The Ultimate Kerry Ad

Here's a good one:

"To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the
whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day
hero ... assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely
entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an
un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the
world into even greater instability."
- George H.W. Bush

 

Wow, you're right, this ad absolutely changed my mind and now I'm not going to vote for Kerry on November 2nd!

...


Oh, wait, I sent in my absentee ballot yesterday and already voted. Oh well, so close John - try again in 4 years?

-m.

 

btw, John, still planning on attending the Ford event this weekend? 1-5pm on Saturday I'll be there, I'll keep an eye out for you!

-m.

 

Here's the audio in text format:

-----begin-----

John Kerry is the candidate for all Americans. No matter what side you're on, John Kerry is on your side.

John Kerry supported the war.

"We need...to disarm...Saddam Hussein."

John Kerry argued against the war.

"It's the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."

If you think we spent too much money on the war, John Kerry agrees with you.

"I would not have made...the wrong choices that are now forcing us to pay nearly the entire cost of this war... 200 billion dollars that we're not investing in education and health care, job creation here at home. That's the wrong choice."

Or, if you think we didn't spend enough money on the war, John Kerry agrees with you.

"Do you believe that we should reduce funding that we are now providing for the operation in Iraq."
"No. I think we should increase it."
"Increase funding?"
"Yes."
"By how much?"
"By whatever number of billions of dollars it takes to win."

If you think the President made the right decision going to war in Iraq, John Kerry agrees with you.

"I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the President made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him."

If you think the President made a big mistake going to war, then John Kerry also agrees with you.

"I think it was a huge mistake for the President to go to war the way he did. I've said that a dozen times."

Maybe you think Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction. John Kerry had the courage to say so.

"... based on weapons of mass destruction. The president distorted that, and I've said that."

Or maybe you think that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction. John Kerry had the courage to say so.

"Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents, and is capable of quickly producing, weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles, such as bombs, missiles, areal sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States itself."

If you think it was wrong to vote against the 87 billion dollars to arm our troops, John Kerry agreed.

"Will you then vote against the 87 billion?"
"I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops, and wrecklessly leave Iraq. That's irresponsible. There's a way to do this properly, but I don't think anyone in the Congress is going to not give our troops ammunition, not give our troops the ability to be able to defend themselves."

If you think it was right to vote against the 87 billion dollars, then John Kerry also agrees with you.

"...proud to say that John joined me in voting against that 87 billion"

Or, if you're simply not sure, John Kerry has a position for you.

"I actually did vote for the 87 billion dollars, before I voted against it."

If you think it's wrong to go it alone in a war, John Kerry agrees.

"Going it alone in Iraq, that's the wrong choice. That's the wrong direction."

If you think it's OK to go it alone, John Kerry agrees with you.

"The President, as I also wrote in that article, always reserves the right to act unilaterally to protect the interests of our country."

John Kerry, the only candidate with the courage to take every position on every issue. It's not easy defending multiple positions. John Kerry had the courage to try to do it on 60 Minutes.

"You voted for this war. Was that vote, given what you know now, a mistake."
"What I voted for... Lezlie, see, you're playing here. What I voted for was an authority for the President to go to war as a last resort IF Saddam Hussein did not disarm and we needed to go to war."
"But I'm trying to find out if you today, now that you know about that report, think the war was a mistake."
"I think I answered your question."

Even when Dan Rather catches you, John Kerry had the courage to just deny it.

"Voted for the war but now didn't vote for the war."
"That's not a flip-flop. That's not a flip-flop."

John Kerry. More positions than any other candidate. And the courage to stand by all of them.

-----end-----

I had to listen to that thing 12 different times to get all that written down. Would have never made it if I didn't discover the hidden button just below the "down arrow" scrollbar button that opens an audio panel with stop/pause/play controls. (Sadly the rewind and fast-forward don't work, and when you pause and resume some audio gets skipped, which made me have to listen to the whole thing multiple times to fill in holes.)

