I know it is hard to do

[fedupinBushcountry]

but Senator Kerry will be on H&C's tonight . I have it on mute right now and thank God because Oliver North was just on.

Kerry will probably be on in the second half. Thank goodness for a mute button.

[globalvillage]

1. Thank you. I have not seen or heard Sen Kerry all day.

I need a fix.
:-)

[globalvillage]

2. You're right.

The mute button helps.

[karynnj]

3. They are now deifying Bush

who "is not a natural on TV"

[globalvillage]

4. OH.MY.GOD.

It's AWFUL! It's like a commercial for bush*. Good Lord, I didn't know it was this bad.
BREAKING NEWS: bush* doesn't sweat!
I don't know if I can make it to the Kerry segment.

[karynnj]

6. I couldn't believe the "Bush doesn't sweat"

There are photos where you can see wetness where sweat normally is. I seriously can't imagine the biggest Kerry an suggesting that about him.

[globalvillage]

7. There is a great deal of photographic evidence

of a sweaty bush*. I won't post it here to preserve the integrity of the thread.
But it's out there.

Google if you dare.

edit, forgot the *.

[karynnj]

5. OMG - Kerry up next

They have text saying an "unlikely alliance" and speaking about Israel. Kerry got 77% of the jewish vote, has great ratings by all Jewish groups.

[Mass]

8. Remind me never to watch Kerry on FOX again. Somehow, he seems to

be afraid to look too liberal (or I am mistaken on whom he is, but I dont believe so).

[globalvillage]

10. He didn't seem himself.

and Colmes is an idiot.

[Mass]

14. Definitively an idiot. Why talk about Clinton when talking about

healthcare. The result was that Kerry did not speak about his plan, but had to criticize Clinton's plan instead.

[TayTay]

11. I think it's the editing.

He has been pretty liberal lately. (Or progressive or whatever word it is that is supposed to be used for people to the left of the political dial.)

[fedupinBushcountry]

12. I think it is definitely the editing

we have no idea in what sequence those questions were asked and what parts were taken out.

[Mass]

13. I agree. I was really surprised. You could see what he thinks by

moment, particularly when he was talking about diplomacy, but I was a little surprised by the qualificatives he made concerning the cease fire and Qana.

The truth is that I am sure that we would not be there if Kerry was president (if anything because, even if something like that had happened, he would have had somebody to speak with in Iran and Syria, and probably dialogued with Hezbollah). I read what he said on Imus and I mostly agree with him, which is why I was so surprised.

[karynnj]

9. Kerry spoke of a lot of things

- health care = moral issue
Asked about the comment that this wouldn't happen in ME if he were President. He gave these reasons:
- Our actions in Iraq have destroyed our moral leverage (he said he would have done things differently in Iraq, said we need diplomacy.
- Mentioned the US not in Iran diplomacy for 3 yrs
- Said we need a real cease fire with troops at the border - he also said we need to strengthen the Lebanese government so they can pull people away from Hezzbollah.

He would get in trouble here - when asked if Israel over-reacted he said No, but did criticise actions like Qana. (He did seem closer to the European than the Bush comments though)

[wisteria]

15. Those remarks on Israel and Qana did strike me as a hard stand and

I didn't care for them. My opinion is Israel has overreacted and the bombing in Quana wasn't necessary. But, I am no expert,perhaps he knows something we don't. He certainly couldn't be called non aggressive, anti-conflict tonight after his comments. Perhaps it did come across this way do to the editing.

What we don't do to see and hear Senator Kerry. I had to watch Bush, North, and the toe sucker- Morris along with Hannity before they got to the good stuff.

[karynnj]

16. He did say the bombing at Quana was (wrong, unfortunate -

I can't remember the words he used - but he did say something negative to kind of qualify the Israel thing.

I think that Kerry appreciates the situation in Israel. Israelis have lived unprovoked attacks since before 1948. Consider that we went to war with 2 countries because of 2 (very large) attacks - even though 1 country didn't attack us. Israel is about the size of NJ and a large proportion of the people know someone who died in a terrorist attack.

