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09/03/2004:

"Outraged Kerry takes the gloves off at last after Republican jibes"

by Julian Borger

John Kerry launched a stinging and personal counter-attack against George Bush's administration, singling out Dick Cheney, the vice-president, for having "refused to serve" in Vietnam.

The ferocity of the Democratic party's presidential challenger at the midnight rally of supporters in Ohio marked a sharp change in his campaign tactics. A few hours earlier, at the Republican party convention in New York, President Bush had joined in Mr Cheney's derision of Senator Kerry as a vacillating liberal.

The president repeated those charges yesterday at a rally in Pennsylvania, lampooning Mr Kerry for voting to go to war in Iraq and then opposing a funding request in the Senate for the occupation.

"He said he was proud of his vote, and then he just said the whole thing was a complicated matter. His words," Mr Bush said. "Here are my words: There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat."

The charge that Mr Kerry was "unfit for command" was a main theme of the Republican convention, provoking outrage from the senator. He said: "I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have, and by those who misled the nation into Iraq."

Mr Kerry's seemed to be using his speech to release months of pent-up anger.

In the face of a campaign by rightwing Vietnam war veterans to question whether he merited his five combat medals, the senator had until yesterday refrained from referring directly to the actions of Mr Bush or Mr Cheney during the Vietnam era.

Both men avoided combat, while the young Lieutenant Kerry was fighting in the Mekong Delta. Mr Bush signed up with the Texas air national guard as a pilot; Mr Cheney was granted five deferments from the draft for attending college, then graduate school and finally for having a child.

The new gloves-off strategy begins after a week of debate and unease within the Kerry camp over the wisdom of restraint. It coincided with the hiring of Joe Lockhart, a former spokesman for Bill Clinton with a combative reputation.

In yesterday's speech Mr Kerry made it clear he was aiming his accusations principally at the vice-president, who had used his Wednesday night speech to portray the Democratic candidate as unfit to be commander in chief.

Mr Kerry responded: "I'll leave it up to the voters to decide whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty."

Full Article: Guardian UK

Is Kerry insane? This is the stupidest campaign strategy. Whose cojones are bigger than whose? Ick. Was the last time Kerry was proud of anything he did 1970? Here we are in a mess that could leave Vietnam in the dust, and Kerry doesn't even see fit to recall to our minds the John Kerry of 1971 who spoke out on the horror of that war. Instead he, like Bush, is determined to continue the folly.