I'll put my personal opinions in a separate post. Can I get some forum points for my effort?

--Spence

 

Kerry is The Manchurian Candidate:


"The interrogator went through all of these statements from John Kerry," recalls James Warner, a Marine pilot who was shot down and held near Hanoi for five years and five months. "He starts pounding on the table. 'See, here, this naval officer. He admits that you are a criminal and that you deserve punishment.' ...I didn't know what was going to come next. In other words, for the rest of the time we were in that camp, I was very ill at ease."

Warner — who earned a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts — appears in Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal. This 45-minute documentary, produced by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carlton Sherwood, is available via stolenhonor.com. It presents POWs who argue that John Kerry's fallacious spring 1971 claims that U.S. atrocities occurred "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" amplified their agony under America's North Vietnamese enemies.

How can any United States citizen support this candidate? It's one thing to argue that the Vietnam (or Iraq) war was unjust, unnecessary, or just plain wrong. I respect those viewpoints. It's quite another thing to be a mouthpiece for enemy propaganda.

 

One would have to believe that humans sometimes lie, or distort or misrepresent things; or that humans can sometimes be bribed to lie, or distort or misrepresent things, to still support Kerry.

What you said might or might not be correct, Oxygene, but I can't tell from what you said alone. Can you give us more detail? What were the positive effects of what Kerry said, and what were the negative effects? Who is reporting each of these effects to us, and what might their motivations be?

The original advertisement seems to make a lot of logical errors.

The ad claims that "No matter what side you're on, John Kerry is on your side." What about people who think that the way the President went about disarming Saddam was correct? John Kerry is NOT on that side: he explicitly says that, while we need to disarm Saddam Hussein, the method we used (the war) was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. He's been pretty clear that he's not on that side.

What about people who think that, even though the war has already been started, that it's not too late to pull out? John Kerry is NOT on that side: he says, in retrospect, that it was a bad idea to make choices that are now forcing us to pay nearly the entire cost of this war, etc... but he also says, now that the war has already been started, that we should increase funding for the operation in Iraq. He's been pretty clear that he's not on that side.

Especially since the audio is now in text form, where you can go back and reread and *think*, I think it's pretty obvious what kind of logical fallacies the creator of this message are trying to use, and what they hope to accomplish by lying to people. (Lie == anything communicated with the intent to deceive, in my opinion.)

So who funded this? Do we see the same kinds of tactics used elsewhere in the media? What are THEY trying to accomplish? The goal of "informing voters" is not served with logical fallacies and lies.

--Michael Spencer

 

"Bring it on" isn't a mouthpiece for enemy propaganda?

-m.

 

Have you noticed how similar politics & hybrids are?

Judgment based on the quick impression is abundant.

Wrong conclusions based on modest examination is common.

Enlightenment from heavy research and lengthy real-world study is, unfortunately, rare.

That's why hybrids typically win when details are thoroughly analyzed. The same is true about some of the false claims being made about the presidential candidates. When Senator Kerry "voted against" a bill, it doesn't mean he wasn't in favor of what the bill's objective. It could have meant he didn't agree with the way the it would be funded... the end result was too costly.

Sound familiar? That is exactly what we are seeing with hybrids now. Achieving higher MPG is an objective. The fact that the "mild" and "assist" hybrids deliver less of a return on the price you pay isn't, until you start examining the data. What you get is too expensive. The "full" hybrid design delivers better MPG for the same price. Then when you dig for information, you discover it is cleaner too. And eventually, you'll discover it also accommodates for future enhancements too... from taking advantage of greater electrical storage capacity to supporting a fuel-cell.

In other words, don't focus on just one tree. Be attentive of all the other trees that it coexists with, both near and far. Awareness of all the factors that influence the forest is vital. Don't judge on just a quick impression.

