Quote: the G-man said: No, if you read the transcript, both the moderator and the other candidates at that debate took Kerry to mean exactly what I said he meant. And Kerry never corrected them. In fact, he just kept driving his point home.
Maybe now he's engaging in one his famous "flip flops" about what he meant?
I reread the transcript & here's where you got your very abridged Kerry quote, right? The red are the bits you pulled out of context.
BROKAW: We're back on stage at the Peace Center for Performing Arts in Greenville, South Carolina, with the seven presidential candidates contesting for the Democratic presidential nomination. South Carolina's primary is next Tuesday.
Senator Kerry, let me ask you a question. Robert Kagan, who writes about these issues a great deal from the Carnegie Institute for Peace, has written recently that Europeans believe that the Bush administration has exaggerated the threat of terrorism, and the Bush administration believes that the Europeans simply don't get it.
Who is right?
KERRY: I think it's somewhere in between. I think that there has been an exaggeration and there has been a refocusing...
BROKAW: Where has the exaggeration been in the threat on terrorism?
KERRY: Well, 45 minutes deployment of weapons of mass destruction, number one.
Aerial vehicles to be able to deliver materials of mass destruction, number two.
I mean, I -- nuclear weapons, number three.
I could run a long list of clear misleading, clear exaggeration. The linkage to Al Qaida, number four.
That said, they are really misleading all of America, Tom, in a profound way. The war on terror is less -- it is occasionally military, and it will be, and it will continue to be for a long time. And we will need the best-trained and the most well-equipped and the most capable military, such as we have today.
But it's primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world -- the very thing this administration is worst at. And most importantly, the war on terror is also an engagement in the Middle East economically, socially, culturally, in a way that we haven't embraced, because otherwise we're inviting a clash of civilizations.
And I think this administration's arrogant and ideological policy is taking America down a more dangerous path. I will make America safer than they are.
If your going to misrepresent Kerry that much, why not go for broke and say he wants to eat babies & kick old people.
