Can I get a witness?

By Edward Daley

I just can't let this one go. At first I was going to refrain from commenting further on the massive hypocrisy of Senator John Kerry, since so many other people have been pointing out his various flip-flops over the past decade or two. But in spite of what others may have said about him, I still feel compelled to delineate Mr. Kerry's obvious reversals in any number of policies over the years. The current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination has got to be the most inconsistent and blatantly opportunistic of all the candidates in the hunt for George W. Bush's job these days.

Take, for instance, Mr. Kerry's stand on the Iraq War. In June of 2003 in New Hampshire, John Kerry said that the president "misled every one of us," claiming that he took us to war based on "questionable intelligence." He talked about President Bush failing to form an "international coalition" before invading Iraq, basically calling him a liar and a fool. These sentiments have been reiterated more than once since that time, yet the Senator's statements before Congress in 1997 show that had he been president last year, he likely would have done just what Bush did. The following are quotes by Mr. Kerry taken from the Congressional record for November of that year.

"[Saddam Hussein] cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a matter about which there should be any debate whatsoever in the Security Council, or, certainly, in this Nation." "Saddam Hussein should pay a grave price, in a currency that he understands and values, for his unacceptable behavior. This should not be a strike consisting only of a handful of cruise missiles hitting isolated targets primarily of presumed symbolic value." "While we should always seek to take significant international actions on a multilateral rather than a unilateral basis whenever that is possible, if in the final analysis we face what we truly believe to be a grave threat to the well-being of our Nation or the entire world and it cannot be removed peacefully, we must have the courage to do what we believe is right and wise."

What? Saddam's objective was to amass a stockpile of WMD? There shouldn't be "ANY DEBATE WHATSOEVER in the Security Council" or "this Nation." over the issue? We must have the "courage to do what we believe is right and wise" even if countries like France disagree with us? Is this the same John Kerry who is now running for president? Yes indeed, the Senator supported the president's policies regarding Iraq as recently as October of 2002 when he announced that "The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to... defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq." He even voted against an alternative to Bush's Iraq War resolution that would have authorized force only in the event that such an act was sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council.

Not long afterward, however, he was quoted as saying that he would not "support the president to proceed unilaterally" when it came to military action against Iraq. This obvious shifting of gears by Senator Kerry should come as no surprise to anyone who read the March 25, 1991 edition of New Republic Magazine. In that publication, quotes from two different letters appeared which were written by Kerry to a man named Wallace Carter, a constituent from the his home state. They refer to the Senator's position (positions actually) regarding George H. W. Bush's military action against Iraq during the Gulf War.

January 22, 1991: "Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition... to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war." January 31, 1991: "Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf."

And what about Kerry's position concerning the Patriot Act? Not long ago, he condemned John Ashcroft for his support of the legislation, which, by the way, garnered overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress in 2001. "We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night," Kerry stated, "So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time."

What I'd like to know is, if the Senator felt that way about it, why did he vote to enact it into law? Furthermore, why did he have this to say about it on the Senate floor at the time it was being considered? "With the passage of this legislation, terrorist organizations will not be able... to do the kinds of things they did on Sept. 11." Why, indeed, did Kerry go on to say that he was "pleased at the compromise we have reached on the anti-terrorism legislation"? Didn't he even read the thing before voting on it?

Lately the Senator has been verbally assaulting President Bush on the issue of bad WMD intelligence, yet he, like so many other Democrats, did everything in their power during the 1990s to destroy our intelligence gathering capabilities around the world. They did so by scaling back the CIA and outlawing the use by that agency of foreign operatives with connections to criminal enterprises. If any group of people is directly responsible for our current lack of good ground intelligence in the Middle East, John Kerry and his fellow Democrats make up that group!

Issues of foreign policy and national security aren't the only ones Kerry has pulled a 180 over during his career though, and I have only touched upon a few of those here out of a list of many. On other matters of major concern to Americans, John Kerry has exhibited just as much inconsistency as he has regarding our various war efforts. For example, One of Kerry's most recent criticisms of George Bush is that he is controlled by special interests. "And now I have a special message for the special interests that have a home in the Bush White House: 'we're coming, you're going, and don't let the door hit you on the way out'" he said last month in Des Moines, Iowa. What he failed to mention to his cheering supporters at the time was that he himself has accepted more money from paid lobbyists than virtually any other Senator over the past decade and a half.

He also didn't bring up the fact that, of the roughly $640,000 he's taken from these "special interests," many representing companies with business before his own Senate committees, some of the money he received came from the infamous Johnny Chung. Chung was a key figure in the 1996 Clinton/Gore fund-raising scandal, who held one fundraiser for Kerry in September of that year. At the time the story first broke, Kerry had stated that he'd first met Chung at that fundraiser, but information soon came to light in a report by Newsweek Magazine which showed he had actually corresponded with the man before the event took place.

