Redstate

. . . this doesn't really surprise anyone about John Kerry.

Which, in my opinion, is a scary thing.

For those who were involved in the 1992 election you will remember the lengths the left went to to convince everyone that "private morality" and "public morality" were distinctly different issues. As if a guy who lies to and cheats on his wife is going to treat the electorate with greater respect.

In the prescient words of Mary Matalin, you can't be one kind of man and a different kind of president.

how important do you think this particular lie might be to any or all of a 'president' Kerry's potential military and diplomatic allies?

If he knows he is a liar, and we know he is a liar, and 'they' know he is a lair . . . are you certain that makes for the foundation of trust and respect required for even the most fundamental foreign relations?

Kerry may; perhaps we might; but 'they' certainly will not.

That's why this lie is particularly egregious AND important:  It clearly underlines the moral and ethical foundations upon which a Kerry statescraft will form:  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.

is never unimportant, and the fact that we all knew Kerry was already an 'embellisher' in no way dimishes the story's signficance.

Personally, I'm starting to believe that the bogus story of missing ordnance in the NYT was published to offest the highly-anticipated evidence of Kerry's latest gaffe.  Normally I am not so paranoid......but hey, even paranoids have enemies.

Taken alone, I don't think this "little white lie" is of great importance. However, the number and nature of Kerry's lies is concerning.

He has constantly exaggerated and invented stories which could just as well have been told truthfully. Or even not told at all. For instance, how could he have possibly gained from being 30 yards from Bill Buckner's error in the '86 series instead of at that banquet? Or, would it have been less helpful to his purpose if he had just said he met with "several" or "a few" members of the SC...yada, yada, yada?

These "little white lies" are not political rhetoric. They appear to suggest a much deeper, life-long problem.

I fear we are about to make a pathological, serial teller of gratuitous, self-agrandizing lies the most powerful man in the world.

I was taught that trust is absolute--it's either 100% or it's zero.  If you can't trust a man all of the time, you can never really trust him.

Foreign leaders know this as well as we do.  Perhaps better.  If we think we are all alone in the GWOT now, just wait til we are led by a man no one can trust.

I am reminded of Bob Dole in '96 when he said "where is the outrage?" regarding Emperor Billigula's conduct in office, and Dole's comments were given short shrift.

(I also point out as others have that Dole had the good grace to step down from the Senate to run his presidential campaign, where Kerry obviously doesn't have the confidence, courage OR conviction to have done likewise - and why not? Kerry is being paid for a job he seldom shows up for, just like his one-term loafer of a running mate, John 'Silky Pony' Edwards - but alas I digress...)

I also wonder if there will be any public outrage IF the story about Kerry and the VVAW taking direction from Madame Binh of the Viet Cong in Paris in '71 gets any airplay.

Now THAT is a smoking gun (reported via World Net Daily) that in all logical circumstances, should have ended ANY candidate's campaign.

Imagine the furor IF (hypothetically) Senator John McCain were running for president and it was revealed that he had indeed collaborated, cooperated and had been coopted by the North Vietnamese Communists?

McCain could honestly claim that he was tortured into submission, and most Americans would understand it and accept it.

But John F'in Kerry wasn't being tortured, oh no - he was flying to Paris on his honeymoon (so he says), enjoying the first class accomodations of whatever airline he was flying, and no doubt graciously accepted the generous gratuities offered by his hosts, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.

I've heard Madam Binh used to really have a good spread (banquet items of course).

And with then-Lieutenant JG John F. Kerry, they clearly didn't have to spend very much money to obtain his full and complete support.

If America elects John Kerry next Tuesday, not only will we ultimately experience the greatest national disasters and collapse of American security imaginable, we will deserve every bit of it.

Broken Glass.

My two operative words.

how it is that this is a major lie, and in particular how it is not important that George Bush has lied about virtually everything, including weapons of mass destruction, cost of the war, cost of his medicare package, college grant funding, not wanting nation-building.... I don't have time to type the entire four years of the Bush administration. How does this litany of lying make him fit to serve? I really have to learn this thinking. I know I'll be viewed as a troll, but I really really want to learn what goes through your head to justify a non-stop run of lying and incompetence... is it just that you want to to portray Kerry as a BIGGER liar and someone MORE incompetent?

You haven't established that those were lies. Things that turned out in hindsight be incorrect, yes. But last I checked, failure to prophecy correctly makes one a heretic, not a liar. Recalling fake events from your own history makes you either delusional or a liar.

