John Kerry has responded to those who have criticized him for insulting our troops in Iraq by attacking those critics with childish insults.

Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record:

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.”

This rant reads like a post at some Angry Left hate site like The Daily Kos or ThinkProgress. And this man wanted to be president of the United States, the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces he holds in such contempt? How pathetic.

Proving once again what a genius he is when it comes to political acumen, John Kerry seems to have insulted all the U.S. troops in Iraq by implying they’re uneducated and not “smart”.

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

Way to support the troops, Senator! What’s he going to do next, compare them to Ghengis Khan? Oops, been there, done that already. Political pundits sometimes define a “gaffe” as accidentally letting the truth slip out. Will Kerry and his fellow Democrats be compelled by the Democrat-leaning press to answer for this in the next week? Is calling our troops stupid better or worse than calling some opposing campaign staffer “macaca”? We’ll see if the MSM gives this as much coverage. We will not hold our breath.

More:

Michelle Malkin has a big roundup of reactions.

Patterico’s Pontifications, anticipates the post-gaff spin:

I’ll play Devil’s Advocate: Kerry is talking about Bush and not the troops.

At least that’s what his spokesman will say tomorrow.

That just won’t fly, given that the president is highly educated (with degrees from Yale and Harvard).

UPDATE: Kerry responds to his critics with his typical grace and humility.

Former Republican Congressman from Texas Dick Armey takes a shot at his party today for betraying his version of conservative ideological purity and what’s really important in America, and of course the Washington [Democrat]-Post is more than happy to provide the forum.

Somewhere along the road to a “permanent majority,” the Republican Revolution of 1994 went off track. For several years, we had confidence in our convictions and trusted that the American people would reward our efforts. And they did.

But today, my Republican friends in Congress stand on the precipice of an electoral rout. Even the best-case scenarios suggest wafer-thin majorities and a legislative agenda in disarray. With eight days before the election, House speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi has already begun her transition planning.

Where did the revolution go astray? How did we go from the big ideas and vision of 1994 to the cheap political point-scoring on meaningless wedge issues of today — from passing welfare reform and limited government to banning horsemeat and same-sex marriage?

The answer is simple: Republican lawmakers forgot the party’s principles, became enamored with power and position, and began putting politics over policy. Now, the Democrats are reaping the rewards of our neglect — and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

….

Now spending is out of control. Rather than rolling back government, we have a new $1.2 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit, and non-defense discretionary spending is growing twice as fast as it had in the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, Social Security is collapsing while rogue nations are going nuclear and the Middle East is more combustible than ever. Yet Republican lawmakers have taken up such issues as flag burning, Terri Schiavo and same-sex marriage.

So let’s get this straight – according to Dick Armey the definition of marriage, the bedrock social institution of our civilization, is “meaningless”? And conservatives should simply stand aside and allow the radical secularist left to redefine the institution without opposition? And that’s the real conservative position?

How utterly ridiculous! It’s important to remember that the right did not start the fight over the definition of marriage, which has stood for thousands of years. It is those on the left, who want to radically alter this fundamental social institution, who are making it an issue. But to simply assert that the issue is meaningless defies all reason. Certainly millions of Americans who have gone to the polls to vote in overwhelming majorities to save the institution of marriage when given the chance, don’t think it’s a meaningless issue.

We agree that federal spending is out of control, and have no desire to rehash the whole Terri Schiavo incident again, but the core issue in that case was literally a matter of life and death, and whether the state ought to be allowed to purposely deprive a human being of food and water in order to hasten her death, against the wishes of her parents. Whatever position one took at the time, how can anyone call the question “meaningless”?

Members of congress are dealing with real issues of interest to real Americans, not participating in political science seminars at a university or writing op-eds for the Washington Post. If Dick Armey and other conservatives want to primarily focus on economics and tax issues, that’s fine. But if they believe they can build a “permanent Republican majority” by focusing solely on economics and ignoring the interests of social conservatives on bedrock issues of family and the right to life, they’re just living in a fantasy world.

And it’s not as if there’s some wall of separation between economic and social issues, or that conservatives generally fall exclusively into one camp or the other. In many ways, the issues are interconnected. Michael Medved wrote a good column a few weeks ago, making the case.

