*Inappropriate quote of the day:
“You have a Jim Rassmann, who was a Special Forces officer that was blown off John Kerry’s small boat … When John Kerry turned that boat back and hauled Jim Rassmann out of the water, risking his own life, what he has said: We leave no one behind. He didn’t leave Jim Rassmann behind. He won’t leave veterans behind.”
–Ted Kennedy, who left Mary Jo Kopechne behind. (Link via NGD)
—Noam Scheiber notes that in 1991, John Kerry’s office was sending pro-war letters to pro-war constituents and anti-war letters to anti-war constituents (Link via Andrew Sullivan)
–Over at The Command Post, I quote at length from RNC Chair Ed Gillespie’s speech ripping into John Kerry’s voting record on national security. Highlight: Kerry voted in 1997 to cut $1.5 billion from the intelligence budget. (I also liked Gillespie’s crack on Edwards: “I heard Sen. Edwards was disappointed that he got only 13 percent of the vote in New Hampshire after getting 33 percent in Iowa. I guess as a trial lawyer he just assumed he would always get a third.”).
–The New Republic (subscription only) says Kerry’s 1997 book The New War “was almost entirely focused on the threat of global crime-not terrorism.” As TNR notes, the book isn’t terrible, but it certainly isn’t the visionary tract Kerry now makes it out to be. And get this doozy:
Perhaps worst of all is the odd note on which he closes-a call for repairing America’s domestic health through after-school programs, health care for all, and early-childhood intervention. Those programs, Kerry writes, “will enable us to make peace in our own country and contribute to it elsewhere.” After reading that Manhattan is likely to be nuked someday, a reader can be forgiven for expecting more.
–A link to the full text of Kerry’s dramatic 1971 testimony to Congress. Note that the “Winter Soldier Investigation” (discussed here) is the opening and thematic centerpiece of this speech, which launched Kerry’s political career.
—Fortune magazine notes that Wesley Clark just made $1.2 million (at least on paper) from his investment in a German company, and that this was essentially a risk-free investment set up by business associates. Nice work if you can get it.
—This morning’s NY Daily News looks at Clark’s videotaped address to the annual conference of the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America, a group under investigation for ties to terrorism. “Two past conference speakers face terror-related indictments and a third is identified in FBI reports as a Hamas terror leader.”
–Also in the Daily News, gossip columnist Lloyd Grove (second item) relates some of the hate mail he’s getting for questioning whether John Kerry has had Botox to render his famously furrowed brow smooth and motionless. Um, he is a gossip columnist. This is the first and, I’m sure, last time I’ll say this: this is an issue for Maureen Dowd!