I think Israel's attack is out of proportion, but it seems that Lebanon had done nothing to rein in Hezzbollah or demand they not threaten Israel and the international community had not pushed them to. Kerry did suggest that Bolton had done little to push to disarm Hezzbollah. He specificly won't speak to Syria.

The problem with no one trying to persuade Hamas and Hezzbollah to give up terrorist goals is that there is a never ending cycle of the terrorists attacking Israel and Israel hitting back much much harder. For decades, the strategy of always hitting back harder was praised as being a deterent - and it might have been till things got so hopeless (in the west bank) that the expected punishment wasn't enough to stop the terrorist actions.

What is really sad is that with Abbas coming in and Syria being pushed out of Lebanon - Bush had a windfall opportunity. Neither really happened because of his "spreading democracy", but if he would have used diplomacy and helped build stability, he could have achieved some of his stated goal.
In January when he was in Israel, Kerry spoke with Wolf Blitzer and was concerned that the US pushed the elections over Israel's and Abbas's objections and earlier had not backed Abbas sufficiently - leading to Hamas in power. Kerry then was concerned with how Israel could sit at a table with Hamas that had not agreed not to blow up buses.

I wish Kerry would have said something more about the incredible destruction and innocent people dying. I can't really see FOX editting that out - because they would love to show Kerry as soft.

[Mass]

18. Something disturbs me on that, and when I talked to my husband,

it actually disturbed him as well. He is getting tired to see Democrats refusing to take a position that would actually help Israel by calling for a cease-fire. The current situation creates terrorists more than he destroys them.


He said a few words on Qana, but unfortunately, it sounded more like Bush's words, as if it was sad, but it was like it was and we must destroy Hezbollah (not disarm, destroy). If this policy was helping, there would be no terrorism on the West Bank. Unfortunately, we know it does not work.

[ProSense]

17. The Bush factor in the Mideast: The problem is

that just because Bush's foreign policy is a disaster doesn't mean terrorism doesn't exist.

It is certainly true that Hezbollah has been linked to a string of classic terrorist attacks going back more than 20 years, including suicide bombings against civilian targets, hostage-taking, and the hijacking of a TWA flight. A particularly vile example was the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in which 85 people were murdered. Hezbollah strongly denies involvement, but the truth is probably murkier than either side pretends. Responsibility for these attacks has often been attributed to Hezbollah's External Security Organisation (ESO), a unit believed to be under the operational control of Iranian intelligence rather than the Hezbollah's Lebanese leadership. Britain is one country that draws this distinction, proscribing ESO, but not Hezbollah itself, under the Terrorism Act.

Interestingly, some of the earliest suicide bombings commonly attributed to Hezbollah, such as the 1983 attacks on the US embassy and marine barracks in Beirut, were believed by American intelligence sources at the time to have been orchestrated by the Iraqi Dawa party. Hezbollah barely existed in 1983 and Dawa cadres are said to have been instrumental in setting it up at Tehran's behest. Dawa's current leadership includes none other than the new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, feted last week in London and Washington as the great hope for the future of the Middle East. As the old saying goes, today's terrorist is tomorrow's statesman - at least when it suits us.

None of this should be read as exonerating Hezbollah of the charge that it uses terrorist tactics. Irrespective of anything else, the use of Katyusha rockets against Israeli population centers is clearly intended to inflict terror and suffering on civilians. It deserves a response. But the allegations of terrorism levelled at Hezbollah (as well as Hamas and other groups) by America and Israel go well beyond the targeting of non-combatants. The US state department's annual reports on terrorism also list operations carried out against the Israeli Defence Force as examples of terrorism. The US government justifies this conclusion by way of a logical contortion that defines Israeli troops as "non-combatants," despite the fact that Israel continues to occupy territory in Lebanon and Palestine with military force. The intention is not just to stamp out terrorism as commonly understood, but also to stigmatize perfectly legitimate acts of resistance.

