Kerry's 'joke' could haunt him
He once said Secret Service had orders to 'shoot Quayle'
Posted: January 26, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Sen. John Kerry got to be the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination through a series of embarrassing verbal gaffes by his major opponent, Howard Dean.
But Kerry has made his share of mistakes in the past.
One that may come back to haunt him – particularly as he begins considering vice presidential candidates – is the one he told about Dan Quayle on Nov. 16, 1988.
"Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they're to shoot Quayle," he said. "There isn't any press here, is there?"
After finding out the press was there – and the quote picked up by the Associated Press – Kerry apologized.
That was a long time ago, but there have been more recent faux pas.
"What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States," he was quoted as saying by the Boston Globe, April 3, 2003.
Kerry was criticized for comparing the United States with a brutal dictatorship in Iraq – a bit over the top for a man seeking the highest office in the land.
''For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions of Irish-Americans," he was quoted in the Congressional Record, St Patrick's Day, March 18, 1986.
There's just one little problem with that one – Kerry's not Irish.
And then there was the F-word in a Rolling Stone interview.
Even before his Quayle joke, Kerry achieved national recognition for the first time back in April 1971, while one of the leaders of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Kerry helped organize a rally of hundreds of Vietnam vets on the Capitol Mall in Washington. There were Viet Cong flags flying. There were clenched fists raised in the air. There were posters of Communist Party hack Angela Davis plastered on placards.
The most remarkable part of that media event was the visual image of these former soldiers throwing away their hard-won war medals – with John Kerry leading the action. News accounts reported Kerry, the decorated retired lieutenant, had thrown his own medals away.
Only many years later did Kerry admit he actually kept his and threw away the medals earned by others.
A few days after the rally, while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 23, 1971, Kerry said U.S. soldiers had "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, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."
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