Debates and Stuff

All your (political) base are belong to Mike P.A. Ward. Seriously, he’s got this stuff covered. And come on, he’s even got an Anthony in his name, for good measure. I’m going to straight gank large portions of his last three posts because they’re so good:

Oct 12, 2004:

Transcript portion from Debate #2:

KERRY: I’ve never changed my mind about Iraq. I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat. I always believed he was a threat.

...five minutes later...

KERRY: And what’s interesting is, [N. Korea is] a threat that has grown while the president has been preoccupied with Iraq, where there wasn’t a threat.

Kerry is the epitome of politician. No one but a politician could say with a straight face "I’ve never changed my mind about Iraq" after vacillating as many times as Kerry has... and he says it directly to the same populace that has witnessed all the vacillations. Who does he think he’s kidding? (Of course, the moonbats don’t care that he’s lying, and the conservatives aren’t fooled by the lying... let’s hope the undecideds are paying attention.)

Oct 13, 2004:

People are always talking about how "all politicians lie," and "they’re all the same." And as a result, they just don’t care about politics. One of these two candidates fits that mold and another does not. Let’s be frank - George W. Bush is not slick enough to tell an effective lie off the top of his head or make up a random false statistic when he’s in a bind during a debate. However, he knows his guiding priciples and you know where he stands. As a result, he’s derided as inarticulate and and dullard.

Conversely, we all know John Kerry is an amazing debater. He can pull things out of his nether regions like none other. The guy is very slick, and yet for this he gets praise. What is John Kerry if not the stereotypical politician? His ability to be on both sides of every issue is evidence of an absense of concrete guiding principles, without which there is no motivation to be president besides the love of power.

John Kerry is a man who has been planning his presidency since he was a youth from bringing a video camera to Vietnam to reinact battle scenes for his presidential campaign, to selling out his "band of brothers" after coming home by lying about them to Congress, to a twenty year Senate career as a tax and spend big-government/small-military liberal, to now he is the kind of politician that makes people hate politics. George W. Bush first ran for office 10 years ago and will never be accused of being slick with words or wavering in his principles. Beyond who’s political philosophy you agree with, which candidate do you really think will do what he believes to be the right thing no matter what the polls say?

Kerry says whatever his current audience wants to hear. Anyone who can’t see that is blind, and anyone who trusts anything he says is a fool. And people are just impossible to please -- they complain about how "all politicians" are slick-talking liars, then when they get a president who isn’t, they call him dumb.

This one is the best, though:

Oct 14, 2004:

Tonight was clearly the President’s best performance ... Kerry didn’t completely bomb, but only because his performance was taking place right next to SeeBS Employee Bob Schieffer. Holy cow, could he be more biased? Here is an actual transcript:
Schieffer: Senator Kerry, the economy is crap, there’s a backdoor draft, the president is evil and your hair is gorgeous. Could you talk about that a little? Kerry: Under this president my hair has lost 39% of its luster. I would never allow my hair to fall under such disrepair. I have a plan and I will make my hair even more glorious than it is now faster than this president has. Under this president, you will get more of the same. Schieffer: President Bush, you have big ears and Dick Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian. Why do you want her in a death camp? Bush: Education.

Posted by Anthony on Oct 14, 2004 | 8 replies
Filed under: General

Comments:

01. Oct 14, 2004 at 05:01pm by Rolly:

In all fairness to Kerry regarding the comments on threats in debate 2, he was referring to the threat of Saddam in his first comment. However, the threat he referred to 5 minutes later was what the person who asked the question called a threat-Iran and it’s weapons. These are 2 different things, but just as politicians tend to do, Mike Ward has used snippets of statements or conversations in his own way to support his point.

02. Oct 14, 2004 at 07:40pm by Anthony:

Kerry said that the threat in NK grew while Bush was preoccupied with the non-threat in Iraq. Five minutes earlier, he said Iraq was a threat. How is that misleading on Mike’s part?

