Tuesday, September 7, 2004

Finally, Kerry answers Bush's attacks

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- Finally. At long last, Sen. John Kerry has found his voice on the campaign trail.
ABOUT FRIGGIN' TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From seattlepi.com


Kerry, previously cautious to the point of silence about President Bush's Iraq war, used the climax of the Republican National Convention to question Bush's fitness for office for "misleading our nation into war" with Iraq.

And it's about time.

Stung by the personal relentless targeted attacks by a raft of Republicans, and Sen. Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, Kerry has had it with the turn-the-other-cheek approach to this campaign. When he turned the other one, his opponents slapped it, too.

Kerry now must regret the obvious orders that went out to all the speakers at the Democratic National Convention in Boston a month ago to be nice and don't criticize Bush.

The president had a free ride until Thursday evening, just as he was accepting the Republican Party's nomination for a second term and criticizing Kerry for his Senate votes on domestic and foreign policy.

On this night, the peak of four days of Republican exultation in Madison Square Garden in New York, Kerry spoke at a rally in Springfield, Ohio. It was there that the Democrat finally unleashed.

Noting that Bush supporters had "attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief" all week long, Kerry declared: "Well, here's my answer. I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who misled the nation into Iraq."

Kerry said Vice President Dick Cheney "even called me unfit for office last night (Wednesday night.) I'll leave it up to the voters whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty."

Cheney has explained that he sought those deferments during the Vietnam War because "I had other priorities."

Well, so did thousands of other young men who nevertheless were drafted or who volunteered for military service during that terrible war.

For his part, Bush -- the son of a prominent Texas congressman -- leaped to the head of the line of applicants to join the Texas Air National Guard and thus avoided duty in Vietnam.

I remember four years ago when Bush promised he was going to change the tone in Washington. He was looking for more civility.

Well, that was then and this is now, as evidenced by the disgraceful and false accusation leveled against Kerry by Bush's ardent supporters disguised as the swift-boat veterans.

In his Springfield, Ohio, remarks, Kerry gave another reason why he thought Bush was unfit to lead the nation. The president, according to his Democratic challenger, has been doing "nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs ... and letting 45 million Americans go without health care."

The Massachusetts senator, obviously angered by the vicious attacks aimed at him by GOP convention speakers, also accused Bush of being an unfit leader for "letting the Saudi royal family control our energy costs."

And he socked it to Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton, the Houston, Texas, oil services company, saying the vice president was "unfit" for "handing out billions of government contracts to Halliburton" where he still receives about $150,000 a year in deferred compensation and holds more than 433,000 stock options.

Bush led the nation into war against Iraq on grounds that Saddam Hussein had arsenals of weapons of mass destruction; that he had ties to the Al Qaida network and that Iraq was an imminent threat to this nation. None of those charges has proved to be true

With no apologies for shifting the rationale for the war, Bush now says he acted to defend the United States in the "war on terror." Even if Saddam Husseinan had no unconventional weapons, he could have produced them, in the president's view, and that was enough reason to invade.

Give me a break.

The blistering attacks on Kerry at the Republican convention and Kerry's decision to drop the mister-nice-guy routine point to a real fight for the presidency. Kerry is on the right track to question Bush's competency in light of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It was inevitable that the president's unilateralist foreign policy would come up in the campaign dialogue, as it should.

Voters indicate in polls that they are more concerned with jobs and the economy than with the war in Iraq. Nonetheless, the war says more about our moral values and whether our elected leaders are accountable to the public for waging war for wrong reasons.

The election will be a referendum on Bush's foreign policy, which has cost the United States heavily in terms of its image in the world.

Critics say that the war in Iraq and his neglect of brokering peace in the Middle East has increased -- rather than lessened -- terrorism in that region and made us more vulnerable.

We look forward to the Bush-Kerry debates on that subject.