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Politics : Proof that John Kerry is Unfit for Command -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (26686)	7/26/2006 7:57:22 AM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 27181

Crystal-Gazing with John Kerry By Kathleen Parker WASHINGTON -- It takes chutzpah, as they might say in Haifa, to declare that Hezbollah and Israel wouldn't be fighting now if John Kerry were president. Kerry, who did declare that, apparently has more chutzpah than nuance, as it turns out. "If I was president, this wouldn't have happened,'' said the Massachusetts senator, during a lunchtime visit to "Honest? John's Bar and No Grill Inc.'' in Detroit while campaigning for Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. "The president has been so absent on diplomacy when it comes to issues affecting the Middle East. ... We're going to have a lot of ground to make up (in 2008) because of it.'' Because of Bush's focus on Iraq, Kerry said, the president failed to address threats posed by other terrorist organizations. "He has made it so much worse because of his lack of reality in going into Iraq,'' said Kerry. And then, "We have to destroy Hezbollah.'' It's impossible, of course, to know what we'd have been watching on television the past several days had Kerry been elected president. Would Hezbollah not have attacked Israel? To answer that, we have to back up a few steps and first ask whether we would have been less focused on Iraq had Kerry been elected in 2004. Although Kerry voted for the Iraq invasion, he voted against $87 billion in supplemental funding to pay for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. His 'no' vote followed the defeat of an amendment he co-sponsored that would have rolled back tax cuts to help defray the cost of funding the war. Whatever his motivations, the vote contributed to his most infamous "flip-flop'' and one of the Bush campaign's most effective ads, which quoted Kerry saying: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.'' Over time, Kerry clearly changed his mind about our position in Iraq, so might we gather that he'd have done things differently? Let's pretend -- after all, Kerry is pretending -- that he could have soothed insurgents and terrorists alike and that, by now, most American troops would be home and Iraq would be enjoying the fruits of a fully functioning stable, democratic government. We'll give him that tea leaf. Having managed postwar Iraq better than the Bush administration -- and arguably my neighbor's cat could have -- what about Iran? Without Iran's support and provision of munitions, Hezbollah wouldn't be kidnapping Israeli soldiers and launching rockets into Israel right now. Might we also assume that under the aura of a President Kerry, the Iranians would have passed on electing the Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? If only John Kerry had been president, might Iran's powerful clerics have decided instead to back a more pragmatic Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani? Might we never have heard clerics urging voters to the polls with words like this: "Every vote you cast is a bullet in the heart of America''? Perhaps, perhaps, but we'll never know. Given that Iran's elections were arranged in advance by the country's clerics, it seems likely we'd be right where we are: Trying to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons and from keeping its promise to erase Israel from the map through its terrorist arm, Hezbollah. Finally, we come to Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians. With his broader focus, could Kerry have dissuaded Palestinians from electing Hamas to govern them? Or Syria to stop funding Hamas? Or prevented southern Lebanese from electing 14 members of Hezbollah to represent them in that country's Parliament? These are but some of the events that have transpired in the past year and a half. Whether a different approach to Iraq would have simplified our present task of stabilizing the region is unknowable. But Kerry's boast in the midst of chaos, death and ruin is an embarrassing expression of political hubris that should make even loyal Democrats cut and run. Kerry did get one thing perfectly right when he said we need to destroy Hezbollah. Israel apparently is aiming to do just that. Whatever might have been two years ago, Israel today must be grateful that George Bush -- not John Kerry -- is its wingman. realclearpolitics.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (26686)	7/27/2006 10:45:44 AM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 27181

