Posted on 03/24/2003 7:56:18 AM PST by PJ-Comix
MANCHESTER, N.H. - Americans should ignore wartime sentimentalism of President Bush and judge him on a string of domestic failures clouded by his headlong drive to war, Democratic presidential challenger John F. Kerry charged yesterday.
``America is not defined by what drops out of the belly of a B-2 or what comes out of the muzzle of an M-4 carbine,'' the junior Massachusetts senator told a breakfast gathering of 150 Democrats here.
``America is, in the end, defined by the quality of our life here at home and what we stand for to the rest of the world and how we live our values in all our policies.''
Kerry, keeping up his steady criticism of Bush - even as other hopefuls tone down their rhetoric during the war, accused the Republican president of failing the nation's schools, elderly, environment and uninsured. And he used the war to pummel Bush on several of those issues.
``My friends, if we can find $6 billion to get Turkey to join a war, we can fund the schools of Manchester and Concord and Keene and a host of other places in this country.''
Kerry has kept up a steady campaign schedule during the ramp up to war and had a full schedule of events in the first-in-the-nation primary state yesterday. After a 40-minute stump speech and a nearly two-hour meet-and-greet in Manchester, the senator spoke at a Concord brunch and a Nashua house party.
Democrats said he shouldn't be faulted for campaigning during the war - or for suggesting the commander-in-chief should be tossed out of office.
``You know, democracy doesn't stop when you're at war,'' said Kathy Sullivan, chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. ``At times like this, I think it just stresses how important our own democracy is and that we can't stop our democracy while there's war going on, and we have not done that in this country in the past.''
Kerry stressed to reporters that he supports U.S. troops in Iraq. In fact, the decorated Vietnam veteran praised Bush's war plan, saying commanders are making ``sensible'' decisions and avoiding confrontation when possible.
But Kerry kept up his criticism that Bush moved to war too quickly, without enough diplomatic support.
Among the harshest was a comparison of what he called Bush's failures to homeland successes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his first lady, Eleanor, during World War II.
``That was a true time of global confrontation and peril,'' Kerry said. ``But even as they managed all that, a conflagration of human effort, that dwarfs, dwarfs what we are currently involved in in the context of the war on terror, they sat in the White House and struggled with how they would keep faith with the values of the New Deal.''
Kerry said FDR gave the nation its middle class, drove for gains for women in the workplace and ended discrimination in the military - all during wartime.
``Never has there been so much to do in our great country and never has so little been asked of Americans in an effort to do it,'' Kerry said.
``Franklin Roosevelt would ask, `What are you doing to our great country?' And we should be asking, `What are we doing to our country?' ''
After the speech, Kerry denied suggestions by a primary opponent that he is being two-faced in his war criticism of Bush because he voted to support the congressional resolution authorizing force in Iraq.
Kerry called the comments by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean ``patently and unequivocally'' wrong and said his position on Iraq ``has never varied.''
If you want to know the REAL REASON why the DESPERATE Ketchup Boy is in full campaign mode despite the war, it is because he is LOSING to Howard Dean in New Hampshire. Check out this THREAD for more info on this.
Among the harshest was a comparison of what he called Bush's failures to homeland successes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his first lady, Eleanor, during World War II.
``That was a true time of global confrontation and peril,'' Kerry said. ``But even as they managed all that, a conflagration of human effort, that dwarfs, dwarfs what we are currently involved in in the context of the war on terror, they sat in the White House and struggled with how they would keep faith with the values of the New Deal.''
Wrong! The New Deal was pretty much put on the back burner during WWII. Check any history book. FDR devoted himself to the War effort almost to the exclusion of everything else including the New Deal.
Kerry said FDR gave the nation its middle class, drove for gains for women in the workplace and ended discrimination in the military - all during wartime.
This statement alone proves what a complete IDIOT Ketchup Boy is. The FACT is that the U.S. Military remained completely SEGREGATED during WWII. Whites and Blacks served in SEPARATE units. Ketchup Boy should be held to account for this IDIOTIC and UNTRUE statement!!!
Translation: "Job #1 is not national security, it's domestic socialism."
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