Campaign Dogged by Terror Fight -NYT

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio, Aug. 1 - John Kerry was supposed to spend Sunday traveling through small-town Ohio and Michigan, going to church and talking at rallies. But by afternoon, his campaign was also searching northern Ohio for a secure telephone line so Mr. Kerry could squeeze in a briefing on an issue that was overtaking the day: the terrorist threats announced in Washington.
...
"I am concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism," Howard Dean, a former rival of Mr. Kerry for the Democratic nomination, told Wolf Blitzer on CNN on Sunday.

"His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore at times of difficulty for America stick with me,' and then out comes Tom Ridge," Mr. Dean, the former Vermont governor, added, referring to the homeland security secretary. "It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both in it."

White House officials denied that suggestion, and other Democrats and Mr. Kerry's advisers would not embrace it. "I certainly hope not," Steve Elmendorf, Mr. Kerry's deputy campaign manager, said. "You have to take them at their word."

http://nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/campaign/02campaign.html?hp

"His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore at times of difficulty for America stick with me,' and then out comes Tom Ridge"


Dean nailed it! Every time I see Ridge, I can't understand how people think Bush is doing a good job at keeping us safe. I mean, if we were safe, we wouldn't see Ridge. :eyes:

What has he accomplished at the DHS?

on my face. bushco is using terror and fear to control the election, period.

Just what every liar wants you to do.

Terror attacks are serious business. If the targets are hit, you would not want your loved ones involved. Take the alerts seriously, but take complete notes, archive material, collate information, prepare for hearings and trials after the election, whenever they are actually held.

Maintain focus. Don't freak out and don't brush it off.

Why can't we do that with YOU, george?

"You have to take them at their word."

Kerry should have access to the evidence that warrants this heightened alert. Seems that he should be able to call Ridge and ask to see this evidence. If Kerry thinks it's on the up and up, that would be a good thing for us to know. I don't trust the motives of this administration....seems that they'd be happy to share the intel with Kerry, if for no other reason than to show that this war on terror is a bi-partisan issue. Of course, if they don't want to share, then I'll be convinced that it is in fact just a political ploy by Rove.

I'm not convinced that it is. I do know I'd like to see what I recognize as true coming out of the candidate's own mouth.

More power to him.

and he should, as the Democratic Presidential candidate, be privvy to the evidence. If they don't want to share it, I'd say a lot of the speculation that it is politically motivated is valid.

Committee.



John Edwards, however, IS. The Democratix members (as of the start the term) are - in order of seniority: 1 John D. Rockefeller 2 Carl Levin 3 Dianne Feinstein 4 Ron Wyden 5 Richard Durbin 6 Evan Bayh 7 John Edwards 8 Barbara Mikulski

Kerry IS due inteligence briefings as the Democratic candidate. That's what the story was about. But that doesn't mean live intelligence as it comes in -even the Senate Intelligence Committee isn't due that.

Dangling his little toes of truth in the media water to attract the Rove-sharks, so the 'official' Kerry camp can stay out of the mud and above reproach by claiming that they don't agree or condone what Dean is saying ...

Brilliant !

Send the doctor out there to say the things that need to be said, then disagree with the Doctor because they have to appear above the fray.

In a post 9/11 world, they needed a Doctor to do the nitty gritty slam-'em work. This way, both candidates can stay above the fray and what needs to be said still gets said.

FUCKING BRILLIANT!

"I certainly hope not," Steve Elmendorf, Mr. Kerry's deputy campaign manager, said. "You have to take them at their word."

Not, "Of course not" or "We believe it's on the up and up" or "We disagree with Dean".

Just "I hope not". Brilliant.

I'd buy the Team Kerry brilliance if it were more than Dean saying it.

If the situation were revcersed, the rethugs would have had multiple surrogates repeating the line to multiple sources which would have generated multiple stand alone stories, not just a sentence buried in a largely negative ny times piece. THEN the campaign would have distanced itself--after the damage was done.

Elmendorf's answer sounds too familiar--the sound a of a Democrat shitting in his or her pants when faced with the opportunity to practice hardnosed politics.

