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Addressing Democrats in his hometown of Boston, liberal icon Ted Kennedy blasted President Bush for embarking on a "misguided war" in Iraq,
"The administration has alienated long-time allies. Instead of making America more secure, they have made us less so. They have made it harder to win the real war on terrorism, the war against al Qaeda. None of this had to happen," Kennedy said.
"I have known John Kerry for three decades. I have known him as a soldier, as a peacemaker, as a prosecutor, as a senator, and as a friend. And in every role he has shown his strengths. He was the right man for every tough task and he is the right leader for this time in history."
Kennedy called Kerry "a war hero who understands that America's strength comes from many sources especially the power of our ideas. He knows that a true leader inspires hope and vanquishes fear."
Kennedy Bashes Bush BOSTON, July 27, 2004
"Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam," Kennedy said at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Kennedy also said that "truth is the first casualty of policy" in the Bush administration.
"This is the pattern and the record of the Bush administration [on] Iraq, jobs, Medicare, schools, issue after issue -- mislead, deceive, make up the needed facts, smear the character of any critics," he said. "Again and again, we see this cynical, despicable strategy playing out."
Kennedy also said recent statements by former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke showed the administration's "inattention to the grave and gathering threat of terrorism before 9/11 and the president's preoccupation with Iraq."
"This misguided war in Iraq has distracted us from the real war we must win and made that war harder to win, because even as we combat terror, it has left America more and more isolated in the world," Kennedy said.
Kennedy: 'Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam'
"Surely, we can have effective relationships with other nations without adopting a chip-on-the-shoulder foreign policy, a my-way-or-the-highway policy that makes all our goals in the world more difficult to achieve," Kennedy said in a speech delivered to the National Press Club.
"I continue to be convinced that this is the wrong war at the wrong time," Kennedy, the Senate's leading liberal said. "The threat from Iraq is not imminent and it will distract America from the two more immediate threats to our security: the clear and present danger of terrorism and the crisis with North Korea."
"An administration that takes such a course, whether out of conviction or political calculation is no friend of minorities and no force for civil rights," Kennedy said.
Kennedy slams Bush on Iraq 'Wrong war at the wrong
time'
"The president's handling of the war has been a toxic mix of ignorance, arrogance and stubborn ideology," said Kennedy, D-Mass., in a speech to students at George Washington University. "The president's arrogance toward the world community has left our soldiers increasingly isolated and alone."
Meanwhile, he said, the administration continues to insist that the country is safer now because of the war. But Americans "deserve to hear more from our president than happy talk like that," said Kennedy. "The war in Iraq has made the mushroom cloud more likely, not less likely.
"It's a campaign of anger and insult," Kennedy said. "And the most egregious examples are the examples of Vice President Cheney. When he even goes on to suggest that the al-Qaeda wants John Kerry to win, that is the most outrageous charge. It's the most anti-American it's McCarthyism of the first order."
Kennedy says Bush policies make U.S. more vulnerable
to attack
Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy yesterday accused President Bush of having created at home and abroad "the largest credibility gap" since the Watergate scandal forced Richard M. Nixon from the White House 30 years ago.
Kennedy, a key backer of fellow Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry's campaign for the party's presidential nomination, also charged that Iraq has become "George Bush's Vietnam," the war that divided the United States and helped prompt Lyndon B. Johnson not to seek reelection to the White House in 1968.
In addition, Kennedy said, Iraq has "diverted attention from the administration's deceptions here at home -- especially on the economy, health care, and education."
"Sadly, this administration has failed to live up to basic standards of open and candid debate," Kennedy said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "They repeatedly invent `facts' to support their preconceived agenda -- facts which administration officials knew or should have known were not true."
The senator said, "As a result, this president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon," who was forced to resign as president in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal that exposed abuses of power.
"It is undermining our national security, undermining our economy, undermining our health care . . . undermining our very democracy," Kennedy said. "We need change."
Kennedy likens Bush to Nixon 'Credibility gap' is
called largest since Watergate
Kennedy accused the president of "pure, unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a devious strategy to convince the American people that Saddam's ability to provide nuclear weapons to al-Qaida justified immediate war."
"Why wasn't C.I.A. Director Tenet correcting the president and the vice president and the Secretary of Defense a year ago, when it could have made a difference, when it could have prevented a needless war, when it could have saved so many lives?" he asked.
