“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.”- John Kerry, October 31, 2006
“They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”- John Kerry, April 22, 1971
2 comments:
Rat's != Support of troops.
Answer:
(Not equal)
You've missed the point, cougster1.
Take a look at this article, it does a good job of explaining the importance of these events, and the context of Kerry's quote from his 1971 testimony before Congress:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LarryElder/2006/05/04/senator_ted_kennedy_--_peace_criminal
It doesn't matter who spent how many days risking their lives where. The point is that right now, we do have people risking their lives in Iraq, and the sort of criticism Kerry uses of the war is criticism of the troops.
Stepping back and giving him room with an excuse like "there are a few bad apples and everyone knows it" doesn't work: the manner of speaking Kerry has consistently used is to talk of troops negatively, in the abstract, and to refer to them generally. This does not indicate "some and not all." The only distinction he did make in 1971 was between those "speaking out" - in his manner, that is, against the war - thereby implying that those remaining silent or supporting the war were war criminals.
In short, Kerry has shown a repeated willingness to demonize soldiers when it furthers his own political ends. Criticizing a war certainly can be a legitimate item of discourse, but not in the way this man does it, by calling the troops monsters in so many different ways so as to undermine support for the war in general. Tactics like Kerry's produce one thing: hatred for service men and women.
This country has seen that ugly result before, in the very war Kerry participated in. He should know better than to create those conditions again, and he does know better - he just doesn't care.
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