More of John Kerry's Retroactive Campaign Promises On Sunday, John Kerry said of Israel's war against Hezbollah, "If I was president, this wouldn't have happened," adding, "we have to destroy Hezbollah." But wait a minute – Hezbollah didn't attack us on 9/11! Wouldn't fighting Hezbollah distract us from the urgent task of finding Osama bin Laden? Democrats can't come out and admit that they refuse to fight any war in defense of America, so they utter the "Where's Osama?" incantation to pretend that they'd be doing something. To wit: dedicating the entire resources of the U.S. military to locating Osama bin Laden. Thus, in the third presidential debate, Kerry complained about the cost of the war in Iraq, saying the war was "the result of this president taking his eye off of Osama bin Laden." After making the capture of Osama bin Laden their sole objective in the war on terrorism, now Democrats expect us to believe they would have been fighting every other Muslim jihadist on the planet like mad – just not one of the main sponsors of Islamic terrorism, Saddam Hussein. But they'd be merciless with every other mass-murdering, Islamic, terror-sponsoring lunatic. Israel's recent tussle with Hezbollah reminds us how absurd the Democrats' fixation on Osama is. America has been under attack from Muslim extremists for nearly 30 years. Not just al-Qaida and certainly not just Osama bin Laden. Here's the highlights reel for anyone still voting for the Democrats: November 1979: Muslim extremists (Iranian variety) seized the U.S. embassy in Iran and held 52 American hostages for 444 days, following Democrat Jimmy Carter's masterful foreign policy granting Islamic fanaticism its first real foothold in the Middle East. 1982: Muslim extremists (mostly Hezbollah) began a nearly decade-long habit of taking Americans and Europeans hostage in Lebanon, killing William Buckley and holding Terry Anderson for six and a half years. April 1983: Muslim extremists (Islamic Jihad or possibly Hezbollah) bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 16 Americans. October 1983: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) blew up the U.S. Marine barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 Marines. December 1983: Muslim extremists (al-Dawa) blew up the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing five and injuring 80. September 1984: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) exploded a truck bomb at the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut, killing 24 people, including two U.S. servicemen. December 1984: Muslim extremists (probably Hezbollah) hijacked a Kuwait Airways airplane, landed in Iran and demanded the release of the 17 members of al-Dawa who had been arrested for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing two Americans before the siege was over. June 14, 1985: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) hijacked TWA Flight 847 out of Athens, diverting it to Beirut, taking the passengers hostage in return for the release of the Kuwait 17 as well as another 700 prisoners held by Israel. When their demands were not met, the Muslims shot U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem and dumped his body on the tarmac. October 1985: Muslim extremists (Palestine Liberation Front backed by Libya) seized an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, killing 69-year-old American Leon Klinghoffer by shooting him and then tossing his body overboard. December 1985: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed airports in Rome and Vienna, killing 20 people, including five Americans. April 1986: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed a discotheque frequented by U.S. servicemen in West Berlin, injuring hundreds and killing two, including a U.S. soldier. December 1988: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground. (Then came an amazing, historic pause in Muslim extremists' relentless war on America after Ronald Reagan won the Cold War by doing the opposite of everything recommended by Democrats, depriving Islamic terrorists of their Soviet sponsors. This confuses liberals because they don't understand the concept of terror sponsors, whether it's the Soviet Union or Iraq.) February 1993: Muslim extremists (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, possibly with involvement of friendly rival al-Qaida) set off a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center, killing six and wounding more than 1,000. Spring 1993: Muslim extremists (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Sudanese Islamic Front and at least one member of Hamas) plot to blow up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the U.N. complex and the FBI's lower Manhattan headquarters. November 1995: Muslim extremists (possibly Iranian "Party of God") explode a car bomb at U.S. military headquarters in Saudi Arabia, killing five U.S. military servicemen. June 1996: Muslim extremists (13 Saudis and a Lebanese member of Hezbollah, probably with involvement of al-Qaida) explode a truck bomb outside the Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds. August 1998: Muslim extremists (al-Qaida) explode truck bombs at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 and injuring thousands. October 2000: Muslim extremists (al-Qaida) blow up the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 U.S. sailors. Sept. 11, 2001: Muslim extremists (al-Qaida) hijack commercial aircraft and fly planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 Americans. America's war with Islamic fanaticism didn't start on 9/11, but it's going to end with 9/11 – as long as Americans aren't foolish enough ever to put a Democrat in the White House. By Ann Coulter FrontPageMagazine.com \| July 27, 2006