Terrorism has always been extraordinarily difficult to define, but the American approach lacks any pretense at objectivity, thus making the term utterly meaningless. Used in this way, terrorism becomes simply "political violence of which we disapprove." The answer, of course, must not be to abandon any attempt to distinguish between right and wrong in the use of force. There need to be standards if we are to prevent the free-for-all of violence without limit. But these standards must be disinterested, legitimate, and robust. As it happens, most of what we need is adequately provided for in international humanitarian law. Numerous treaties and judgments from the Geneva conventions onwards set out quite detailed rules governing the use of force, including the principles of proportionality and civilian immunity.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0731-28.htm

There has been a lot of discussion about what terrorism is and whether or not Hezbollah guerrillas are terrorist. They are; it's complex, always has been, but make no mistake terrorism exist. Up to the onset of this conflict, and even since, everyone from Kucinich to Robert Fisk described Hezbollah as a terrorist group. Bush's stupidity doesn't change that. The above article is basically denouncing Bush's condemnation of Hezbollah to justify Israel's response (by the reports the lunatic is instigating the fighting). At the same time, the author is clearly pointing to the acts that led to the distinction of Hezbollah factions as terrorist.

The writer goes on to conflate actions ascribed to the Iraqi Dawa party with Maliki to demonstrate that "today's terrorist is tomorrow's statesman." By that logic one could call Saddam a terrorist (a brutal dictator, yes, a terrorist no!). Is Libyan leader Qaddafi a terrorist? OBL certainly is one. So is the assumption then that Maliki is a terrorist?

[TayTay]

24. Couple that with the comments on Imus

Kerry made the very strong point that Iraqi PM Maliki would not condemn Hezbollah for their attacks on Israel. This undermines the entire Bush reason for invading Iraq. We invaded Iraq in order to force a government in the Middle East that was friendly to American interests. (I disagree with the war from soup to nuts, but that was their reason, get rid of the dictator Saddam Hussein, get a democratic government in Iraq that would be the envy of the area and inspire democratic reforms across the region and be a check on the power of radical Iran.)

The government that we spent thousands of American lives, uncounted thousands of Iraqi lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to create, won't even condemn Hezbollah for their terrorism. This is a catastrophic failure on the part of the Bush Administration. The war in Iraq is continuously sold to the American people are part of the global war of terror, something that we have to fight over there lest we fight them here. Well, over there, our puppet government won't even condemn this terrorist act. What in hell are we doing in Iraq then? In what possible way does this war in Iraq support the fight against 'global terrorism'? (We have gained nothing but death and destruction in nearly 3 1/2 years of this fight in Iraq.)

This point exists outside of the moral dimensions of what Israel is doing to Lebanon. (In fact, it's being drowned by the discussion over what Israel did and their culpability in the destruction of Lebanon.) The Israeli have been encouraged by a Bush regime that still thinks it can bring lasting change and democracy at the end of a gun. Sen. Kerry has repeatedly pointed out the futility of this. He has also pointed out that the region is not likely to change until the roots of the problem and the reasons why so many of the population has turned to radical fundamentalism are addressed. He was quite clear on this and on a plan for moving forward in that region that would actually help.

[politicasista]

19. Why wont Dems call for a cease fire?

Their postions sound very hawkish. It's obvious Condi won't do anything either.

I hope Kerry will get around to talking about the loss of life. It's so horrific over there.

[Mass]

20. Leahy just calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Excellent speech which reaffirms that the United States is an ally of Israel, but also that the fight does not hurt Hezbollah and hurts both Israel and Lebanon.

Indictment of Rice.

[karynnj]

21. I wish all the Democrats were saying this - including Kerry

[politicasista]

22. me too n/t

[Mass]

23. Speech here

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200608/080106.html

[globalvillage]

25. That's a very good speech.

I think he nailed it.