Quote:
Originally posted by Fair and Equitable
Since you want political leaders, here goes:
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), 10/1/01, Roll Call: "I truly believe if we had a Department of Peace, we could have seen [9/11] coming."
Al Sharpton, 12/1/02, New York Times, on the 9/11 attacks: "America is beginning to reap what it has sown."
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, 3/1/2003, Toledo Blade: "One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped cast off the British crown."
Representative Dennis Kucinich, 9/30/01: Sitting In His Capitol Hill Office Last Week, Near A Window Where He Could See The Smoke Rising From The Pentagon On Sept. 11, Kucinich Insisted He Is More Optimistic Than Ever That People Worldwide Are Ready To Embrace The Cause Of Nonviolence.” ... “Afghanistan May Be An Incubator Of Terrorism But It Doesn’t Follow That We Bomb Afghanistan …” (Elizabeth Auster, “Offer The Hand Of Peace,” [Cleveland, OH] Plain Dealer, 9/30/01)
Senator John Kerry, 4/19/04: "I will use our military when necessary, but it is not primarily a military operation. It's an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, public-diplomacy effort," he said. "And we're putting far more money into the war on the battlefield than we are into the war of ideas. We need to get it straight." (Washington Times, 4/19/04)
To state the obvious, three of these were candidates for the Democratic presidential nominee, with one winning the nomination. I'm looking forward to your logic for ignoring their comments or perhaps you will finally explain why Karl Rove's statement was not accurate.
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To state the obvious, none of these quotations -- however inflammatory -- fit Rove's bill. To take the last, Kerry said that he would use the military when necessary, but suggested that the Bush Administration was choosing the wrong tactics. Porter Goss, Arturo Gonzalez and Karen Hughes would strongly resist the idea that what they do is not part of the war on terrorism.
Kucinich sounds like he was channeling Gandhi. I don't happen to agree -- and neither do most Democrats, who voted unanimously to fund the war in Afghanistan -- but in any event, what he said there does not support Rove. Someone surely has done a good job of finding you sentences from Kaptur, Sharpton & Abercrombie to wrench out of context, but none of those fit Rove's bill, either. Kaptur and Abercrombie voted for the war in Afghanistan, too, so perhaps you're not trying very hard to understand where they were coming from.
