Jonah Goldberg hit Nexis over the weekend to find out what Kerry said about terrorism before 9-11-01. Why? Kerry has publicly stated that 9-11-01 did not change his worldview. Therefore, we need to know what he said, thought, proposed and did about the terrorist threats to the US during the Clinton Administration and before.
Answer: nothing.
Two excerpts:
Now, look, I know that Nexis-search sleuthing is not perfect. I am sure I'm missing some press release or staff-written letter to the editor or speech he gave to the Amherst Rotary Club. But if you know how these things work, you know how revealing this is. John Kerry says he hasn't changed from the 1990s, and in the 1990s he didn't [care] about any of this stuff. And during the 1980s, he was as dovish as you can get, fighting Ronald Reagan's foreign policy at every turn and even calling Reagan's tenure a period of "moral darkness." And in the 1970s he was calling American soldiers war criminals and fighting for a nuclear freeze.
When John Kerry says 9/11 merely confirmed what he'd been warning about for years, he makes it sound like he was some Churchillian figure standing alone against the dark and gathering storm, when the reality is far closer to an image of him as a back-bencher snoozing behind the pages of a newspaper as Churchill thundered alone.
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It's hard to shake the impression that so many "pro-war" writers want to punish George W. Bush for his mistakes by voting for Kerry. How childish. The choice isn't between punishing Bush or rewarding him: It's between electing a president who understands the fight we're in and one who denies we even need to be in one. Despite Kerry's newfound convictions about the need to "destroy" and "kill" terrorists, there's little reason to believe he understands what this war is about. Bush says Kerry has a "September 10th" worldview. He's right, of course. Kerry himself admits that he has a September 10th worldview. That would be fine, if Kerry's worldview on September 10th wasn't so awful.
Read it all.
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