Powell and Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney presented to the American people and the UN that they knew where the weapons were. I remember driving with a friend, already very suspicious about this invasion, and said to her, "I really hope they find something there, or it's going to be a mess" This administration made up the fact thet there were weapons there. It was not lack of foresight. The foresight had already shown that there WEREN'T weapons there, and they made them up and used it as the reason to go to war. You say making up a conversation with people is a lie. I say making up weapons of mass destruction is a lie. Even if they're both lies, which one caused 1100 dead American soldiers?

We CAN trust John Kerry.

We can trust him to adopt whatever position best suits his political ambitions, no matter whether or not it conflicts with previously stated principles or positions.

With that in mind he's a pretty predictable and dependable fellow.

Oh please. I swear, people don't know the difference between lying and being wrong on the left, do they.

If Bush "lied" or "made up stuff" about WMDs, then so did Kerry. So did Edwards---who, I might add, is on record saying that Iraq was an iminent threat.

So did the French. So did the Russians. So did the Jordanians. So did the Egyptians. So did the British. So did the UN. So did Hans Blix.

Need I go on?

Now look, I'm a fair guy. The administration DID mislead the country on WMDs. But "mislead" is not "lie", because the latter involves intent.

since they did lie, this still doesn't explain the reason for supporting someone who has repeated lied about very serious and some not so serious matters over the last four years, while going on about him saying he met with more members of the security council than he did. I mean, this is a man who once claimed that we DID find weapons --- we found these biological weapons labs. No fact, no basis... just made it up. And this is just one example. I have no problem with being for lower taxes on the wealthy, and being pro-gun, and being anti-choice, be against creating jobs because you don't give a rats ass about anyone else, (sorry had to throw in a great bit from a resident of Alabama I spoke to this past weekend) etc etc. Have that opinion, I disagree, but I can deal with that opinion. But I just don't get getting worked up about this exaggeration, whatever you want to call it, when the man you support has lied about a whole lot more dangerous situations, and some that are just laughable because they show how pathological he is in his ability to create his own reality.

is that Bush had no intent when he lied... um... mislead... ok... fair enough. I think he did have intent, but if you don't so be it. what about everything else? was that all misleading too?

You aren't welcome to make up whatever charges you'd like to invent today. If you want to make a claim, support it. Saying something that turns out to be incorrect is not necessarily a lie. If you know it is incorrect at the time, it is a lie. So if you want to draw the a-priori conclusion that he knew it was false at the time, dispite that all the intelligence agencies around the world also believed it to be true, despite the fact that Kerry, Edwards, and Clinton all said the same thing, then so be it--but draw that conclusion in the shrill echo chambers of the far left where truth is whatever you say it is today. If on the other hand you want to offer proof that Bush knew it wasn't true when he said it and that he knew the intelligence agencies around the world were wrong, feel free to provide it in the space below. If not, shut up.

what the facts are and what they always have been is that we have not found the weapons of mass destruction that THEY SAID WERE THERE. Relying on the French, British, Polish, Nigeria, whatever is not the point. I don't want to rely on them andTHEY WEREN'T THERE. It is not creating whatever truth I want by saying there are no weapons, because there WERE NO WEAPONS. wow...

everyone believed they were there. They weren't. It is only a lie if when you said they were there, that in fact you knew for a fact they weren't.

Wow. That is so difficult to grasp. Being wrong != lying. Pick up a dictionary sometime, you might find it enlightening.

what the facts are and what they always have been is that we have not found the weapons of mass destruction that THEY SAID WERE THERE.

You are correct.

Relying on the French, British, Polish, Nigeria, whatever is not the point.

Yes it is. It establishes that Bush wasn't LYING, because he, like EVERYONE ELSE, believed the WMDs were there.

I don't want to rely on them

Only because it refutes your central point.

and THEY WEREN'T THERE.

Yes, you said that, and none of us disputes that.

It is not creating whatever truth I want by saying there are no weapons, because there WERE NO WEAPONS. wow...

No, but you still haven't established that everyone who said they were there were lying about that fact. And if you're determined to keep anyone who "lied" (in your terminology) about Iraq's WMDs out of office, you have no business supporting Kerry/Edwards either.

The space here where you were supposed to provide evidence that Bush knew it was untrue when he said there were weapons, is still blank. In America things like evidence are still important.

if he can believe they were there, I can believe that he knew they weren't

you're asking me to provide proof of what was in his head. but when asked about where the weapons of mass destruction, he sent powell to make up a story aout weapons that weren't there. Why would he need to make them up if he didn't know they weren't there. Hope that isn't too many negatives in one sentence for you to handle. Maybe I even messed it up.