1115.org

Poor George (as Ann Richards famously said of a slightly different president on a slightly different occasion). He’s fallen on such hard times that he now has to serve as his own attack dog. As Jason pointed out in comments the other day, never before has the White House doubled as Hate Speech Central. Of course, it’s just one more line item to add to the already long “never before” list that pretty much constitutes Bush’s presidential legacy.

Part of the problem with being your own attack dog is that you lose some of your dignity. Perhaps that’s not a problem for this President. (He believes passionately in freedom, and as Kris Kristofferson wrote, in a slightly different context, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.)

Part of the problem is also how silly you look if a mean-spirited attack rebounds in your face.

Riding high after labeling more than 50% of the voting population as supporters of terrorism, Bush obviously thought Kerry‘s “stuck in Iraq” joke made him a soft target. A target that even a National Guard stay-at-home could feel safe in attacking. His expression and body language when he attacked Kerry, and demanded that Kerry apologize to troops in Iraq, said it all—a cocksure little man doing his level best not to look quite as cocky as he feels.

After reading Kerry’s comments to a GOP audience in Georgia, Bush said Kerry’s statement was “insulting and it is shameful. The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave, and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology.” The White House tipped off the networks to when Bush would attack Kerry, so the comments could be carried live and make the evening news.

A pity we never got to see the President’s expression when he watched Kerry’s rejoinder
(or had it read out to him, as the case may be):

Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how. I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy. If anyone owes our troops in the fields an apology, it is the president and his failed team and a Republican majority in the Congress that has been willing to stamp — rubberstamp policies that have done injury to our troops and to their families.

My statement yesterday — and the White House knows this full well — was a botched joke about the president and the president’s people, not about the troops. The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable testament to their abject failure in making America safe. …

I’m not going to stand for it. What our troops deserve is a winning strategy, and what they deserve is leadership that is up to the sacrifice that they’re making. Sadly, this is the best that this administration can do in a month when we have lost 100 young men and women who have given their lives for a failed policy. Over half the names on the Vietnam wall were put there after our leaders knew that our policy was wrong, and it was wrong that leaders were quiet then, and I’m not going to be quiet now. This is a textbook Republican campaign strategy: try to change the topic, try to make someone else the issue, try to make something else said the issue, not the policy, not their responsibility.

Well, everybody knows it’s not working this time, and I’m not going to stand around and let it work.

If anyone thinks that a veteran, someone like me, who’s been fighting my entire career to provide for veterans, to fight for their benefits, to help honor what their service is — if anybody thinks that a veteran would somehow criticize more than 140,000 troops serving in Iraq, and not the president and his people who put them there, they’re crazy. It’s just wrong.
[…]
This policy is broken, and this president and his administration didn’t do their homework. They didn’t study what would happen in Iraq. They didn’t study and listen to the people who were the experts and would have told them. And they know that’s what I was talking about yesterday. I’m not going to be lectured by a White House or by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, who’s taking a day off from mimicking and attacking Michael J. Fox, who’s now going to try to attack me and lie about me and distort me. No way. It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country, are willing to lie about those who did. It’s over.

This administration has given us a Katrina foreign policy: mistake upon mistake upon mistake, unwilling to give our troops the armor that they need, unwilling to have enough troops in place, unwilling to give them the humvees that they deserve to protect them, unwilling to have a coalition that is adequate to be able to defend our interests.

Our own intelligence agency has told us they’re creating more terrorists, not less; they’re making us less safe, not more. I think Americans are sick and tired of this game.

These Republicans are afraid to stand up and debate a real veteran on this topic, and they’re afraid to debate — you know, they want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men.

Well, we’re going to have a real debate in this country about this policy. The bottom line is, these Republicans want to distort this policy. And this time it won’t work, because we are going to stay in their face with the truth.

And no Democrat is going to be bullied by these people, by these kinds of attacks that have no place in American politics. It’s time to set our policy correct.

They have a stand still and lose policy in Iraq, and they have a cut and run policy in Afghanistan. And the fact is our troops, who have served heroically, who deserve better, deserve leadership that is up to their sacrifice, period.
[…]
You got Dick Cheney saying everything’s just terrific in Iraq only a week ago. John McCain ought to ask for an apology from Dick Cheney for misleading America. He ought to ask for an apology from the president for lying about the nuclear program in Africa. He ought to ask for an apology for once again a week ago referring to al Qaeda as being the central problem in Iraq when al Qaeda is not the central problem.

Enough is enough! I’m not going to stand for these people trying to shift the topic and make it politics. America deserves a real discussion about real policy, and that’s what this election is going to be about next Tuesday.
[…]
Let me tell you something, I’m not going to give them one ounce of daylight to spread one of their lies and to play this game ever, ever again. That is a lesson I learned deep and hard, and I’ll tell you, I will stand up anywhere across this country and take these guys on. This is dishonoring not just the troops themselves by pointing the finger at the troops, it’s abusing the troops. They’re using the troops. They’re trying to make the troops into the target here. I didn’t do that, and they know that. And for them to suggest that somebody who served their country as I did and has a record like I have in the United States Congress of standing up and fighting for the troops would ever, every insult the troops is an insult in and of itself. And they owe us an apology for even daring to use the White House to stand up and make this an issue again. Shame on them. Shame on them. And may the American people take that shame to the polls with them next Tuesday.

Somehow, I don’t think George Bush won this round. One speech like this at the right time in 2004 might well have made that election unstealable.

This story has a satisfying Tony Snow footnote too. Snow called Kerry’s botched joke “an absolute insult”. So Kerry decided to show Snow what an absolute insult sounds like:

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed-suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium…

(I do wish he had said “codpiece” though.)

Just as an aside, why does Reuters’ headline read “Kerry Draws Republican Fire” and The BBC’s read “Kerry under fire for Iraq ‘joke’” instead of “Kerry Fires Back”?

Must be a convoluted Librul Media conspiracy, I guess.