. I have NEVER felt worse for a losing VP candidate than when I KNEW that Edwards was full of fight but Kerry trumped him out of making that good fight.
If Kerry didn’t go down swinging last time, when so much was at stake for our country and the world, I’ll NEVER be able to trust him with my vote EVER.
NEVER EVER EVER.
NOT AFTER THAT.
You can take that to the bank.
Well said. You took the words right out of my mouth. Frankly, after making a pledge to “count every vote” a central theme of his campaign and collecting millions in a special fund to finance a post election fight, and then breaking that promise while keeping our money, I regard his obvious intention to run again as astonishing chutzpah. I think the Democratic Party will experience a mass exodus if Kerry is ever again permitted to win the nomination.
I wish I were better at documentation, but I’m not so a can’t provide a link.
However, I read – either on a blog or a news article – that Kerry explained his decision to accept the results in Ohio because contesting the results “would have made it about me.”
No, sir, it would not have made it about you. It was not about you, it was about the people who came out to vote for you. It was about the vote. It was about the future of our country.
It wasn’t about you. It was never about you. It will never be about you. Get over yourself!
Merely a spinner’s talking point.
One way or another he was TOLD to leave it alone.
“Advised”
If indeed he even needed any “advice.”
HE knows upon which side his bread is buttered.
On the same side as it has always been buttered.
On the side of privilege.
And give me NO shit about his heroic stand on the Vietnam War. How fucking smart did you have to be to know it was rotten from the get-go? LOTS of sub-Yalie intellects realized it with no help whatsoever from their trust funds, and one way or another simply refused to go.
He became a soldier because that was what he thought was necessary in order to found a political career.
And he opposed that war for the same reason.
He supported the invasion of Iraq for political reasons, and now he “opposes” it for the same reasons.
He accepted the support of the power structure that wanted ANYBODY but Dean, and when they told him the game was up he obeyed.
He okayed the theft of the presidency in 2004 for political reasons, and now he opposes vote fraud for the same reasons.
He is a frontrunner of the WORST sort.
Get rid of him.
Let him go live off the earnings of his wife’s dead Republican husband.
ENOUGH of this shit!!!
AG
I have very mixed feelings for Kerry. When he makes a speech like this I love him but I like others have a hard time accepting the fact that he gave up so easily. John Edwards came out on that ballroom stage that night and promised us that they would not give up until every vote was counted. The next morning it was over. We all knew we had been cheated again, just like 2000.
The nice little girl inside me wants to forgive and move on. I will do that to a major extent. As far as supporting Kerry for another go at it? No and it is up to us to make sure he doesn’t get the nod from the primaries. It is up to us to throw everything we have to give, which I believe is alot, into OUR candidate not THEIR candidate. Ready to rumble for that folks?
that this is the funniest pile of two-faced, johnny-come-lately garbage I’ve read in a while.
He CARES now? He’ll fight for us NOW after he capitulated after he fought after he equivocated after he mouthed empty platitudes …. I’m sure he’ll say something different when the consultants get done w/ their polling.
Go wherever it is that old gigolos go, Senator Kerry. You serve only to get in the way of people who really believe in something other than themselves and their own ambitions.
We all knew when they selected Kerry that we would lose. He was a placeholder for Hillary. Edwards had a shot and could have energized the south and the young vote. He had a shot. But Clinton folks could not contenance that because he might win and that would have fucked with her plans.
NO to Kerry. NO to Hillary!
Allrighty then John, nice speech…to bad it probably means nothing…except to sucker people in once again to get behind you on your next presidential bid..I’ve gotten real turned off by speechifying and look to peoples records and how they have voted these last miserable 7 years which means Johnny Boy I ain’t gonna get on your bandwagon this time around.
How do you ask the last voter you screwed to vote for you again?
Love the speech and the fire, hate the timing! John boy, where were you two years ago??