New Pentagon Report Uses Language Kerry Used in 2004 that Bush-Cheney Called "Dangerous" and "Naive"

August 07, 2008 9:12 PMzzaki-->
In October 2004, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., then the Democratic presidential nominee, was asked by the New York Times Magazine, what it would take for Americans to feel safe again:
''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life."
As you may recall, Republicans pounced.
"Nuisance"…"law enforcement"…these words meant Kerry didn't get it, they said.
"Senator Kerry talked of reducing terrorism to - quote - 'nuisance' - end quote - and compared it to prostitution and illegal gambling," President Bush said. "See, I couldn't disagree more. Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive, destroying terrorists, and spreading freedom and liberty around the world."
Bush-Cheney also went after Kerry for using 'nuisance' as pertains to terrorism in a TV ad.
"Nor can we think of our goal in this war in the way Senator Kerry described it yesterday in The New York Times," said Vice President Dick Cheney. "Quote: 'We have to get back to the place,' he said, where terrorism is 'a nuisance,' sort of like - and these are his comparisons — sort of like gambling and prostitution. This is naive and dangerous."
But Bush and Cheney's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, unveiled a National Defense Strategy this week that sounds quite similar to what Kerry said.

LinkHere