Reply #3: I think this statement was amplified by the RW noise machine. [View All]

[TayTay]

If memory serves, Sen. Kerry made that statement after he had won the Super Tuesday primaries. I believe that subsequent accounts of that speech note that the Senator was exhausted and was speaking off the cuff when he said the rational, senate-like words to the effect that he had voted for a version of the bill before he against the final version. However, that line was one snippet of a much longer speech that explained why the Bush policies were failing and why Kerry had problems with them.

There are a couple of things to consider here. (Ah, get some rest on the road Senator.) The very flawed Newsweek account of the '04 campaign did accurately note that the Republicans took opposition research very, very seriously. They had a video truck filled with equipment that was used to tape and extract comments from speeches by Kerry for quick turn-around into attack ads. It paid off in this instance. The Repubs knew the value of defining Kerry before he could define himself to the American people. So, they distilled all of what he said into a very misleading ad that claimed that Kerry was all over the place on Iraq. This was untrue, but the damage was done. (BTW, what can Dems learn from this experience. Probably nothing, since Dems would rather attack each other and assign blame than learn from the past, but there are lessons in here for those who care to see them.)

The other thing to consider is the actual debate in mid-October of 2003. There were some really interesting proposals in Congress made by the Democrats that sought to reign in Bush and the Administration in regards to Iraq. I can't summarize it all here. Get your wonk on and head over to the Congressional Record and have a look at the votes for Oct 17, 2003. Just look at some of the Democratic proposals that never made it onto the floor of the Senate because they were tabled. Ahm, things were not as they seemed and we are remembering stuff that didn't really happen. Go check that out, it was one of the most interesting periods of the Congress in terms of dealing with the Iraq War.