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Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves):
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Gawd....there's so much "low-hanging fruit" that I won't even build up a sweat reaching for the more-obscure quotes of Messr. "SKerry" ;-) Hey, I'm tapering....I'm not supposed to be building a big sweat this week, anyway (heh-heh). BTW, #2 is an added bonus: another quote from good old Ter-ay-zah about Laura Bush.

#1. Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia he said, "If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no." An article in the National Review, circa 1995.

#2. "Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job - I mean, since she's been grown up."

- Hmm.... this one is interesting, considering that Laura first received a B.S. in education from SMU in 1968 before teaching in public schools in Dallas and Houston. In 1973, she went back to school and attained an M.S. in Library Science and worked as a school librarian in Austin. It seems to me that Ter-ay-zah's main avocation has been in marrying rich men and spending their money on ultra-liberal causes of which the richest of them all (a Republican Senator) would most likely have disapproved.

Okay, back to Messr. "SKerry" (hee-hee)

#3. "There were all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harrassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns , which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered by the government of the United States from the top down." From Kerry's April 18, 1971 testimony. Guess this makes him a self-admitted war criminal, huh?

#4. "Did the training wheels fall off?" John Kerry's comment after hearing that George Bush fell off his bike. 2004. Nice guy.

#5. "I don't fall down. The son of a bitch knocked me over." John Kerry after falling when a Secret Service agent accidentally got in his way on March 19, 2004.

#6. "When it was popular to be a Massachusetts liberal, his voting record was that. When it was popular to be for the Iraq War he was for it. Now it's popular to be against it, and he's against it." Jay Carson, a Dean campaign spokesman.

#7. "The Senator with the most special interest money over the last 15 years is John Kerry, who's just been running around telling all Americans how he's going to get the special interests and don't let the door hit you on the way out. That is exactly what's wrong with American politics and that's why 50 percent of the people in this country don't vote." Howard Dean on February 1st, 2004.

#8. "I don't own an SUV" said John Kerry, who supports increasing existing fuel economy standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015 in order to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil supplies....Kerry thought for a second when asked whether his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had a Suburban at their Ketchum, Idaho, home. Kerry said he owns and drives a Dodge 600 and recently bought a Chrysler 300M. He said his wife owns the SUV. "The family has it. I don't have it," he said. The Guardian. April 23rd, 2004.

#9. "Kerry then went on to promise that the 8 to 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. would be given a "path to citizenship" in his first 100 days in office". Matt Hayes at FOXNews describes a promise made by John Kerry at a national conference of the race identity group "La Raza" (The Race).

#10. "John Kerry is a down-the-line liberal who won election as Lieutenant-Governor by emphasizing his anti-war credentials." The Economist, April 21st, 1984.

#11. "Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture don't have the judgement to be president or the capability to be elected president." John Kerry, December 20th, 2003.

#12. "Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror, and therefore any advance in Iraq is an advance forward in that, and I disagree with the Governor (Howard Dean)." John Kerry, December 15th, 2003.

#13. "I agree completely with this Administration's goal of a regime change in Iraq - Saddam Hussein is a renegade and outlaw who turned his back on the tough conditions of his surrender put in place by the United Nations." John Kerry, July 29th, 2002.

#14. "I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations." John Kerry, 1970.

#15. "John Kerry said yesterday that he will treat the war on terror "primarily" as law-enforcement action..." Washinton Times, April 19th, 2004.

Ooh...and I LOVE this one:

#16. "When you cut tax rates, employment always goes up. The idea that you can increase taxes and stimulate the economy is pretty damn stupid." Edward Prescott, Arizona State University Professor of Economics and the 2004 Nobel Prize winner for Economics, voicing his disagreement with Mr. Kerry on taxes and outsourcing. From the Arizona Republic, October 19th, 2004 "Nobelist Prescott Lauds Bush Policies"

And last, but not least, and from the venerable New York Times (Todd S. Purdum reporting in the January 25th, 2004 edition):

#17. "Mr. Kerry voted for the USA Patriot Act, Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind education bill and the Congressional resolution authorizing the president to use force in Iraq, only to sharply criticize all three once he became a presidential candidate. Mr. Kerry counters that his quarrel is with Mr. Bush's execution of the policies, but he has struggled for months to explain his shifting stance on the Iraq war."

This is just a small sample of quotable quotes from Kamp Kerry over the years. I've left out John "Benny Hinn" Edwards and his "heal the sick, raise the dead" pronouncements of the last week or so. I would've had a few of his.....but I couldn't stop laughing long enough to get them down on paper (figuratively).

Face it guys....Messr. Kerry is trying to be all things to all people. He's gone on the attack the last week in a desperate attempt to shore up his sagging poll numbers, and is saying anything, no matter how outrageous or untrue in a calculated attempt at winning the election. He believes, like almost all liberals, that the good result at the end (his election) justifies all of the bad stuff done along the road to get to the desired result. Take the Mary Cheney incident as illustrative of this point.

He'd sell out his "integrity, integrity, integrity" spouting mother in order to get into the Oval Office, if she weren't already dead.

