John Kerry In Quotes — Version 2.0

by John Hawkins | March 12, 2004 12:40 pm

Since John Kerry — or as I think of him, Senator Flip-Flop — has won in New Hampshire, he now has to be considered the odds on favorite to take the Democratic nomination. So, I thought it was time to put out my first batch of John Kerry quotes.

While Kerry is not as wacky as Howard Dean or Wesley Clark, he still has his moments. Kerry has flip-flopped far more than anyone else in the race, has been talking about Saddam’s WMD since before the Gulf War, and I suspect that a lot more is going to come out about Kerry’s radical, pro-Communist, anti-war activities after Vietnam before it’s all said and done. But in the interim, let’s get things started with a few quotes…

Misc

“I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, ‘I’m against everything’? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to f*ck it up as badly as he did? I don’t think anybody did.” — John Kerry in Rolling Stone

“When Teresa Heinz-Kerry arrived, she handed me a pin that read in the center: “Asses of Evil” with “Bush”, “Cheney”, “Rumsfeld” and “Ashcroft” surrounding it. She met, greeted and talked to a jam-packed room of Kerry supporters and others who came for the MoveOn documentary.” — From John Kerry’s Blog[1]

“No one’s talking about how to keep the other side home on Election Day. It’s a lot easier than you think and it doesn’t cost that much. This election can be won by 200,000 votes. You target (Bush’s) natural constituencies. For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you’re an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion. Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, ‘What’s all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?” — From one Kerry’s Celebrity Supporters, Moby, who Kerry has even performed with on stage[2]

“We’re going to keep pounding, let me tell you. We’re just beginning to fight here. These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group I’ve ever seen. It’s scary.” — John Kerry, March 2004

“John Kerry. In his 20 years in the Senate, he’s been a standard-issue Massachusetts liberal, with a lifetime rating from Americans for Democratic Action of 93 on their 0-100 scale. By contrast, the other Senator from the Bay State, Teddy Kennedy, has a lifetime rating of 88. “That makes Kennedy the conservative of the two,” chortled Republican National Chairman Ed Gillespie as he visited New Hampshire last week on an anti-Democratic strafing run.” — James Pinkerton, 1/26/04

“Sen. John F. Kerry has said he was ‘very proud’ of his vote to increase the (gas) tax by 4.3 cents per gallon…” — Michael Kranish, The Boston Globe, 5/4/96

“Mr. Kerry voted for the USA Patriot Act, Mr. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education bill and the Congressional resolution authorizing the president to use force in Iraq, only to sharply criticize all three once he became a presidential candidate. Mr. Kerry counters that his quarrel is with Mr. Bush’s execution of the policies, but he struggled for months to explain his shifting stance on the Iraq war.” — Todd S. Purdum, Jan 25, 2004 in the New York Times

“For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions that Irish-Americans” — Senate floor statement by John Kerry, 3/18/86

“(John Kerry) has never indicated to anyone that he was Irish and corrected people over the years who assumed he was” — Kerry spokeswoman Kelly Benander said in Feb, 2003

“I’ve met with foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly,” he said. “But, boy, they look at you and say: ‘You’ve got to win this. You’ve got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.’ Things like that.” — John Kerry discusses his meetings with unidentified “foreign leaders”

“I’m a Christian. I’ve read the Bible and I know you can find the clauses that go both ways (on gay marriage). I’m not here to argue that with you.” — John Kerry in March, 2004

“President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn’t be upset if I could earn the right to be the second.” — John Kerry, 2004

“Everybody always makes the mistake of looking South. Al Gore proved he could have been president of the United States without winning one Southern state, including his own.” — John Kerry

“The senator with the most special interest money over the last 15 years is John Kerry who’s just been running around telling all Americans how he’s going to get the special interests and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. That is exactly what’s wrong with American politics and that’s why 50 percent of the people in this country don’t vote.” — Howard Dean on Feb 1, 2004

“I don’t believe in litmus tests, but I believe very strongly that the right to choose and the right to privacy are fundamental constitutional rights and I can’t imagine supporting a Supreme Court nominee who doesn’t share my view of the Constitution.” — John Kerry explains his Roe Vs. Wade litmus test after explaining that he doesn’t believe in litmus tests

“Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they’re to shoot Quayle. There isn’t any press here, is there?” — Nov. 16, 1988)

“I’m an internationalist. I’d like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.” — John Kerry, 1970

“Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said during last night’s Democratic presidential debate that the threat of terrorism has been exaggerated. “I think there has been an exaggeration,” Mr. Kerry said when asked whether President Bush has overstated the threat of terrorism. “They are misleading all Americans in a profound way.” — Washington Times on Jan 30, 2004

“I’ve never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard. Those are choices people make.” — John Kerry Denigrates the National Guard on Feb 3, 2004

Vietnam

“I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way… What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be re-fighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a presidential primary.” — John Kerry back in 1992

“Under Kerry’s leadership, VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against The War) members mocked the uniform of United States soldiers by wearing tattered fatigues marked with pro-Communist graffiti. They dishonored America by marching in demonstrations under the flag of the Viet Cong enemy.” — Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry

“(N)o one in the United States Senate pushed harder to bury the POW/MIA issue, the last obstacle preventing normalization of relations with Hanoi, than John Forbes Kerry.” — US Veteran Dispatch

“People are going to remember Gen. Giap saying if it weren’t for these guys [Kerry’s group], we would have lost. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged people to desert, encouraged people to mutiny – some used what they wrote to justify fragging officers.” — Oliver North

We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans’ Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the “greater glory of the United States.” We will not accept the rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars — in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all and when we do, we will demand relevancy such as other organizations have recently been unable to provide. We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim. — John Kerry, in “The New Soldier”

“War crimes in Vietnam are the rule, not the exception.” — It was mentioned that John Kerry[3] said this in a 1971 debate

“To attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom…is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy.” — John Kerry, 1971

On The War In Iraq & WMD

“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” — From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

“The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation.” — John Kerry, 10/9/02

“(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. …And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War.” — John Kerry, 1/23/03

“Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror, and therefore any advance in Iraq is an advance forward in that…” — John Kerry 12/15/03

“When it was popular to be a Massachusetts liberal, his voting record was that. When it was popular to be for the Iraq war, he was for it. Now it’s popular to be against it, and he’s against it.” — Jay Carson, a Dean campaign spokesman

“If you think I would have gone to war the way George Bush did, don’t vote for me.” — John Kerry, Jan 2004

Endnotes:
  1. From John Kerry’s Blog: http://69.20.93.201/blog/archives/000871.html#000871
  2. performed with on stage: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:-bsk_FGjqcwJ:www.independentsforkerry.org/info/index.php%3Fcategory_id%3D784%26subcategory_id%3D634+moby+john+kerry+stage&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
  3. John Kerry: http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061703.shtml

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/uncategorized/john-kerry-in-quotes-version-20/