[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 21050]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     KERRY DOES NOT GET IT ON IRAQ

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. 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.

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