If the left successfully undermines marriage, making it just another lifestyle choice among many, that will make a bigger welfare state more likely, not less. Mr. Armey should think about that, not write social issues off as meaningless.

Ever since the push to radically redefine marriage was started by the left, they have repeatedly tried to make the silly analogy between “gay marriage” and inter-racial marriage, specifically to the case Loving vs. Virginia.

The analogy is nonsense. There are no significant differences between a black man and a white man (and none whatsoever that have anything to do with the intimate marriage relationship). To believe otherwise is by definition racist. To acknowledge that there are profound, fundamental differences between men and women is simply to acknowledge the obvious.

There’s nothing at all wrong with our nation’s laws acknowledging this as well. Those who wish to be honest about this may ask themselves, “How important to me is the race of my partner?” “How important to me is the gender of my partner”? Try to find somebody for whom there’s any comparison, let alone equivalence.

The relationship between a man and a woman is profoundly different from any relationship between two men or two women. The most obvious, but by no means the only, difference is the ability to produce a child and provide that child a father and mother. For the New Jersey Supreme Court (or any other court) to force the people of New Jersey to proclaim that they’re the same is ridiculous, and an abuse of their responsibilities as judges.

It’s past time to let the people decide – submit the Federal Marriage Amendment to the states for ratification.

You can always count on liberals to throw down the “racist” slander, even when the ad they’re complaining about has nothing in it about race, at all. There’s nothing even remotely racist about the ad. Nothing.

The MSM, adjunct to the DNC, are trying to help fan the flames. Here is MSNBC’s take:

The ad brought immediate criticism from the Ford campaign and the NAACP, whose Washington office called it “a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women.”

Granted, many Democrats have pre-existing prejudices about black men, white women, and all sorts of other things, but that’s their problem, not the Republicans’.

And here’s Harold Ford, projecting:

Ford told MSNBC-TV: “I know that they are a little desperate and doing the things that you do when you get desperate in a campaign.”

When you’re a Democrat, especially a black Democrat, and the polls get a little too tight, cry “racism!”

Even for the perennially race-baiting Democrats, this is really pathetic.

UPDATE: The Democrat Times of Los Angeles piles on.

UPDATE: Harold Ford agrees with us: “..I don’t think race had anything to do with that ad…”

In the wake of great tragedy, some people respond with grace, dignity, and character. Others, like Cindy Sheehan and Pat Tillman’s brother Kevin, react with an ugly and pathetic stream of bitterness and bile.

As we noted when Cindy Sheehan hit the scene:

When any mother loses a child in war it’s a real tragedy. But that doesn’t mean their opinions carry more weight or they have a veto over national security policy.

Of course Mr. Tillman has every right to express his opinions. That’s a non-issue. But his angry, bitter outburst does not deserve any greater respect because of his service or his loss. He ought to be honored for his service and sacrifice. He, like Sheehan, ought to be pitied, not honored, for his hateful words.

The BDS*-suffering, Adolescent Angry Left eats it up. In their eyes, the only true heroes are those who direct their anger at America and the president.

We discussed a few problems with the study from Johns Hopkins University reported last week that claimed over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, Steven E. Moore, who claims expertise in statistics and research, analyzes and debunks the study.

Our old friend Jennifer Loven, op-ed writer for the AP, has some company. AP writer Tom Raum begins this alleged “news” item by regurgitating the false Democrat talking point that President Bush has shifted the rationale for the war in Iraq as the situation has changed in that country.

But it isn’t true that the sole rationale for the war in Iraq before the invasion was the presence of WMD. There were multiple issues involved from the beginning. One need only review the October 2002 Iraq war resolution to know that. Perhaps Raum should do a little research before submitting his next opinion piece.

We have no problem with the AP producing op-ed pieces, they should just label them as such, and not keep trying to pass them off as news items.

The Washington Post is reporting on a new study that claims there have been 655,000 deaths in Iraq since March 2003 than would have occurred absent the invasion.