03. Oct 15, 2004 at 08:27am by Rolly:

Actually, according to the transcripts Kerry said "I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat. I always believed he was a threat. Believed it in 1998 when Clinton was president. I wanted to give Clinton the power to use force if necessary." He is referring to Saddam. 5 minutes later, a question came from an audience member regarding Iran. As the transcripts state she asked "Iran sponsors terrorism and has missiles capable of hitting Israel and southern Europe. Iran will have nuclear weapons in two to three years time.
In the event that U.N. sanctions don’t stop this threat, what will you do as president?"..And Kerry’s reply to her question about what she called the threat of missiles that Iran has...
KERRY: I don’t think you can just rely on U.N. sanctions, Randee. But you’re absolutely correct, it is a threat, it’s a huge threat.
And what’s interesting is, it’s a threat that has grown while the president has been preoccupied with Iraq, where there wasn’t a threat.

In the context of this exchange he was referring to the threat of weapons, which we now know Saddam did not have during the time frame covered by the Duelfer report. In the context of his first comments he was calling Saddam a threat. It is very reasonable to hold Saddam as a threat, but at the same time believe that Iraq does not have the threat of WMDs. I’m sure you would agree the world is much better off with Saddam out of power, even if he never had WMDs(I’m not saying he NEVER had them). He was a menace to his own society, and a threat to world peace with or without WMDs. Mike lumped these comments together and out of context to support his point that Kerry contradicted himself, when really he was referring to 2 different things at two different times.

04. Oct 15, 2004 at 08:44am by Rolly:

Sorry for the duplicate post, you can delete the last one

05. Oct 15, 2004 at 09:52am by Anthony:

I’m going to have to disagree. And I don’t care how many times you post it :)

I think it’s quite a stretch to interpret it the way you just described it. I see no evidence in Kerry’s comments to indicate that he was differentiating between Saddam-WMD and Saddam+WMD, and certainly no evidence that Kerry believed that Saddam-WMD was as much of a threat as Saddam+WMD. Clinton recognized the WMD threat and has publicly said as much, and that’s exactly why the question of Kerry’s support for force against Iraq under Clinton gets discussed at all. Saddam by himself was a threat to his people and a couple of his neighbors, but he wasn’t a threat to the world without WMD.

06. Oct 16, 2004 at 03:22pm by Mike:

Dah! I’ve caused a ruckus! Anyway, I think Anthony has adequately defended my position on this. I don’t see how you can say I’m twisting Kerry’s position when I’m using his own words with respect to Iraq. However, even if we roll with your assumptions here and that he meant to parse his answer as you describe you would have to admit that Senator Kerry was less than clear, no?

Moving on from word tricks to analyzing the substance of the remarks, if he believed that "Saddam Hussein was always a threat," don’t you think he would have actually voted to invade Iraq in 1991? If he did believed that Hussein had WMDs in 1998 when Clinton was President, but not in 2002 when Bush was President, why did he vote for the second gulf war?

You can read the whole transcript here if you want: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134937,00.html and decide for yourself if I’m taking things out of context. I don’t believe that I am. However, Mr. Kerry doesn’t help with the confusion being that I have yet to have one person explain to me exactly what Kerry’s "consistent" position on Iraq is or how his "plan" deviates in any way from what we are currently doing in Iraq. If you can help me there, I’d appreciate it. Cheers.

07. Oct 16, 2004 at 03:30pm by Mike:

PS - I just realized how many words I misspelled in my original posts! I wish my blog’s spell checker didn’t take 20 minutes on my dial up connection.

08. Oct 16, 2004 at 10:17pm by Mom:

I don’t usually get into this political banter because I vote only one issue and get a lot of flack about it. However, this thread made me think of a talk show radio guy who I enjoy listening to. If you go here you may get some insight into Kerry’s game plan. You should then surf the rest of Dennis Prager’s website and get his latest analysis of the last debate.
lvuall,

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