 

To provide the most unbiased look at the facts available rather than all the spin, misrepresentations and downright lies; To provide some of the heavy research that john1701a talks about, the best source that I know of is the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Government's web-site, www.factcheck.org. This is the site that VP Cheney tried to reference but put .com instead of .org on which rerouted everyone to George Soros's site which ironically is heavily partisan in support of the Democratic Party. :lol:

 

"Bring it on" isn't a mouthpiece for enemy propaganda?

No. It's bravado.

Try this link for an explanation of the origin of the Soviet propaganda regurgitated by the young John Kerry in the early seventies.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pace...00402260828.asp

A quick summary of the article for those who don't care to follow the link to William F. Buckley Jr.'s magazine: A former Romanian intelligence officer who defected to the West before the end of the Cold War has a good idea who authored Kerry's statements about supposed US war crimes to congress in April, 1971.

It won't hurt you to read it. I read The Nation and moveon.org from time to time.

What do you think? Was Kerry a KGB dupe in 1971?

 

Kerry was a KGB dupe, sure. And the emperor's new clothes are spectacular, beautiful.

Keep your blinders on, it doesn't matter to me one bit. As previously mentioned in this thread, I've already voted in this election. You have the rights and freedoms to believe what you want, even if you want to believe the pentagon wasn't hit by a plane on 9/11. You can also believe that Bush is a former AWOL blow-monkey who shouldn't be president by being appointed and not even winning an election, such as I do. That's the freedom we have - as long as Patriot II doesn't take that away.

So go ahead and keep your beliefs, I don't mind. As for me, you can find me volunteering to get Kerry elected as our next president.

-m.

 

No blinders on here. I look at the news today and see:

Successful elections held in Afghanistan - a country that has known mainly repression from religious fanatics and from communist imperialism in recent years. Women voted! That alone would have been unthinkable two years ago.

Nearly 100,000 jobs added to the US economy in September. Not that any president has much control over the business cycle, but it takes a bit of the wind from Kerry's sails.

In Iraq, insurgents in the Sadr City area of Baghdad began to surrender weapons to Iraqi police during a five day weapons-for-cash amnesty.

Meanwhile, Kerry explains to the New York Times that "we need to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." I guess Kerry's nostalgic for the pre 9-11 world of the USS Cole bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing, the US embassy bombings in Kenya in '98, the hundreds of suicide bombings directed against Israeli civilians since the 1990's, the 747 downed over Lockerbie in '88, the slaughter of athletes at the 1972 olympics, etc...

As for the Kerry war crimes statements, it's not about belief - it is absolutely certain that Kerry said these things.

 

Hmm, yes, you're correct that those pre-9/11 terror-related events happened. You're also correct that Kerry is nostalgic for the way things were pre-9/11. That's what he said. It is absolutely certain that Kerry said these things, too, if we needed to spell it out.

While the statements are absolutely certain, though, people seem to use those statements to infer things that aren't explicitly said. For example, the ad linked in the first post in the article infers things from Kerry's speech that aren't true.

What does that list of pre-9/11 terror-related events do for your opinion of Kerry? Do you think that list means that Kerry will or won't do something? Think something? Believe something? I don't get the point of that, but I might just be missing it. Is there an assumption or a conclusion that other people think is obvious, but isn't obvious to me (or others)? If so, could you please spell it out explicitly so we can talk about it?

It's good that we all can talk about this in such a friendly manner. In so many other forums, this kind of political discussion would have degenerated into name-calling and flamewars. I guess that says something good about Prius owners, huh?

--Spence

 

Kerry's comments suggest to me that he's not the right person for the job of Commander in Chief. The War on Terror is deadly serious, and the stakes are very high. Unfortunately, this war, the war of militant Islam against the Judeo-Christian West, against Hinduism, and against Buddhism) will be the focus of our collective attention for the foreseeable future.

Bush understands the threat. He has called the terrible but real possiblilty that we face "the day of horror." The day when, God forbid, a terrorist group detonates a nuclear weapon in an American city and we lose ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or a million people.

