Floor Speech - October 06, 2004

KERRY DOES NOT GET IT ON IRAQ

Mr. Speaker, 

On the one hand, Mr. Kerry calls Iraq a mistake. 

On the other hand, he says our soldiers are not dying for a mistake. 

He has failed time and again to make sense of his flip-flops. 

And while he looked good in the debate last week, he sounded like the same old candidate with 57 varieties of stances on Iraq. 

His call for a timetable to get troops out of Iraq sends a message that terrorists can outlast us. It is a fancy way to spin the fact that he wants to retreat.

His repeated statements that Iraq is a "quagmire," "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," repels allies; it does not rally them to our cause. 

And, talking about real coalitions is a fancy way to spin the fact that, under his watch, other nations would dictate the deployment of our military, and it insults our coalition partners and the Iraqi forces who are risking their lives every day for freedom.

John Kerry just does not get it.