Kerry Responds to Right Wing Attacks

Kerry’s office is fighting back against the distortions of Kerry’s statements in his Face the Nation interview. Kerry spokesman David Wade said the following on CNN today:

“Ken Mehlman’s filthy and shameful lie about a decorated combat veteran is disgraceful. Political hack Ken Mehlman and draft dodging, donut eating Rush Limbaugh have something in common. Neither of them know anything about how to make American troops safe. John Kerry will continue to speak out about how to succeed in Iraq and protect brave American troops.”

In addition to distorting Kerry’s position on succeeding in Iraq, the right wing noise machine has been distorting this statement from the Face the Nation interview:

“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.”

As anyone who has any understanding of the English language would realize, saying it would be terrorizing to kids to have American soldiers come into their home at night is both true and in no way calling the soldiers terrorists. “Terrorizing” and “terrorists” are very similar words, but do not necessarily mean the same thing. The context makes the distinction quite clear.

Either these right wingers are unable to read and understand a simple sentence or they are liars. Perhaps both.

Update: Some of the right wing sites are comparing this statement to Kerry’s Vietnam testimony. There is a connection here. They are continuing to lie about what Kerry said back then just as they are lying about what Kerry said this week. If they hate Kerry so much you would think they would come up with something Kerry really said to attack him for rather than continuing to make up stuff to attack him for.