Interestingly, the military would appear to agree, and agree strongly, with this assessment. The recent poll by the Military Times of its readership reports that by a huge 72 to 17 percent margin active-duty military personnel who took the survey favored Bush over Kerry.

Another hopeful sign is the re-election of coalition supporter John Howard of Australia. Hopefully this bodes well for our upcoming election.

Yes, I agree, Prius owners tend to score above average in politeness.

 

Oxygene, do you really think that Bush's policies are making such an horrific attack less likely?

This is a world of 6,000,000,000 people. You can't put all of them in Guantanemo Bay. There is no way you can totally control the world. Terrorist attacks will happen. Pretending, like Bush does, that you can totally eliminate terrorism, insults our intelligence.

Now, what you need to do is to minimize the number and severity of attacks. The two most important factors here are MOTIVE and CAPABILITY. To launch a large-scale plot requires a large number of like-minded people who want to attack you, probably moving in an indifferent larger population.

One sure-fire way of increasing the number of such people is carrying on like Bush does, conducting an apparent war on Islam, killing thousands of innocent civilians, and supporting the Israelis while they bulldoze Palestine (contrary to heaven knows how many UN resolutions). Bush has been increasing motivation.

Next, you want to prevent the motivated from getting their hands on dangerous weapons. Bush has given this lots of lip-service (after all it's the stated reason for invading Iraq), but in reality it's been a disaster. Iraq had no WMDs.

He's increasing the number of nuclear weapons sloshing around the world. He's given up on the treaties designed to prevent nuclear proliferation, he's designing more "usable" mini-nukes of his own, he's not paid much attention to the USSR's stockpiles, he hasn't been eliminating America's stockpiles as required under the non-proliferation treaty, and he's provoked other states into developing nukes as fast as they can. And the one state that HAS been selling nuclear technology to all-comers, Pakistan, is being supported to the hilt. It makes no sense.

And the latest thing? One of Iraq's nuclear plants, which had been under IAEA monitoring for over a decade has just been stolen. Wholesale. When the Americans invaded, the country was destabilised, and then Bush wouldn't let IAEA monitors into the country (ironic, eh?). During this period an entire nuclear processing plant was stolen. If Iraq HAD had any actual WMDs, they would probably have been smuggled across the borders as well, thanks to the botched invasion. This war has managed to increase proliferation.

So, do you want a leader who just uses endless fear-mongering about terrorism to justify his own policies, or do you want a leader who would actually do something about it?

Kerry actually HAS done something about it - in the 90s he was one of the leaders in the investigation that brought down BCCI - a bank that was the centre of a huge money-laundering operation for criminals and terrorists. See this link:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/...409.sirota.html

 

Thanks, KMO, for your thoughtful post. I agree with you 100%, and I'm sure many others do too.

 

Thank you. I'd just like to urge anyone with doubts about John Kerry's character to fully read the article I linked to above.

This is a serious election, and we shouldn't be looking at throwaway jibes made by each candidate. We should be looking at their records. The BCCI episode to me perfectly sums up the differences in character between the candidates.

(I don't know why I'm saying "we" - it's not as if I get a vote :roll.

 

JOhn KErry
(JOKE)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Brian\";p=\"44945)</div>

Yes, truly a well thought out argument. You've won me over sir. :roll:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxygene\";p=\"44706)</div>

Um, that number represents a failure, not a success. The predicted number was 150,000 jobs. Even if we had achieved that it would have just been enough to keep up with population growth, certainly not enough to get us out of the hole we're in.

The reality is that Bush will be the first president to preside over a net loss in jobs since Herbert Hoover.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxygene\";p=\"44706)</div>

I guess when an occupation is such an unmitigated disaster even the slightest good news gets people excited.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxygene\";p=\"44706)</div>

The fact that the Bush camp obsesses over every single word that Kerry speaks is only a sign of their desperation. He meaning here is obvous -- we will "win" when terrorism has been reduced to the point where it is no longer foremost on our minds. Anyone who thinks all terrorism in the world can be totally eradicated is living in a fantasy world.