Reading the transcript, I think President Bush was doing OK in the debate until this moment where Kerry said this:
I've met kids in Ohio, parents in Wisconsin places, Iowa, where they're going out on the Internet to get the state-of-the-art body gear to send to their kids. Some of them got them for a birthday present.
I think that's wrong. Humvees -- 10,000 out of 12,000 Humvees that are over there aren't armored. And you go visit some of those kids in the hospitals today who were maimed because they don't have the armament.
This president just -- I don't know if he sees what's really happened on there. But it's getting worse by the day. More soldiers killed in June than before. More in July than June. More in August than July. More in September than in August.
I think it was the implication that President Bush didn't care about our troops more then anything else that made Bush lose his temper. His response to Kerry was this:
First of all, what my opponent wants you to forget is that he voted to authorize the use of force and now says it's the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place.
I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops? What message does that send to our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis?
No, the way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I've just outlined.
Which wasn't that great a response. It would have been better to just let it slide rather then do a response, especially since that response wasn't very articulate.
I think the President got mad here because he sees that Kerry's constant criticism and calling Iraq a "colossal mistake" as making the war harder. To a large extent he's right, if you had to choose it would be much better to have Kerry shut up then it would be to armor all those Humvee's, because less soldiers would be dying in Iraq. Those months that Kerry rattled off? They correspond to when Kerry started campaigning. Remember that the President has made a huge effort to meet with the soldiers and their families, and I think he truly does feel their pain. So being criticized like this with outright lies would piss me off too.
Now don't get me wrong, I think that the challenger in a Presidential race, even in wartime, has to question the President. What I object to is the smarmy way Kerry is doing it: Style over Substance. Senator Kerry really doesn't have any idea what he would do in Iraq past January. So instead of talking about real alternatives, he makes these smarmy attacks.
Comments (4)
I was pissed about that body armor/Humvee thing too. Not every soldier needs a flak jacket, nor would they wear it if they had one. The Humvee is just an upgraded jeep and a damm good one at that. I have a photo of my uncle when he was in the Army in 1945 and is was nearly naked. I asked him about it and he said it was hot in Burma. Did he blame FDR that? NO! I’d be glad to send the jpg.
Posted by Ivan Ivanovich | October 2, 2004 7:07 AM
Posted on October 2, 2004 07:07
Well, isn’t the whole problem with the war that we went into because of style over substance? Hussain was a paper tiger, a blowhard, and we bit the bait without checking to see if he was a real worm or a rubber phoney. Now we’re stuck there because we lept before we looked. Or we looked, but ignored the preponderance of evidence that said it was a bear trap and not a flowerbed, because we wanted to jump into a flowerbed. Take your pick.
Posted by Your Conscience | October 5, 2004 9:29 AM
Posted on October 5, 2004 09:29
I think there was selling the war, which was all about stockpiles of WMD, and there was the reason for the war, which was 1-2 WMD in the hands of terrorists. (Which was definitely in Iraq’s capabilities.)
Posted by Opinionated Bastard![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.opinionatedbastard.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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October 5, 2004 10:27 AM
Posted on October 5, 2004 10:27
Unit Refused Iraq Mission, Military Says
McClenny said in her message that her platoon had refused to go on a fuel-hauling convoy to Taji, north of Baghdad. “We had broken down trucks, non-armored vehicles and, um, we were carrying contaminated fuel. They are holding us against our will. We are now prisoners,” she said.
Staff Sgt. Christopher Stokes, a 37-year-old chemical engineer from Charlotte, N.C., went to Iraq with the 343rd but had to come home because of an injury. He said reservists were given inferior equipment and tensions in the company had been building since they were deployed in February.
“It wasn’t really safe,” he said. “The vehicles are not all that up to par anyway. The armor that they have is homemade. It’s not really armor. It’s like little steel rails.”
Posted by awasis | October 16, 2004 5:38 AM
Posted on October 16, 2004 05:38