Kerry has often criticized the Bush administration's ties to Enron, claiming without any actual proof that it has influenced the president's energy policy in a way that will adversely effect average Americans. When one considers his seeming distrust toward that particular energy company, one must conclude that it's unlikely he would want his constituents to learn of his wife's close relationship with Enron's former Chairman, Kenneth Lay. Apparently Lay has served as a trustee of the Heinz Center for Economics, Environment and Science for nearly a decade, and was still affiliated with the organization as recently as last spring. I suppose it's ok for his own spouse to have ties to Enron, but for the Bush administration to be associated with it is a situation worthy of condemnation.

Senator Kerry once wholeheartedly supported the president's 'No Child Left Behind' education initiative, referring to it as "groundbreaking legislation that enhances the federal government's commitment to our nation's public education system." However, he recently referred to that same initiative as "one-size-fits-all testing mania." He went on to say that "By signing the No Child Left Behind Act and then breaking his promise by not giving schools the resources to help meet new standards, George Bush has undermined public education and left millions of children behind." I guess that increasing federal education funding by 65 percent isn't enough for John Kerry. Still he has no problem rebuking Mr. Bush at every turn for spending too much money.

Every day I see another story about some major U-turn the Junior Senator from Massachusetts has taken, and for the longest time I was stumped as to why so many liberals seemed so oblivious to this state of affairs. I am no longer confused about this though, as I have finally concluded that they aren't necessarily unmindful of his record, they simply don't care. It has become clear to me that the majority of Democrats are more concerned with beating Bush than with choosing a presidential candidate who actually cares enough about our country to take a firm stand on the issues we care most about.

They just want to win at any cost, so it doesn't matter to them if they end up electing someone who might well do a worse job of running the country than they perceive Bush is doing. As long as the guy sitting in the Oval Office has a D next to his name, the country can go straight to hell in a handbasket. If the new Commander in Chief turns out to be a schmuck, it's ok, because at least he's THEIR schmuck. The good of the Democratic party far outweighs the good of our country in the eyes of most liberals.

Hating Bush has become the favorite pastime of so many leftists these days, that actually considering if the man they are supporting is capable of doing a better job than he, has become a virtually insignificant afterthought. Just ask any person walking out of a polling place this primary season why they voted the way they did, and chances are the folks who voted for Kerry will tell you they did so because he has the best chance of beating Bush in November.

In the words of Professor Bruce Cain of the University of California at Berkeley, "There's no question that electability seems to be the number one thought on people's minds back east." That sentiment is echoed by people like Carl Sherblom, a New Hampshire wetlands scientist. "The most important thing is to unseat Bush" he noted after attending a Howard Dean rally in that state not long ago. Of course, now that the former Vermont governor's campaign has self-destructed, people like Mr. Sherblom will apparently have no problem giving their support to John Kerry, even if they had no intention of doing so only a month ago.

It's not just the voters in the eastern states who seem to feel this way either. All over the country liberals are saying pretty much the same thing. Bush has to go, that's the MOST important thing. And when you ask them why they despise the president so much, all they can manage to do is parrot the claims of John Kerry, who has done nothing but lie to them since day one of his presidential campaign.

Here's one final example of candidate Kerry's waffling for you to consider. Last month while campaigning for the Senator in South Carolina, Max Cleland attacked Bush's military service saying "We need somebody who felt the sting of battle, not someone who didn't even complete his tour stateside in the Guard." This accusation is completely untrue and John Kerry knows it, yet he said nothing to disassociate himself from the statement. Instead, all he could say about Cleland's bogus claim was "That's a question that I think remains open."

Yeah, it remains open because John Kerry WANTS it to remain open, yet in 1992 he defended Bill Clinton from accusations by then President George Bush Sr. of draft dodging, remarking that "We do not need to divide America over who served and how." That same year he stated before Congress, "Mr. President, you and I know that if support or opposition to the (Vietnam) war were to become a litmus test for leadership, America would never have leaders or recover from the divisions created by that war."

Again we see the clear hypocrisy evident in the words and deeds of Senator John F. Kerry. If you're a Democrat you get a pass from him for whatever deplorable acts you may have committed, but if you're a Republican you get, at the very least, dead silence where words of exoneration are warranted, and reproof for supporting the very policies which Kerry himself has endorsed.

I can only hope that the less fanatical members of the anti-Bush party will come to their senses and see that simply disagreeing with the president is no reason to vote for someone who seems incapable of telling the truth, not only about George W. Bush, but about himself and his own record. I'm no strong Bush supporter myself, but as much as I dislike some of his positions, and although I'm truly disappointed in him for what I suspect are purely political reasons for him taking those positions, I have to admit that when he says something it's usually pretty similar to what he's said in the past.

© Edward Daley