He isn't out there like some sort of "trained dog". He just calls things as he sees them. That's it and that's all.

Sorry, Dean has to be the bulldog which is usually the role reserved for the Veep.

In this situation, the Veep can't play that way.

It'll be even better when the political motivations of this latest phony 'Terra Lert' are revealed and Dean makes the media look like the phony asswipes they are. Then Kerry puts him in charge of the FCC and the REAL fun begins.

strategy of standing up to the enemy. I DID see CNN this morning with Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute and some redhead from that all-important American Enterprise Institute, and the redhead had O'Hanlon for lunch. His "rebuttal" style consisted, in three out of four times he was on camera, of various versions of "well, I agree with Caroline (or whatever her name was)" or "well, here again, I agree with Caroline..." JEEZ!!!!! WORTHLESS!!!! Then WHY do we turn to America and insist there is a difference between the two candidates and the two parties' policies and points of view? WHY? Michael O'Hanlon just proved there isn't any. Let her butt in, didn't even TRY to refute what she first said - taking Kerry apart for being a member of the Senate Intel committee and yet not being there so much of the time - he did point out that Kerry is out running for president, but WHY DID HE NOT POINT OUT how the republi-CON majority on this and every other committee has not made it possible to have real, honest, cut-through-the-baloney dialogue and discussion and action on policy improvements? WHY did he not throw it right back in her face and take the GOLDEN opportunity to remind people (repeating what Kerry had JUST said in a soundbite a few minutes earlier - and I'm glad he even brought it up) - that this White House did more to stonewall the 9/11 Commission, fight its even being assembled to begin with, fight its reasons for wanting extensions, fight its wishes to call contradicta to testify, fight speaking to the Commission members themselves, refuse to go under oath - JEEZ! Is he a mole, working for the other side?

Don't think for a millisecond that those BASTARDS in the White House didn't PLAN it just this way. They're manipulating the public with LIES, as usual.

Every word of these "alerts" is and will continue to be, a lie, even the and's and the's within them. The sole purpose of these posturings by Ridge is to distract the media from the political campaigns, and to frighten the people. It seems likely to me that the people will prove sturdier than the media commentators: the people already display a healthy skepticism toward these attempts at fomenting panic; the media commentators, being cowards to the bone in most instances, are much more easily led into the desired state of frenzy. It seems worth noting, that in a well run polity at war, attempts to panic the people are viewed as defeatist treason, and dealt with accordingly....

"You can't cut the throat of every cocksucker whose character it would improve."

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

Thank you, Howard!

naming the person that gave the info to cause the terrorist alert, what kind of info he had, etc. Shouldn't this be classified info? They also had it several weeks ago.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/02intel.html?ei=5006&en=191a653487a53251&ex=1092024000&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=>

who the individuals doing it were....I would probably go public with it in hopes that the attack would be called off.
Just my opinion.

on when the information was received and when it was released.

Maybe you remember a little while ago when BA Flight 423 from London to Washington kept being grounded because of terrorism threats? Each time the grounding was due to old information that was "looked at in a new light".

In the end British Airways simply changed the flight number to 493.

He ought to play fair. He ought not to play with the lives and emotions of so many American people and he ought not to play with the lives of so many people around the world, period.

His grandmother Dorothy Walker was an unrivaled tennis player who thought winning was the whole thing and taught her sonny boy, dear old poppy that winning was the rule of the game as long as you pretended not to want to win, but winning a tennis game, and manipulating people's lives, or killing sooooooo many innocent civilians as have died in Iraq and in Afghanistan, sending troops in harms way and then ratcheting up the emotional buttons just to get your way and win the game is a totally different thing.

The Bushes all are immature enough not to know the difference(despite lip service to the fact) and using people as tennis or golf balls to be served at their pleasure is immoral.

:puke:

I live and work in NYC. Today on the way to work all the trains and buses had extra security. As soon as the networks move on to the next boogie man the security will wane back to normal levels. The department of homeland security is like a three ring circus.

Hex