Misc
"Mr. Kerry voted for the USA Patriot Act, Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind education bill and the Congressional resolution authorizing the president to use force in Iraq, only to sharply criticize all three once he became a presidential candidate. Mr. Kerry counters that his quarrel is with Mr. Bush's execution of the policies, but he struggled for months to explain his shifting stance on the Iraq war." -- Todd S. Purdum, Jan 25, 2004 in the New York Times
"For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions that Irish-Americans" -— Senate floor statement by John Kerry, 3/18/86
"(John Kerry) has never indicated to anyone that he was Irish and corrected people over the years who assumed he was" -- Kerry spokeswoman Kelly Benander said in Feb, 2003
"I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to f*ck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." -- John Kerry in Rolling Stone
"Everybody always makes the mistake of looking South. Al Gore proved he could have been president of the United States without winning one Southern state, including his own." -- John Kerry
"I don't believe in litmus tests, but I believe very strongly that the right to choose and the right to privacy are fundamental constitutional rights and I can't imagine supporting a Supreme Court nominee who doesn't share my view of the Constitution." -- John Kerry explains his Roe Vs. Wade litmus test after explaining that he doesn't believe in litmus tests
"John Kerry. In his 20 years in the Senate, he's been a standard-issue Massachusetts liberal, with a lifetime rating from Americans for Democratic Action of 93 on their 0-100 scale. By contrast, the other Senator from the Bay State, Teddy Kennedy, has a lifetime rating of 88. "That makes Kennedy the conservative of the two," chortled Republican National Chairman Ed Gillespie as he visited New Hampshire last week on an anti-Democratic strafing run." -- James Pinkerton, 1/26/04
"Sen. John F. Kerry has said he was ‘very proud’ of his vote to increase the (gas) tax by 4.3 cents per gallon..." -- Michael Kranish, The Boston Globe, 5/4/96
Vietnam
"I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way... What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be re-fighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a presidential primary." -- John Kerry back in 1992
"Under Kerry's leadership, VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against The War) members mocked the uniform of United States soldiers by wearing tattered fatigues marked with pro-Communist graffiti. They dishonored America by marching in demonstrations under the flag of the Viet Cong enemy.” -- Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry
"(N)o one in the United States Senate pushed harder to bury the POW/MIA issue, the last obstacle preventing normalization of relations with Hanoi, than John Forbes Kerry." -- US Veteran Dispatch
On The War In Iraq & WMD
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998
"The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation." -- John Kerry, 10/9/02
"(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. ...And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War." -- John Kerry, 1/23/03
"Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror, and therefore any advance in Iraq is an advance forward in that..." -- John Kerry 12/15/03
"When it was popular to be a Massachusetts liberal, his voting record was that. When it was popular to be for the Iraq war, he was for it. Now it's popular to be against it, and he's against it." -- Jay Carson, a Dean campaign spokesman.
