More On Democratic Gaffes

I somehow missed this story, but there was yet another Democrat (in addition to Howard Dean, see below) who made an awful gaffe last week. Can you guess who? That's right, former Presidential Candidate/Junior Senator from Massachusetts John Kerry. Speaking with CBS's Bob Schiefer on 12/4's Face the Nation, Kerry said the following:

But I think what we need to do is recognize what we all agree on, which is you've got to begin to set benchmarks for accomplishment. You've got to begin to transfer authority to the Iraqis. And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not......Iraqis should be doing that. And after all of these two and a half years, with all of the talk of 210,000 people trained, there just is no excuse for not transferring more of that authority.

Once again, this is not an issue of whether or not what Kerry said was true. Indeed, I don't necessarily disagree with his sentiment - having Americans breaking into houses and arresting Iraqis just vindicates those who view our involvement as nothing more than an occupation. The American Red Cross has released a report on this type of activity by "arresting authorities" and some of the findings are disturbing. However, nobody is suggesting that our soldiers shouldn't be able to "hunt down" the insurgents, arrest them, imprison them etc. However, the sooner we can have the "arresting authorities" primarily made up of Iraqis, the easier it will be to bring our troops home. I'm not even sure that the President would disagree with this - it coincides with his "as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" line.

But, Kerry's absent minded wording has only served to embolden conservatives and give new life to their "retreat and defeat" line of attack. For prominent Democrats like Dean and Kerry to be so irresponsible with their choice of words is appalling. It should not have surprised Kerry to learn that using "terrorize" and American soldier in the same sentence was a bad idea. Has he been taken out of context by conservatives? Absolutely. Are they smart enough to understand what Kerry was actually getting at? Of course. Do those things matter? Absolutely not. Again, Kerry said what he said, and now he has to live with it.

It doesn't take much tape to for conservatives to make attack ads against you. Dean and Kerry have personally given conservative groups across the country all they need to label the entire Democratic party as cowardly defeatists who do nothing but give comfort our enemies and undermine our troops' efforts overseas. Once again, John Kerry is falling into a trap set by Republicans - first they labeled him an indecisive "flip flopper" and he responded with, "I actually voted for it before I voted against it" (remember that gem?...Republicans made an ad out of that one too); now, after being labeled the party of "cut and run"/"retreat and defeat", Kerry ostensibly compares our troops to terrorists. Way to go Senator. No amount of backtracking or "putting your comments in context" will fix this. The RNC ad machine is already churning and you're just helping their cause.

P.S. To get a sense of conservatives' response to Kerry's comments, watch this clip over at Media Matters: http://mediamatters.org/items/200512080001

UPDATE: Here it is...this is the first ad, from the RNC's website: http://www.rnc.org/Default.aspx