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq’s government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

This would equate to over 500 additional deaths each and every day for 3.5 years. (They aren’t claiming that 655,000 died in total in Iraq, but that 655,000 more died than would have otherwise, so the total number of deaths in Iraq would be significantly higher than that number.) Yet it makes the nightly news when an incident occurs that kills 30 or 50 people. But 10+ times that many are killed every single day? And this has been hidden until today? The fact that the study disagrees with all other estimates by orders of magnitude also makes it highly suspect.

Another point – typically there are more injuries than deaths when a large attack occurs. So there ought to be millions of injured if there are 655,000 deaths. Where are they? Are the hospitals of Iraq stuffed with millions of injured Iraqi civilians?

The study, based on the Post report, also offers no information as to how many of those 655,000 allegedly killed were people fighting for the enemy. It does estimate that “Of the violent deaths that occurred after the invasion, 31 percent were caused by coalition forces or airstrikes”, but no mention of how many were terrorists and insurgents. It’s an important distinction that seems to be entirely missing from the study and most of the reporting about the study.

Whether the number of innocent civilians killed in Iraq is 6,000, 60,000, or 600,000, it is too many. But the blame for these deaths should go to those who are doing the killing – the terrorists and insurgents who are deliberately targeting innocent civilians – not to the United States military and coalition forces, who are working very hard to stop the killing. Liberals will no doubt ignore any moral distinctions and immediately embrace the study’s conclusions, as it fits their rabid anti-Bush agenda.

With the North Koreans testing a nuclear weapon yesterday, and their missile tests in July, President Bush’s decision to pursue and deploy a ballistic missile defense system is sure looking prescient, isn’t it?

Remember all the caterwauling from the left about that decision? Voters need to think more about that and less about Mark Foley as November 7th approaches.

…some immediately blame President Bush:

North Korea’s apparent nuclear test last night may well be regarded as a failure of the Bush administration’s nuclear nonproliferation policy.

Since George W. Bush became president, North Korea has restarted its nuclear reactor and increased its stock of weapons-grade plutonium, so it may now have enough for 10 or 11 weapons, compared with one or two when Bush took office.

So the North Korean’s is believed to have had nuclear weapons before President Bush took office, they continued to develop more after he took office, therefore the whole program is his fault. Brilliant.

When Bush became president in 2000, Pyongyang’s reactor was frozen under a 1994 agreement with the United States.

….

Many top U.S. officials were determined to kill the Agreed Framework, and when U.S. intelligence discovered evidence that North Korea had a clandestine program to enrich uranium, they had their chance.

A U.S. delegation confronted Pyongyang about the secret program — and U.S. officials said North Korean officials appeared to confirm it. (Pyongyang later denied that.) The United States pressed to cut off immediately deliveries of heavy fuel oil promised under the Agreed Framework. North Korea, in response, evicted international inspectors and restarted its nuclear reactor.

It’s President Bush’s fault the North Koreans started cheating on the Agreed Framework before the ink was dry? If they were cheating, then wasn’t it effectively the North Koreans who abandoned the Framework, not the president?

In the real world, what would have been gained by continuing to pretend the Framework was still in effect? Having make-believe agreements with outlaw regimes will not keep America safe. In labeling North Korea part of the “Axis of evil” and abandoning the Agreed Framework, President Bush told the truth; liberals wll never forgive him for it.

Other countries are not under United States direct control. They can and will do what they want, in spite of our best efforts to negotiate with them. North Korea’s nuclear weapon test is North Korea’s fault, not President Bush’s fault.

Update: The WaPo piles on (Bush, not Kim Jong Il).

A report on the “World Can’t Wait” demonstrations today by the decrepit “anti-war” movement, from Yahoo News:

Hundreds of people called the Bush administration’s policies a crime and held up yellow police tape along a three-block stretch in front of the White House on Thursday as part of a nationwide day of protest against the president.

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahri released a similarly themed video last week. Maybe he got the date wrong.

We noticed 8 or 10 people on the sidewalk outside a local government building; several had signs they were lackadaisically waving. One car honked; whether in support or opposition was hard to tell. One guy looked like he had a folded up Mexican flag in his hands; he looked a bit confused, like maybe he showed up at the wrong march. Easy mistake.

Overall a pretty weak effort.

More:
LGF has some good pics from the NYC protest.
Michelle Malkin dubs it “National BDS Day”