What? Um... Look. I just responded to statements made by others in this thread. I didn't make up the bit about Kerry's statement. I simply responded to it. Find me a statement that I said that was incorrect please.
My argument was not about whether Kerry made the statement or not. Heck. When it was mentioned in the thread was the first I'd heard of it! My argument was that if Kerry made the claim that he had the support of foreign leaders, that he should in fact suppoort those claims. End of story.
Um... Factual information? I just posted a "fact" that completely blows Smash's post out of the water. Were you reading?
Here. Let me refresh:
On Monday, March 8th. Kerry is quoted by a Boston Globe reporter named Patrick Healy with the following statement:
Quote:
Kerry: "I've been hearing it, I'll tell ya. The news, the coverage in other countries, the news in other places. I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say it all publicly, but boy they look at you and say, you gotta win this, you gotta beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that. So there is enormous energy out there. Tell them, whereever they can find an American abroad, they can contribute."
Over the next week, this kinda raised a storm as folks were questioning which leaders he may have been talking about.
On Sunday, March 14th, Kerry made the following statement in response to the questions:
Quote:
"I'm not going to betray a private conversation with anybody," Kerry said Sunday. "I have heard from people, foreign leaders elsewhere in the world who don't appreciate the Bush administration and would love to see a change in the leadership of the United States."
Ok? You following this? Note. Almost a full week. Not one statement from Kerry or his camp denying that he said the words "Foreign Leaders" in his speach from March 8th. A second statement on March 14th that again uses the exact words "foreign leaders". Remember that. It's significant.
On Monday, March 15th, Patrick Healy releases the following statement (I've got a link here): http://www.drudgereport.com/kerrybo.htm
In it, he says that he mistranscribed the words from one week earlier on the March 8th Kerry speach. The word that he though was "foreign" was actually "more". So the actual quote was (my bold btw):
Quote:
KERRY: "I've been hearing it, I'll tell ya. The news, the coverage in other countries, the news in other places. I've met more leaders who can't go out and say it all publicly, but boy they look at you and say, you gotta win this, you gotta beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that. So there is enormous energy out there. Tell them, whereever they can find an American abroad, they can contribute."
That's the mistranscription that Smash is talking about. And that's all well and good. But what about the statement he made on March 14th? That's a *different* statement, made on a different day, presumably before different reporters, a full 6 days after the first speach, and clearly *after* there was already an uproar about his use of the phrase "foreign leaders" in the first one.
Those are facts Fell. If you don't like them, then feel free to come up with something to refute them. I don't just make stuff up. Smash does. But I don't.
I'll repeat my original argument. If Kerry is making claims that he's hearing from foreign leaders who are telling him that Bush has got to go, then he damn well needs to support his claims. If he can't or wont, then it really does seriously call his credibility into question. That's not just a matter of opinion. That's a matter of fact. Whether the original quote was correct or not is irrelevant. He made essentially the exact same statement a week later. It's still a valid issue.