Now, I want to see some counterattacks by all the Kerry-ites out there. And remember, I've got to get my fanny-perpendicular down to Orlando tomorrow morning, so I want to see 'em TONIGHT! (hee-hee)

Sergeant Slaughter Kahuna
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]
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There's only one counter. Where is the context? For instance, when remarking that he didn't know if Mrs. Bush had ever held a job, what question or comment prompted that? Was he asked if she had a job, and he was just answering, or was he asked about her ability as a First Lady? If there's no context, I just ignore all these quotes. (Same for anti-Bush quotes too, by the way)

Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]
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I'll simply counter with my favorite Bush clip. I already posted a link to this a while back but its always good for a second, third, or fourth look.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/bush-bs.html
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [slowguy] [ In reply to ]
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You'd make a good and HONEST newspaper editor. I think they'll be needing a few more at some of the more liberal papers, come November 3rd if Dubya gets another 4 years.

Supposedly, the mass suicide of leftists in this country will make for quite a few job openings.

If Kerry gets in, I plan on continuing on as always. And anyway, it's always more fun to be a bomb-throwing member of the opposition rather than a defender of the entrenched power elite ;-) This gets tiring n'cest pas? :-))
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]
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Tear-Ray-Za Heinz...what a little gem of a lady. She just caused her husband to lose some of the mother, librarian, and teacher votes with that comment.

What a classy lady....
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]
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And anyway, it's always more fun to be a bomb-throwing member of the opposition rather than a defender of the entrenched power elite ;-) This gets tiring n'cest pas? :-))


So let me ask you this, BK - how can you justify the way in which this administration has betrayed the men in uniform in Iraq with their continual refusals to allocate enough troops to actually do the job they were sent there to do, ie. create a secure environment that will allow for the development of democracy?

From where I sit, Rumsfeld's job security is apparently of greater importance to this administration than American lives.
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [triathron] [ In reply to ]
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So you're some type of General now who seems to know what our troop level strength should be in Iraq?

Put on a uniform and head on over if you're such an expert on such matters.
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [Brian286] [ In reply to ]
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"So you're some type of General now who seems to know what our troop level strength should be in Iraq? "

I don't know if I'd characterize it as a betrayal, but there are many many considered military experts that think we should have had, and should now have more troops in Iraq, and that the reason we don't is because of Sec Rumsfeld's desire to push his "transformation" agenda. Lot's of guys in uniform who are over there or were over there hink this way.

Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [Brian286] [ In reply to ]
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So you're some type of General now who seems to know what our troop level strength should be in Iraq?


Read some Ralph Peterson, one of the most intelligent, informed writers on military matters and geopolitics that I've come across. He puts it much better than I can. Basically, our Army is well suited for a constabulary role (which is what they need to perform in Iraq), if they have the numbers to do the job.

That aside, it doesn't take a War College diploma to know that our guys are outnumbered, and evening the odds somewhat wouldn't be such a bad idea.
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [triathron] [ In reply to ]
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Outnumbered by who?
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [triathron] [ In reply to ]
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Just got outta the conference, and I have to jump in on this. Well, I have a War College Diploma, and I respect Colonel Peters' analysis, but without any of us being on the ground right now (though my wife currently is ;-), I don't think betrayed is the word to be using.

I also don't think a characterization like us being "outnumbered" is appropriate, either. Composition of forces always change to suit current mission parameters, but it's not like picking up chess pieces and then plopping them down in another spot.

A constantly shifting mission strategy like what's going on in Iraq will almost always manage to stay ahead of our ability to react as quickly as we'd like. This is mainly for institutional reasons, but also because we don't have readily available "lift" assets to get around so quickly anymore, as we had in the run-up to the first Gulf War. Practically speaking, the military has been in a "drawdown" since the end of the Gulf War and the beginnings of the Clinton Administration. So, ramping up to a huge war machine, absent a national or international effort, as we saw in WWII, neccessitates a much longer planning and implementation horizon. These two effects (a rapidly shifting mission parameter and an institutional inertia) combine to limit our ability to execute what we used to call operational decision making, or OODL, and also our facility at using a "Boyd's Cycle" (a state in which we can put in more men and materiel in more different places than the enemy can respond to) to bring the fight fully to al-Zarqawi and the other jihadist insurgents. Or as Dubya would say: "It's hard" ;-)

The military uses operations science to determine force size. Doctrine normally calls for a ratio of 10 infantry soldiers (not the supply types or the paperpushers, but actual lead slingers) to 1 guerilla in order to overwhelm an insurgency and render it harmless. Needless to say, the United States doesn't have anywhere near 300,000 actual infantry troopers to go into Iraq and root out the estimated 3000 or so actual insurgents currently causing a little trouble. That's why the U.S. is investing so heavily in training of Iraqi forces in a kind of "Iraqification" of the war. At this time, it's also a moot point as to whether France or Germany or any of the other allies we had in "Old Europe" would have been either willing, or able, to supply men and materiel in the amounts that would be required to totally stamp out the remaining bad guys in Iraq. It'd just be second-guessing, really.

