Kerry’s Ridiculous Defense.

I have spent pretty much the whole evening thinking off and on about what John Kerry said yesterday and how he reacted to the inevitable firestorm today. His response is, in my mind not only wholly unacceptable, but is also just plain arrogant and elitist. I heard his statement but I also wanted to read it, in his own words as he prepared it for our consumption. So here’s how it appears on his own web site.

From the beginning it is clear that Kerry considers himself far above criticism. This is how he chooses to word his game retort.

Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record:

Well, now that the rules of engagement have been established, let me say that John Kerry is not one who should be throwing stones here. His entire career has been one enormous political game, beginning with his enlistment in the Navy. Kerry first posting in Vietnam was aboard the USS Gridley, a warship well away from combat. He returned to serve aboard a swift boat, a vessel which had to that point in the war, patrolled the coast. being on a swift boat meant that you saw little to no combat and Kerry knew that well.

“I didn’t really want to get involved in the war,” Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. “When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that’s what I thought I was going to be doing.”

In fact, Kerry was there to gussy up his resume with a nice easy stint as a naval officer. He actually steered away from flying, unlike the man he criticizes later in his statement, because, as his father put it, he would “lose his love for flying”. Apparently his own “love” was more important than volunteering to fly combat missions. On the other hand, there’s this:

The standard rap against Bush is that he was ducking combat by joining the Guard. Actually, the Texas Air Guard had a program called Palace Alert that allowed pilots to volunteer for flight time in Vietnam. Three of Bush’s fellow pilots—Udell, Woodfin and Fred Bradley—recalled to NEWSWEEK that Bush inquired with the base commander about signing up for Palace Alert. He was told no; he had too few flying hours at the time and his plane, the F-102, was by then deemed obsolete for air combat.

I note this to say that John Kerry’s service was no more admirable to my thinking than that of the President. Neither showed any noble motivations in choosing where and how they served. If not for the unexpected change of the swift boats’ mission, Kerry would have been the waterborne equivalent of George Bush except for the certainty that he would never have volunteered for a potential combat mission. Kerry got out of his combat posting as soon as he could, using a procedural loophole and taking advantage of three pretty ticky-tack wounds to get his golden ticket home. Once home, he immediately began working to savage the reputations and honor of the men with whom he served.

This is important to remember because Kerry wants us to believe that he is, in fact, an authority on the bravery and intelligence of the American soldier. He will say as much later in his statement.

Note also how completely dismissive Kerry is. He apparently cannot fathom that he said anything wrong at all and that this entire episode is something the President cooked up as a “distraction”.

If that’s true, then the President’s mind control powers are formidable indeed. George Bush did not make John Kerry open his fool mouth. He did not make Kerry disparage our troops. He certainly did not force Kerry into this petulant and ridiculous statement. Nevertheless, Kerry wants us to believe that he is the victim. Poor guy.

So let’s get into a couple parts of his statement that quite honestly shocked me. Here’s the first bit.

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.

So is the Senator saying that he was criticizing both the soldiers and the President? That’s certainly the way this reads to me. Read it again. You could easily sum this up by saying “No veteran in his right mind would criticize only the troops and leave the President unscathed”. I haven’t noticed that anyone’s picked up on this and it looks like a pretty bald-faced and plain statement of fact to me. John Kerry will never criticize the troops alone. No, folks, he’s going to call them and the President morons.

There. Isn’t that better?

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.

To whom is he referring, I wonder. Surely he is not referring to the President who, as we’ve already seen, served during wartime. He cannot be talking about the Vice President who servedwith resounding success as Secretary of Defense during the Gulf War and our military operation in Panama. By my measure, Dick Cheney has one more war under his belt than John Kerry, and more years of serving his country as a leader of the military than does the Senator.

I wonder, though, as Kerry makes the intellectually-vacant “chickenhawk” argument, if he feels at liberty to speak with any authority on police matters. After all, he’s never spent a day as a police officer. Sure, he spent a year as a district attorney, but by his own logic, that can’t count. He didn’t serve in uniform. I don’t think that’s ever stopped him from expounding on law enforcement matters, such as his saying that the war we’re in is properly a law enforcement matter. Does that make John Kerry a “chickencop”?

Of course not. The very idea that you must have “on the ground” experience in something to speak on it runs counter to the very notion of free speech and everything we know about human intelligence. That he makes it just highlights his intellectual laziness.

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.

This is another ridiculous assertion. I distinctly remember the President actually debating John Kerry three separate times in the last presidential campaign. I can forgive Kerry for forgetting them, so embarassing was his performance and so complete his electoral drubbing. After all, you have to mess up awfully badly for your opponent to get more votes than any other President in the history of the country and the first President in 12 years to get a majority of the votes.

This is just bluster masquerading as righteous anger. The simply fact is that John Kerry has nothing but comtempt for our friends and family who serve in the military. This contempt is not new. He’s used his fellow soldiers as political pawns for 25 years without a shred of regard for their reputations or honor. He didn’t hesitate for a moment to call over 200 Swift Boat veterans liars and tools of the Republicans during the last election and he’s not hesitated to call our soldiers today uneducated rubes for nothign more than a cheap laugh in front of a friendly audience.

Here is the greater shame. John Kerry made his statement on a campaign stop for California Gubernatorial candidate Phil Angeledes. This month he has appeared in campaign stops for Senate Candidates Ben Cardin in Maryland, Bob Menendez in New Jersey, and Ned Lamont in Connecticut. He has appeared in dozens of campaign stops for House and gubernatorial candidates as well as Democratic fundraisers.

To this point, not one of the people with whom he gladly appeared have said one word to denounce his contemptible insult. None. Zero. Nada. That is inexcuseable to me.

Were I a Republican ad-maker, I’d create an advertisement that simply played Kerry’s insult and this ridiculous statement over pictures and video of Kerry with the smiling candidates. Then a simple question: do you really want to elect someone who so eagerly embraces a man who openly insults their family and friends.

I’ll say it plainly. John Kerry despises our soldiers. So long as he is a welcomed public face of the Democratic party, it is safe to say that it does as well.

Consider then when you go to the polling places next week.

UPDATE: Welcome to al the readers of Real Clear Politics’ Buzztracker! It’s a rather pleasant surprise to find that my sitemeter is blowing up like the Godfather.

While you’re here, spend some time look around. I have more commentary on the Kerry statement, a bit on how rape seems to be AOK in the eyes of the senior Muslim cleric in Australia, and a note about how just maybe we’re not about to rollerskate into fascism. Stay. Comment. Enjoy!

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Category: General, Moonbat Nonsense, Political Pontifications