John Kerry
Biography and Quotes

Liberal Hall of Shame
The Top 1000 Liberals in America

Speaking of al-Sadr's newspaper, which was shut down by coalition forces last week after it urged violence against U.S. troops, Kerry complained to National Public Radio, -

"They shut a newspaper that belongs to a legitimate voice in Iraq."

Wednesday, April 7, 2004 10:41 a.m. EDT
Kerry: Terrorist Shiite Al-Sadr 'a Legitimate Voice'
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/7/104340.shtml

"The Reagan Administration has no rational plan for our military. Instead, it acts on misinformed assumptions about the strength of the Soviet military and a presumed ‘window of vulnerability,’ which we now know not to exist."

"The biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a better defense. Americans feel more threatened by the prospect of war, not less so. And our national priorities become more and more distorted as the share of our country’s resources devoted to human needs diminishes.”

“If we don’t need the MX [multiple warhead ICBM], the B-1, or these other weapons systems ... [t]here’s no excuse for casting even one vote for unnecessary weapons of destruction, and as your Senator, I will never do so,” Kerry vowed.

Kerry on the Record: Bashing Reagan
NewsMax.com Monday, March 15, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/3/12/192323.shtml

"We're going to keep pounding. These guys [Republicans] are the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen. It's scary."

http://www.townhall.com/news/politics/200403/POL20040311a.shtml#

"Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman."

Monday, March 8, 2004
Kerry Praises Terrorist Leader Arafat as 'Role Model'
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/3/8/112126.shtml

Q. Are you saying that Bush's conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- not to mention the way he has pissed off our allies -- has been incompetent?

Kerry: Oh, absolutely. Worse than incompetent. Clouded by ideological excess, a misinterpretation of history, a willful denial of facts.

Q. Did you feel you were blindsided by Dean's success?

Kerry: Well, not blindsided. I mean, when I voted for the war, 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 fu@# it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did.

John Kerry's Desperate Hours
Rolling Stone Magazine
http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/featuregen.asp?pid=2454

"We were misled not only in the intelligence but misled in the way that the president took us to war,"

Kerry: Bush Misled Congress
Democrats Cite Ex-Inspector's Statements on Lack of Weapons
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, January 26, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47283-2004Jan25.html



"What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States"

Boston Globe, April 3, 2003

"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?"

Associated Press, Nov. 16, 1988

"I'm an internationalist," Kerry told The Harvard Crimson 10 months after returning home from Vietnam. "I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."

"The CIA is fighting its own war in Laos and nobody seems to care," Kerry said.

Kerry wanted U.N. to lead U.S. troops
Posted: February 11, 2004 12:20 p.m. Eastern
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37068

In 1997, Kerry questioned the size of the intelligence community during a speech on the floor of the Senate:

“[W]hy it is that our vast intelligence apparatus, built to sustain America in the long twilight struggle of the Cold War continues to grow at an exponential rate? Now that that struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow even as government resources for new and essential priorities fall far short of what is necessary? Why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to roll on even as every other government bureaucracy is subject to increasing scrutiny and, indeed, to reinvention?”

Kerry on the Record: Attacking U.S. Intelligence
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/18/173209.shtml

"No, I was accusing American leaders of abandoning the troops. And if you read what I said, it is very clearly an indictment of leadership. I said to the Senate, where is the leadership of our country? And it's the leaders who are responsible, not the soldiers. I never said that."

Saturday, Feb. 21, 2004 9:23 a.m. EST
Kerry Denies Quotes Accusing U.S. Soliders of War Crimes
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/21/92521.shtml

"I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command...."

"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

"We are also here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We are here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric, and so many others. Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching begin them in the sun in this country...."

JOHN KERRY'S TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE, APRIL 22, 1971