John Kerry regains old form from Vietnam protests on Chris Matthews' Hardball.
John Kerry is suddenly on fire. All of a sudden, the old John Kerry, the man who asked how can we ask someone to be the last to die for a mistake, is back. Last night on Hardball, he repeatedly took the Bush administration to take over their lies. Black Wednesday shows the transcript; here is the best part:
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST, HARDBALL: Thank you, Senator Kerry, for having us to your Capitol office. You made a very strong statement in a press release last night. You said, "It's hard to name a government official with less credibility on Iraq than Vice President Cheney." Why'd you say that?
SEN. JOHN KERRY, (D) MASSACHUSETTS: I said that because I meant it. He is the person who stood up and talked about how Iraqis met with the people who hijacked the airplanes. The intelligence community never shared that information. He personally, and his small group of people, according to Colin Powell, former secretary of State's own chief of staff, sort of took over and became a cabal that ran American foreign policy.
He opposed the inspections, going to the United Nations. And he, together with the president, provided America with intelligence that was not shared by the intelligence community, and they misled America.
Now Dick Cheney, a man who had five deferments in the course of the Vietnam war, if he's going to challenge me with respect to my support for the troops, that's a debate I'm prepared to have with him anywhere at any time.
MATTHEWS: Are you surprised that the president himself went after you personally last Friday?
KERRY: I'm not surprised by anything from this White House. I learned that during the course of the campaign. I'm sorry for America that on Veterans Day, a day that is sacred to veterans and certainly not a day for attack politics, the president not only engaged in attack politics, but continued to distort, continued to misrepresent to America my position, the position of the United States Congress. Point blank. The United States Congress did not get the same intelligence that was available to this administration, and for them to say so is to continue to mislead America.
MATTHEWS: What's the difference between what you believe Dick Cheney had in hand when he pushed for the war, and what you had in hand when you voted to authorize the president's use of force if necessary?
KERRY: Well, I'll give you a number of examples: In the State of the Union message, the president of the United States used information about nuclear materials and Saddam Hussein trying to get them from Africa. Three times the White House had been told by the CIA, in writing and verbally, that is not accurate, don't use that intelligence. They used it. They didn't tell Congress it wasn't accurate.
Likewise when they announced to people that they had the delivery ability for weapons, biological and chemical weapons, within — I think it was — 45 minutes, if I recall, but less than an hour. That was not shared by members of the intelligence community, and it was not shared with Congress that the intelligence community disagreed.
When they said that there were poisonous gas and bomb-making training given by Iraqis to al Qaeda, that was not accurate. It was discounted by the Defense Intelligence Agency. They never told us about the discount.
There were a whole series of occasions where they took evidence, took the best light of the evidence only, kept the worst or alternatives from Congress, and fed the American people with the imperative for war.
When John Kerry met with Cindy Sheehan, he was showing signs of life. His exact words about the Bush administration were, "I hate what he has done." It took him months to really find his voice on the campaign trail; by then, it was too late. It took months for him to regain his voice after the election was over; but now, he has found it again. This is finally the John Kerry who spoke out against Nixon's war in Vietnam, and who was regarded as being just as dangerous as Ralph Nader.
The only quibble I would have is that the actions Kerry describes are lies. The Bible does not make a distinction between creating a false impression and telling a blatant lie. But he has to deal with these people on a daily basis.
