My top ten lines from last night's debate:
10. With respect to Darfur, yes, it is a genocide. And months ago, many of us were pressing for action. I think the reason that we're not saying send American troops in at this point is severalfold. Number one, we can do this through the African Union, providing we give them the logistical support. Right now all the president is providing is humanitarian support. We need to do more than that. They've got to have the logistical capacity to go in and stop the killing. And that's going to require more than is on the table today. I also believe that it is -- one of the reasons we can't do it is we're overextended. Ask the people in the armed forces today. We've got Guards and Reserves who are doing double duties. We've got a backdoor draft taking place in America today: people with stop-loss programs where they're told you can't get out of the military; nine out of our 10 active duty divisions committed to Iraq one way or the other, either going, coming or preparing. So this is the way the president has overextended the United States."
9. KERRY: "I think a critical component of success in Iraq is being able to convince the Iraqis and the Arab world that the United States doesn't have long-term designs on it. As I understand it, we're building some 14 military bases there now, and some people say they've got a rather permanent concept to them."
8. KERRY: "When we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better."
LEHRER: "Thirty seconds, Mr. President."
BUSH: "Well, actually, he forgot Poland."
7. KERRY: "You know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse? I believe that when you know something's going wrong, you make it right. That's what I learned in Vietnam. When I came back from that war I saw that it was wrong. Some people don't like the fact that I stood up to say no, but I did. And that's what I did with that vote. And I'm going to lead those troops to victory."
6. KERRY: "The president just said the FBI had changed its culture. We just read on the front pages of America's papers that there are over 100,000 hours of tapes, unlistened to. On one of those tapes may be the enemy being right the next time."
5. KERRY: "You know, the president's father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad, beyond Basra. And the reason he didn't is, he said -- he wrote in his book -- because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land. That's exactly where we find ourselves today. There's a sense of American occupation. The only building that was guarded when the troops when into Baghdad was the oil ministry. We didn't guard the nuclear facilities. We didn't guard the foreign office, where you might have found information about weapons of mass destruction. We didn't guard the borders. Almost every step of the way, our troops have been left on these extraordinarily difficult missions. I know what it's like to go out on one of those missions when you don't know what's around the corner."
4. KERRY: "Secretary of State Colin Powell told this president the Pottery Barn rule: If you break it, you fix it."
3. KERRY: "I would not take my eye off of the goal: Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too. That's wrong."
2. KERRY: The terrorism czar, who has worked for every president since Ronald Reagan, said, Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor. That's what we have here.
1. BUSH: "We're facing a group of folks who have such hatred in their heart, they'll strike anywhere, with any means. And that's why it's essential that we have strong alliances, and we do. That's why it's essential that we make sure that we keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of people like Al Qaida, which we are. But to say that there's only one focus on the war on terror doesn't really understand the nature of the war on terror. Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean, bin Laden."
No comments:
Post a Comment