Lawrence O'Donnel says he could care less if troops are demoralized by Kerry negativity on war.

LOL. Man, what was I thinking on that post? ;-0

Wasn't there some guy named Patton reporting to some guy named Eisenhower beginning around November of 1942 in the North African theater? Haven't some argued that the defeat of the Axis powers in Tunisia coupled with disaster of Stalingrad was the turning point of the war? Weren't there some B-17s and 24s of the "Mighty Eighth" flying out of England beginning around Independence Day 1942? Didn't we invade a little Italian island called Sicily in preparation for the summer campaign of 1942?

Thank you, Kamaaina for extricating my head from my arse.

-T

1943 summer campaign in Italy. Oops.

-T

YEP, just like they did in vietnam.

LOL. Don't forget the hair plugs and self-tanning trophy wife.

...vial of coke in his car...

Are we starting a rumor or passing one on?

Transcript should be up on LexisNexis tomorrow. I will post as soon as it appears in a new thread and this thread.

Thanks and please post. What a lot of posters with commonsense have been saying all along. The Liberal Democrats place no value on our military. Just as john sKerry is a great mouther of words he lacks credibility. If Kerry is elected I can guarantee that the place where he will cut will be the military. sKerry is great about deceiving the public with his stylistic words but the truth is he is not good for this country. I pray every night that God will not let this man become president. His tenure in office will damage our country for decades to come. I still remember the empty promises of james earl carter and you can see how that fiasco ended up. Just visit Panama as I did two years ago and see how the Chinese have moved into the Western hemisphere in a big way. I believe that the survival of the United States as we know it hangs in the balance of the coming election outcome.

Thanks.

Strange. Still no transcript... They always post on Tuesdays, but nothing yet. This is why I requested that people grab a video recording to preserve the moment. I suspect that the transcript will be sanitized...

-T

Here the key part of the transcript:

Federal News Service

October 4, 2004 Monday

SECTION: PRESS CONFERENCE OR SPEECH

LENGTH: 5067 words

HEADLINE: THE MCLAUGHLIN GROUP

HOST: JOHN MCLAUGHLIN

PANEL: PATRICK BUCHANAN, MSNBC ELEANOR CLIFT, NEWSWEEK TONY BLANKLEY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: What about Bush's point? Will and can the troops follow Kerry? Eleanor Clift.

MS. CLIFT: Of course. First of all, we have a disciplined military and they will follow the commander-in-chief. And they know better than anyone, because they're on the ground, how they have been cheated in the fact that there wasn't a plan to get the peace, that they were under-equipped.

And Kerry has made excellent points here, and I think he really handled the question about his allegedly changing positions by stating his core positions in succinct fashion. That little red light on the podium, Kerry ought to take it everywhere he goes. It really helped him.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You think he cleared the president's point that the troops will and can follow him even though he said that this war is a colossal diversion.

MR. BLANKLEY: Well, as Eleanor said, obviously the troops will obey orders. But the larger point is that he made it inadvertently against him in the debate when he said, "How do you tell a guy to die for a mistake," and then he called this war a mistake, and then Lehrer asked him, "Well, does that mean that you'd be asking these men to fight for a mistake?" And that's the problem.

Yes, obviously our men are going to do their duty. But it's awfully difficult if your commander-in-chief says, "This is a mistake; we shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be fighting and dying there, but go charge into the battlefield.

"

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you think --

MR. BLANKLEY: That's a terrible way --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you think, when the absentee ballots come in, that the majority of the ballots are going to share the view of those Wisconsin guys?

MR. BLANKLEY: No.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You do not?

MR. BLANKLEY: Everybody believes that the military vote will be disproportionately for Bush.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: And you think that will be the case?

MR. BLANKLEY: I'm --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You want to make a quick point?

MR. BUCHANAN: Yes. Look, Bush has a tremendous point here. It's one of the best points of his campaign. However, I don't think he made it effectively. What Kerry did was answer it with a little anecdote about a couple of soldiers, but the anecdotes are what people remember. So in terms of the debate, I think that Kerry wins. But in terms of the broader point --

MS. CLIFT: Well, he also answered it substantively.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: He also said -- he also enlarged it to say that the troops know that this war is not being handled right. Now, you've seen videotape and I've seen videotape --

MR. BUCHANAN: There's no doubt that there are some problems now with the troops over in Iraq that did not exist as of a year ago. What the president is saying is Kerry is responsible.

MS. CLIFT: But he also handled it substantively. He also handled it substantively because he said you separate the war from the warrior and you take care of the troops. And he also acknowledged the famous Pottery Barn rule of Colin Powell's, that you may not have favored the war, but we're there, we broke it, and we have a commitment to fix it. And that's a responsible position.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Okay.

MR. O'DONNELL: Look, it's not our job to lie about war to make troops feel good. And I don't care what they feel.

MR. BLANKLEY: I don't --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Let me finish.

MR. O'DONNELL: I don't care what they feel about the truth of this war. If John Kerry thinks this war is a mistake and if the United States of America elects him president, the troops are going to have to live with that. And they know better than anyone else whether it was a mistake or not.

MR. BUCHANAN: The commander-in-chief should not undermine the troops --

MR. O'DONNELL: He's not undermining anything.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you want to make a point here?

MR. BUCHANAN: He'd demoralize them.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: All right, the human --

MR. O'DONNELL: I don't care if they're demoralized. They have to go to war and be prepared --

MR. BUCHANAN: The commander-in-chief does care.

MR. O'DONNELL: -- to live with the debate that goes on in the United States about whether it's right or wrong.

MR. BUCHANAN: But if you're going to be commander-in-chief, you cannot be demoralizing the troops in wartime, even if you think the --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Hey, Pat --

MR. BUCHANAN: -- war is a mistake.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Pat, don't you think, don't you know, that those troops talk with their parents, talk with their sweethearts, talk with their wives, talk with their children, and they are informed about the debate going on over here?

MR. BUCHANAN: Kerry's most vulnerable position is the very fact that people think that he is poor-mouthing America in a time of war.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: In point of fact, does that have any impact on the troops at all?

MR. BUCHANAN: I believe it does.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: I believe it does not.

MS. CLIFT: They are demoralized because they are targets in a country that doesn't want them. That's why they're demoralized.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: We've got to move on.

MR. BLANKLEY: Let me --

MS. CLIFT: They're not demoralized because a potential president is pointing out that this war was unnecessary.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Eleanor, let Tony in.

MR. BLANKLEY: Look, none of us know what each of these hundreds of thousands of fine young men and women are thinking. But I want to make a point about the problem that Kerry had regarding American voters, which is what we have some knowledge of, theoretically.

The problem Kerry has is that it seems that the majority of Americans, by a small number, want to see us win this war in Iraq, now that we're here, whether we should have been here or not. And he doesn't sound like a certain trumpet.

MR. O'DONNELL: He says he wants to win it.

MR. BLANKLEY: He sounds like an uncertain trumpet.

MR. O'DONNELL: He says he wants to win it. He wants to fight it to win it.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: He's got a plan to get out. He's got a plan to follow through. He does not want to quit. I want to rephrase that. He wants --

MR. O'DONNELL: He wants to win it.

MR. BUCHANAN: If it was a blunder, why does he want to win?

MR. BLANKLEY: He makes the words he wants to win, but the aura that comes out of him is "This is a mistake; let's find an exit strategy."

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Okay, we've got a lot of ground to cover.