John Kerry took Bush to task with his fiery speech on the Senate floor yesterday. I almost fell out of my seat as I was watching C-span. I think he was "channeling" his anti-war days; that time when he said (I am paraphrasing) how can you ask a guy to be the last to die for a lie. It is located on
http://www.daoureport.salon.com under the headline "Kerry Attacks Bush".
The following are fiery excerpts from Kerry's Senate floor speech:
"Mr. President, Veterans Day is sacred or it is supposed to be. Veterans Day is a day to honor veterans, not to play attack politics...
Perhaps most striking of all is that his almost desperate sounding Veterans Day attack on those who have told the truth about his distortion was itself accompanied by even more distortion...
Does the President think that the many generals, former top administration officials and Senators from his own party who have joined over two thirds of the country in questioning the President's handling of the war in Iraq are all unpatriotic too?...
The President does not have a monopoly on patriotism, and this is not a country where only those who agree with him support the troops and care about defending our country. No matter what the President says, asking tough questions isn't pessimism, it's patriotism...
His statement that Democrats saw and heard the same intelligence he did is just flat out untrue - unless of course the President and his Administration didn't do their job and study the additional intelligence given only to them and not the Congress...
THERE IS NO GREATER BREACH OF THE PUBLIC TRUST THAN KNOWINGLY MISLEADING THE COUNTRY INTO WAR...
When the President tried to pretend on Friday that the Intelligence Committee had already determined that he had not manipulated intelligence and mislead the American public, he knew full well that they have not yet reported on that very question - that is why Democrats were forced to shut down the Senate and go into closed session to make the Republicans take this issue seriously...
The bottom line is that the President and his Administration did mislead America into war...
The President misled America about his intentions and the manner in which he would make his decision...
The act of misleading was just going through the motions of inspections while it appears he really couldn't wait to just KICK Saddam Hussein out of power...
The act of misleading was pretending to Americans the real concern was weapons of mass destruction when the evidence suggests that his real intent was to finish the job his father wisely refused and remove Saddam Hussein to "remake the Middle East"...
In fact, the President was misleading America right up until two days before lauching his war of choice when he told Americans we had exhausted all othe avenues...
The White House has admitted that the President told Congress and the American public in the State of the Union Address that Saddam was attempting to acquire fuel for nuclear weapons despite the fact that the CIA specifically told the Administration three times, in writing and verbally, not to use this intelligence. Obviously, Democrats didn't get that memo..."
Read the whole thing. It is really powerful!!