"No president who misleads the country on the need for war deserves to be re-elected," he said. "A president who does so must be held accountable. The last thing our nation needs is a sign on the desk in the Oval Office in the White House that says, 'The buck doesn't stop here anymore.'"
Kennedy blasts Bush
for 'devious strategy' In campaign-mode decries 'pure, unadulterated
fear-mongering' on Iraq
In a speech to the liberal Center for American Progress, Kennedy said the war has increased hatred for the United States abroad, diverted attention from the broader war against terrorism and put the country more "at risk" than it was before.
"No president of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war," he said. "In doing so, the president broke the basic bond of trust between the government and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war."
The war, he said, "could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."
Kennedy slams Bush on Iraq 'political' war Helen
Dewar,
While admitting that pre-emptive war may be justified if launched to prevent "an imminent attack on our country," he claims that the Iraq war fits into a different category, which he calls "preventive war," which he condemns.
"The premeditated nature of preventive attacks and preventive wars makes them anathema to well-established international principles against aggression," Kennedy writes in the book, which the Globe reports is due to be released April 18.
Kennedy, D-Mass., argued that "Preventive war is consistent with neither our values nor our national security. It gives other nations an excuse to violate fundamental principles of civilized international behavior, and the downward spiral we initiate could well engulf the whole planet."
Kennedy views Bush's decision to invade Iraq as an example of "preventive war" - of attacking a nation to prevent it from developing the ability to threaten the United States. He adds that a similar manner of thinking led the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, since Japan was seeking to block the U.S. military buildup in the Pacific.
"War should always be our last resort," he writess, adding that the Bush administration, however, "made preventive war an option of first resort."
Wednesday, April 5, 2006 10:53 p.m. EDT Ted Kennedy:
Bush Is No JFK
In a scathing attack on President Bush's handling of Iraq, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) yesterday accused the administration of "arrogant ideological incompetence" and said no president has "done more damage to our country and our security" than Bush.
"Because of the Bush administration's arrogant ideological incompetence and its bizarre 'mission accomplished' mentality, our troops and our intelligence officers and our diplomats had neither the resources nor the guidance needed to deal with the worsening conditions that steadily began to overwhelm them and continue to do so," Kennedy said.
"It is preposterous for the administration to pretend that the war in Iraq has made America safer," he added. "No president in America's history has done more damage to our country and our security than George W. Bush."
Kennedy Says Bush Hurt U.S. And Its Security
Sen. Ted Kennedy has sent out a shrill fundraising letter accusing Republicans of posing an "imminent danger to the nation.
The letter, which seeks contributions for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, begins: "The reckless abuse of power by George Bush and his right-wing allies is an imminent danger to the nation and must be stopped.
The letter singles out for defeat Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Katherine Harris, "the notorious GOP state official who gave George Bush the presidency in 2000, who is running for the Senate from Florida.
The letter goes so far as to claim that the Republicans have "poisoned our air and water by repealing key provisions of our hard-won environmental protection laws.
The letter sent out under the letterhead of the long-time Senator from Massachusetts also charges the administration with "packing the federal courts with right-wing judges and characterizes the right-wing agenda as a "radical grab for power.
The letter seeks contributions of "$50, $75, or even more, which will "help put a democratic majority back in control of the senate in 2006!
Ted Kennedy: Bush 'Poisoned' Americans
Sen. Ted Kennedy called President Bush's judicial nominees "Neanderthals" on Friday, a group that includes Hispanic lawyer Miguel Estrada and African-American Judge Janice Rogers Brown.
Boasting of his party's resolve in the face of GOP attempts to stop the Democrats' filibuster, Kennedy told the Senate, "What has not ended is the resolution and the determination of the members of the United States Senate to continue to resist any Neanderthal that is nominated by this president of the United States for any court, federal court in the United States."
Kennedy Calls Bush Minority Nominees 'Neanderthals'
"Both at home and overseas, we need policies that unite, not divide -- policies that that do not divide us here at home into the favored and the ignored, that do not separate us from other nations that share our ideals," Kennedy said in prepared remarks.
"Every American should bear a fair share of the burden," he said. "The road to prosperity was not paved with handouts to the rich."
"The unselfishness we saw in 2001 must not give way to selfishness in 2003," he said. "The last thing we need is policies that divide us at home by race or riches."
Kennedy attacks Bush on Iraq, taxes Policies should
unite at home and abroad, Democrat says
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