We talk in here about "4th generation" and "asymmetrical" warfare. We're not at the "4th generation" stage, yet, in Iraq, but we've certainly been conducting "asymmetrical operations throughout the country. My guess is that based on all the available intelligence from so many independent sources, the administration took a calculated gamble with initial force packages that were not classically "sized" (i.e. they didn't reflect the traditional air/land manuever warfare and combat support modes that I and Colonel Peters grew up with).

Having had my "ass in the grass", sending rounds downrange at the enemy and helping to close with and destroy him, I can certainly sympathize with the frustration that might be felt in some quarters, but it's a war. And in war, you have good days and you have bad days. Perhaps we're a little spoiled in this country by the initial speed and relatively bloodless manner in which we fought the first Gulf War and then toppled Afghanistan and steamrolled the Iraqi military. It can be certain that some sort of insurgency was going to spring up (the Ba'athists and various jihadist groups who had received aid and comfort in Saddam-era Iraq were not going to just "go quietly into that good, good night", after all). What is not so easily answered is where the insurgency will end and our final victory will begin.

Again, you can find a million different opinions about the prosecution of this war, and I and all the rest of the other armchair quarterbacks, Colonel Peters included, have to sit this one out and let the people drawing the paychecks on active at this time now conduct it in the way they see fit. With the approval and authorization of the civilian leadership, of course. ;-)
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [slowguy] [ In reply to ]
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but there are many many considered military experts that think we should have had, and should now have more troops in Iraq,

Have their ever been any miltary experts that have said "we need fewer troops" (or less weapons) in any war/battle we've been involved in? Their opinion/recommendation seems obvious, from their perspective.

Wasn't "the war" over very quickly? Now, I thikn that htey are trying to get the "stragglers" without having too much of an American presence ... creating hte image that Iraq has traded one dictator for another. I think the USA is doing as much as it can to create (or reveal, may be a better word) that they are not "running Iraq", but are trying to get the last of the resistance.

Seriously, expecting a military expert or advisor to say anything but "we need more tropps/weapons/funding" is like expecting the CEO's of Phillip Morris to lead the charge against tabacco.

=======================
-- Every morning brings opportunity;
Each evening offers judgement. --
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [TripleThreat] [ In reply to ]
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Seriously, expecting a military expert or advisor to say anything but "we need more tropps/weapons/funding" is like expecting the CEO's of Phillip Morris to lead the charge against tabacco


Or perhaps expecting the wealthy scion of tobacco money to lead the charge?

Quick question (and no fair using an internet search) - who coined the term 'military industrial complex' and was it's most vociferous critic in the 50's and 60's?
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [TripleThreat] [ In reply to ]
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"Have their ever been any miltary experts that have said "we need fewer troops" (or less weapons) in any war/battle we've been involved in? Their opinion/recommendation seems obvious, from their perspective. "

Why? Do you think military professionals are just dying to send more and more men? Military frequently reccomends manning requirements for operations at the levels they think are appropriate. Sometimes it's a relatively large number, and sometimes it's a relatively low number. Otherwise we'd have tried to send 100,000 men to Haiti. In this case, we needed more to acheive our objectives.

"Seriously, expecting a military expert or advisor to say anything but "we need more tropps/weapons/funding" is like expecting the CEO's of Phillip Morris to lead the charge against tabacco.
"

Really, really poor analogy. Last I checked, soldiers aren't the product of the military produced for sale to the public. The military has dozens of different obligations and they need to man all of those optimally. It makes no sense to just ask for more men just for the sake of asking for more men. You need a little more knowledge about the military before coming to this type of conclusion.

"Wasn't "the war" over very quickly?"

What do you think? Are we still there? Is it possible to run through quickly but not actually accomplish your objectives? Apparently so, since we're now fighting the guys we were supposed to sweep out during the initial phases of the war. Catastophic success is a myth. We needed more people to carefully comb through as the Army moved toward Baghdad. these guys would sweep for the guys we missed, set up security in the areas wewere leaving as we moved on, and secure logistics and civil affairs efforts rearward of our combat forces.

Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [TripleThreat] [ In reply to ]
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Have their ever been any miltary experts that have said "we need fewer troops" (or less weapons) in any war/battle we've been involved in?

Not sure. Also not sure if we've ever been involved in a war in which having fewer troops would've helped.

It's patently clear that we did not have enough troops to deal with Iraq effectively. You don't need to be a military expert to recognize that fact.

(And for triathron, I think Ike used the term first.)








"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [triathron] [ In reply to ]
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Eisenhower coined it in a speech. It may have been his outgoing speech given as President. Personally, I think that the term has taken on a lot of baggage that it might not have been designed for.

Ike was a good guy, and all, and he turned out to be a great organizer, along with his staff, during the run-up to D-Day. His rise from LTCOL to 4 star general during WWII was meteoric, for sure. He also was an okay President.

Wasn't the Presidency the first elected office that he ever held?
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Re: Time For A Little Kerry Bashing :-) A Few Quotes (while rolling up the sleeves): [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]
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Yes.
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