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Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
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 Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 1:46 pm Post subject: Jules Crittenden: "Massachusetts’ botched joke" |
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A wake-up call to Massachusetts...
"But the botched joke we’re stuck with in Massachusetts, and the nation as a whole, is a backbencher’s lackluster career, which has been elevated far beyond his worth. And his failure to recognize that he is irrelevant on the national stage."
| Quote: | Massachusetts’ botched joke
By Jules Crittenden
Boston Herald City Editor
Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - Updated: 06:22 PM EST
It’s hard to know where to start with our junior senator’s botched joke, about dumb people getting stuck in Iraq.
The first person who comes to mind for me is Marine Cpl. Matt Boisvert. When I met him at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in late 2004, he was learning how to use an artificial leg and hoping a couple more operations would give him back the use of his right hand. His goal in life at that time was to be able to pass his medical board, so he could go back to Iraq. He wanted to be with his brothers. His fellow Marines in Iraq.
There was nothing stuck about Boisvert. I only met him a couple of times, but it was often enough to know I’d be glad to have him beside me, when it got down to it. With or without that leg.
This is something you learn very soon in combat. It becomes readily apparent in the eyes, in the speech, in the manner. Who you can trust. Who you want to be with when it matters.
As we prepared on the evening of April 6, 2003, to attack Baghdad at dawn, my friend Smitty, a young soldier, was taken out of our armored vehicle to make way for a special ops soldier. We expected it to be very bad in the morning, and the mood was somber. Smitty was angry and depressed that he was being taken out of it. I told him, "Smitty, we’re all going to get (expletive) killed. You get to live. Be happy."
Smitty said, "If y’all gonna get killed, I want to get killed with you."
It was touching, because I felt the same way, and I had barely known him a month. Smitty wasn’t stuck, either.
Four decades ago, John Kerry found himself stuck in Vietnam. He was a naval officer, and had volunteered for duty in small patrol boats that were out in relatively safe duty on the coast of Vietnam. Then they were sent up the rivers, and it got hotter. He appears to have acquitted himself well enough, earning a Silver Star, though there has been some debate about that. Then, he had his third of three minor wounds, none of which required hospitalization, by his own account. Kerry’s three Purple Hearts satisfied a regulation that said three combat wounds can get you out of combat. Four months into a yearlong combat tour, he applied to be taken out. He walked away from the boat crew he commanded. Men who relied on his leadership. Stuck no more.
There’s something else. A number of the people I know who voluntarily went to Iraq are in fact stuck there, even though they are back here. Reporters as well as soldiers. I exchanged emails with one last week, a highly educated enlisted man, an Auburn University graduate who enlisted after Sept. 11, back home a year now. He can’t stop thinking about Ramadi. It’s hard, he said. He felt like he was doing something good there. Something that mattered. You don’t leave a place like that behind, a place where your friends died, a place where you expected to die. You carry it with you. I guess I don’t particularly appreciate someone trying for cheap political yuks off that.
John Kerry says he’s sorry he botched his joke about Iraq, and now he has apologized to anyone who was offended. He meant to make fun of the president of the United States, not the soldiers. It wasn’t very funny that way, either. The wags have already noted that Bush in fact performed better than Kerry at Yale. None of this would be more than a momentary embarrassment. But the botched joke we’re stuck with in Massachusetts, and the nation as a whole, is a backbencher’s lackluster career, which has been elevated far beyond his worth. And his failure to recognize that he is irrelevant on the national stage.
Boston Herald |
| Quote: | “I’m prepared to kick their ass from one end of America to the other. I am so confident of my abilities to address that and to demolish it and to even turn it into a positive.”
John Kerry - Sept. 13, 2006 |
HT: Cox and Forkum
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BuffaloJack
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 1637
Location: Buffalo, New York
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| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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Good article.
I think that "backbencher’s (Kerry's) lackluster career, which has been elevated far beyond his worth. And his failure to recognize that he is irrelevant on the national stage." says it all.
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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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Stick a fork in him? He's done? Vennocchi appears to have had enough of this strutting poseur... (emphasis mine)
| Quote: | On Kerry, Bush gets assist from Democrats
By Joan Vennochi | November 4, 2006
The Boston Globe
<snip>
Right now, Kerry cuts a sad figure in American politics. It's not only because he lost to Bush. It's because he views today's controversies through the prism of his failed presidential campaign. While you need to learn from your mistakes, politics is the art of looking ahead, not back.
On a human level, Kerry's obsession with 2004 is understandable. However, it makes no political sense for his party to refight 2004 in 2006 -- or in 2008. Bush won't be on the ballot. Why should Democrats get behind his vanquished opponent, especially one so clearly seeking personal redemption? The party needs a standard-bearer. Kerry often looks like he needs a hug.
Boston Globe |
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Anker-Klanker
Admiral
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1033
Location: Richardson, TX
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| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Heh. I had quipped some time ago that sKerry really should confine his political ambitions to running for the President of Liberal Massachusetts. Now, it might appear, even they are having second thoughts. |
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