Quote:
Originally posted by CarneVaca
No way am I going to go through that monster of a thread. Do you have the link otherwise?
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Sorry, it was on the Kerry/O'Reilly thread:
From John Kerry's website:
Kerry rips Dean for `flip-flop' on Iraq
December 12, 2003
Boston Herald
by Andrew Miga
Manchester, NH -
Charging there are ``several Howard Deans,'' Sen. John F. Kerry yesterday tore into the high-flying Democratic presidential front-runner for flip-flopping on the Iraq war to score political points.
By ``It seems to me like he tried to have it both ways,'' said Kerry. ``If you don't have to vote, you can run around and say a lot of things.''
Kerry (D-Mass.) cited Dean's support last fall for a congressional resolution similar to the one Kerry and three of his rivals voted for, giving President Bush war authority.
Kerry charged that Dean, who tapped a deep well of anti-war sentiment among party liberals to propel his candidacy to the front of the Democratic pack, straddled and misled voters.
``Howard Dean exercised the exact same judgment that the rest of us exercised,'' Kerry said. ``I'm saying there are several Howard Deans.''
But Dean, campaigning in Concord, brushed off Kerry's criticism. ``The difference is, I came out very early against the war,'' said Dean.
Kerry cited Dean's support of an alternative resolution, co-authored by Sens. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), requiring Bush to win United Nations approval for enforcing weapons checks in Iraq before going to war.
Bush also would have had to report to Congress by sending a letter before waging war. Dean insisted the Biden-Lugar measure could have prevented the war in Iraq. He said the resolution would have forced Bush to engage in more diplomacy - and to prove his claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
``Had the president done that, we would not have gone to war, because then he would have been forced to certify with his word . . . all the claims he made that were not true,'' said Dean.
Kerry, who has made similar charges in the past, said he was taking fresh aim at Dean because Al Gore had cited the former Vermont governor's anti-war views as the prime reason for endorsing him.
``If Al Gore is endorsing the Howard Dean who made the judgment at the same time as the rest of us, then he is endorsing the wrong Howard Dean,'' Kerry charged.
U. S. Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), meanwhile, fired a stinging shot at Bush for failing to honor America's fallen soldiers in Iraq.
``Bush found the time to go to 34 fund-raisers since the war,'' Gephardt told a crowd in Berlin, N. H., ``but has not found time to go to one funeral.''
GOP officials have said the president wants to keep politics out of memorial services, and expresses his sympathy privately.
Kerry, meanwhile, insisted he would not be deterred if he fails to win New Hampshire, which most party insiders consider as a must-win contest for him.
``I'm running a national campaign and I intend to take my campaign nationally,'' he said