What I want to hear Kerry say

[SavageWombat]

Something like this:

"Dick Cheney has made some claims about what the world would be like if I had been president on 9/11. Now, personally, I don't put much faith in what Cheney and the Bush administration predict would happen. After all, they predicted that Iraq would welcome our troops with open arms. They predicted that oil revenues would pay for the war. They predicted that the invasion would prevent terrorist attacks. They predicted that their tax cuts for the wealthy would create millions of new jobs. Obviously, their track record of prediction isn't too good."

"I can't say for certain what would have happened if I'd been president the last four years. But I can say what happened when Bush was president - our military is bogged down in Iraq, al-Qaeda is still active and dangerous, our national deficit is skyrocketing, and millions of Americans have lost their jobs with no sign of improvement."

"Only George W. Bush was in the White House since 2001. And George W. Bush is the one who will have to answer to the voters for the miserable failures of his administration."

[Cursive_Knives512]

1. Perfect!

He def. should say that, but if he won't, at least we know Dean has enough guts.

[LynzM]

2. Excellent :)

Send it to them! You never know, maybe you'll hear yourself on TV one of these days...

[Killarney]

3. That's awesome. You should

you should format that into a Letter to the Editor and send it to your city newspaper. Get the word out! That's one of the easy ways we can get our word into the media

[IrateCitizen]

4. Kerry SHOULDN'T say that -- but "surrogates" should

By that, I mean that MoveOn.org, Dean and his organization, etc. should fill up the airwaves with this message. Kerry shouldn't do it for two reasons:

1. It allows him to stay out of the gutter
2. It allows him to concentrate on a more "positive" message and thus be seen as above the fray.

[Sparkly]

5. Yes, and...

On this "if it weren't for us, Saddam would be in power" thing, I'd like to hear somebody say that he was contained, and inspectors were on the ground; I want to hear somebody explain clearly that most of the stuff they get hysterical over ("Bad! Mass graves! Bad! Gassed his own people!") happened a decade ago, and was already dealt with -- and we were still on him, not looking the other way. Why doesn't anybody say that?

The second point I'd like to hear someone say uses the "Saddam would still be in power" as a springboard for a simple concept: There's always more than one way to accomplish an end. Bush's war wasn't the only option for getting Saddam out of power, if "regime change" was the goal.

Bush's massive, irresponsible tax cuts were not the only tax cuts proposed.
Bush's weak, ineffective approach to Al Qaeda is not the only possible course of action.

This also goes to:
When a Senator votes against a bill, it's often not the ONLY bill that can get the job done. The $87 billion, without a way to pay for it, was not the only way $87 billion could have been allocated. Bills can be absorbed into other bills. Bills can contain unacceptable things along with desireable things. Bills can have alternatives that are preferable.

Is there some simple way to get that simple concept across to the SIMPLE-minded sheeple of the country?

[whatthee]

6. !

sounds to me like appeasement!

that is not the answer!

[newyawker99]

11. Hi whatthee!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Arkana]

9. what people don't get is this

they don't see the underlying causes for this war because Rummy and Uncle Dick have so bogged them down with "freeing Iraq's citizens" and "finding weapons of mass destruction." Well, we did one of the two, but there are no WMD, and wasn't that the REAL reason for our beef with Iraq?

The causes for invasion changed, seemingly, every week. First, it was that Saddam posed an immediate threat to the United States because he had ties with al-Qaeda (not true). People figured out that this was a load of crap, and the boys in the White House had to change tack. Suddenly, we were there because they had WMD and chem/bio weapons. That may have been true at one point, and then only because we supplied them with these same weapons. Soon, people figured out that once again their Great Leader had lied to them (courtesy of the Kay report). Once again, Chimpy took a U-turn and-presto!-we were there to free the people of Iraq! Yeah, that was it!

As far as I'm concerned, 1 out of 3 isn't good enough, especially when you kill thousands of innocents in the process, not to mention the hundreds of Americans that have died fighting for...what? Oil and revenge?

[seabeyond]

7. excellent, i want to hear him say exactly that

too

[SheilaT]

8. So what in the world is

Kerry out there saying instead of this?

And the other poster who pointed out that Howard Dean would be saying stuff like this were he the nominee is absolutely right.

[truthspeaker]

10. if Kerry had been president, 571 brave Americans would still be alive

Instead, they were killed in Iraq, their caskets smuggled into Dover AFB under cover of darkness.