Local reports about yesterday's rallies with Kerry.

Kerry leads Berkshire Brigades Candidates Night
Updated: 9/9/2006 9:38 AM
By: Karen Honikel


Keynote speaker Senator John Kerry rallied Democrats Friday night, reminding them that the results of November's elections will have a profound impact on the future.

"It's all on the line in this race," Kerry said. "All on the line."

"I don't want a governor for the state of Massachusetts supporting a president whose as wrong as this president is on interrupting the war on terror and keeping our troops in Iraq," he said.

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Kerry warns not enough attention is being paid to the problems in our own country.

"I don't know about you, but I look at this picture and I say something is wrong when the United States of America is spending billions of dollars to export democracy to Iran and Iraq when we need to make our own democracy work right here in the United States," Kerry said.

In particular, Kerry said Massachusetts is falling behind in education.

"This state that we love is not 47th in the country, in terms of public commitment to higher education, What? Massachusetts?," he said.

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John Kerry: Switch the fight to Afghanistan

By SEN. JOHN KERRY

11 hours, 53 minutes ago

Donald Rumsfeld — who should have been fired as secretary of defense long ago — gave an ugly speech in which he spoke of “moral confusion.”

There certainly is a lot of moral confusion around these days. It is immoral for old men to send young Americans to fight and die for a strategy that has not weakened terrorism but worsened it. It is immoral to treat 9/11 as a political pawn — and to continue to excuse the invasion of Iraq by exploiting the 3,000 mothers and fathers, sons and daughters who were lost that day. They were attacked and killed not by Saddam Hussein but by Osama bin Laden.

President Bush has a strategy to try to win an election. We need leadership that has a strategy to win the War on Terror.

Iraq has made America less safe. The terrorists are not on the run. Terrorist acts tripled between 2004 and 2005. Al-Qa-da has spawned a decentralized network operating in 65 countries, most of them joining since 9/11. Only Dick Cheney could call this a success.

The situation in Afghanistan deteriorates steadily. The Taliban now controls entire portions of southern Afghanistan, and across the border Pakistan is one coup away from becoming a radical jihadist state with nuclear weapons. Only George Bush could declare this “mission accomplished.”

It’s time to refocus our military efforts from the failed occupation of Iraq to what we should have been doing all along: destroying al-Qaida. We need to redeploy troops from Iraq — keep up the training and counter-terror operations, establish an over the horizon military capacity — and free up resources to fight the War on Terror.

Every time President Bush tells the Iraqis we will “stay as long as it takes,” he is giving squabbling Iraqi politicians an excuse to take as long as they want to. Iraqi leaders have responded only to deadlines. So we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get Iraq up on its own two feet — a clear deadline of July, 2007. As our generals have said, the war cannot be won militarily. “Staying the course” isn’t far-sighted; it’s blind. Leaving our troops in the middle of a civil war isn’t resolute; it’s reckless. Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America’s leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion.

Neither can the administration engage in the delusion that we’ve won in Afghanistan. Last Thursday the President said we’re on the offensive against terrorists in Afghanistan, even as the NATO commander said the opposite is true and made a desperate plea for more troops to stop a major Taliban offensive.

We must recommit to Afghanistan. This administration has cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is retaking control over entire areas of the country. They’ve cut and run even as we’ve learned that the mastermind of the most recent attempt to blow up American airliners was an al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan. The same killers who attacked us are still plotting attacks against America and they’re still holed up in Afghanistan.

We must send significant reinforcements to Afghanistan: at least 5,000 more troops, equipment, and reconstruction funds. Five years after 9/11, the politics of deception and smear stalks this land. But this cynical strategy can not redeem a Katrina foreign policy or re-elect a rubberstamp Congress. Americans see the truth through the fog of fear.

On the other side, the only thing they have to offer is fear itself. It’s up to us to offer a new course that will actually win the war on terror.

Sen. John Kerry was the 2004 Democratic nominee for President.

A vote for the future
Saturday, September 09, 2006

THUMBS UP, THUMBS DOWN

It was a powerhouse double-header at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst yesterday with the appearance of both the Bay State's junior and senior members of the U.S. Senate.

The messages brought to the campus by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry had local and national implications. In a message close to his heart, Kerry, who lost the 2004 presidential election to President Bush, encouraged students to go to the polls. We hope students were listening. With the addition of a voting place on campus, students don't have any excuses about hardships getting to the polls to vote in the Sept. 19 primary or the Nov. 7 election.

Kennedy and Kerry were also on hand to mark the groundbreaking for a $92.7 million Integrated Science Building that is being touted as a model for science teaching and research focusing on the integration of the life, chemical and physical sciences.

The addition of the new science building is a vote for the future of the flagship campus of the state university system. The joint appearance of Kennedy and Kerry underscored the point that with great gifts come responsibilities.

Kerry, Kennedy come to UMass
Saturday, September 09, 2006
By DIANE LEDERMAN
dlederman@repub.com

AMHERST - U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry, arriving late to his University of Massachusetts speaking engagement yesterday, took off his jacket, jumped off the stage to the floor with his microphone and explained that he would have been there earlier, but "Paris Hilton was my designated driver."

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Kerry continued his standup comedy routine to the pleasure of the more than 500 people who packed the UMass auditorium, and then headed into the reasons that brought him there - helping galvanize students to vote.
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Kerry spoke for about 25 minutes and then answered questions for about another 25. His talk and responses were frequently applauded and he was given a standing ovation when he arrived and when he left.

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He criticized the Bush administration for the number of times he said it has misled the American people, including the "war on terror. Iraq is not the center of the war on terror," he said, for which he was applauded.

"We have lost our moral authority. We lost our leverage in the world." And he told the crowd that the only way to change that is at the ballot box.
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He talked about the difference that people like civil rights activist Rosa Parks - who refused to move to the back of the bus in 1955 - and Lech Walesa, founder of the Solidarity movement that toppled communism in Poland in 1989-90, have made in the world and how students can do the same.