If you had taken the time to read the quote of his statement, the first part of the sentence said that we would be hit by terrorists, the second said that if that happened and Kerry was in office, there would be a chance that he would fall back into the old trsof seeing it as a law enforcement issue. Based on Kerry's past voting history, that would seem likely to me.
Won't you acknowledge that he was misquoted purposefully for partisan political advantage.
Here's some background info. Sorry to confuse you with the facts:
AP Takes Cheney Quote Out of Context
The Associated Press is at it again. In a story covering a town hall meeting with Dick Cheney yesterday, the AP accuses Cheney of saying that a Kerry presidency would result in a major terrorist attack on the United States. The AP bolsters this conclusion by chopping off the end of one of Cheney's sentences, thus causing Cheney's statement to sound inflammatory and even extremist, when it actually was neither.
The AP story opens:
Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.
The Kerry-Edwards campaign immediately rejected those comments as "scare tactics" that crossed the line.
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.
If Kerry were elected, Cheney said the nation risks falling back into a "pre-9/11 mind-set" that terrorist attacks are criminal acts that require a reactive approach. Instead, he said Bush's offensive approach works to root out terrorists where they plan and train, and pressure countries that harbor terrorists.
AP readers are not told that the AP snipped Cheney's quote in the middle of his sentence, in a way that supports the AP's interpretation of Cheney's remarks as an argument that a Kerry presidency will lead to another terrorist attack. When you read Cheney's quote in its full context, it is highly questionable whether the AP's interpretation is correct.
I heard Cheney's quote on the radio today, and later found it in a couple of places on Nexis. (I'll provide a web link when one becomes available.) [UPDATE: The White House transcript is here.] When I read the entire passage in context, it does not appear to me that Cheney is arguing that electing Kerry will lead to another terrorist attack. Rather, Cheney appears to be arguing that, if Kerry is elected, the next terrorist attack will be viewed according to a pre-9/11 mindset, and will consequently be treated as a criminal act rather than an act of war.
Here is the full quote, in context, with the most relevant portion set in bold type:
We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time. We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.
We have to understand it is a war. It's different than anything we've ever fought before. But they mean to do everything they can to destroy our way of life. They don't agree with our view of the world. They've got an extremist view in terms of their religion. They have no concept or tolerance for religious freedom. They don't believe women ought to have any rights. They've got a fundamentally different view of the world, and they will slaughter -- as they demonstrated on 9/11 -- anybody who stands in their way. So we've got to get it right. We've got to succeed here. We've got to prevail. And that's what is at stake in this election.
While Cheney's language could have been more precise, I think that his point was clearly that Kerry would view any future terrorist attack as a law enforcement matter -- not that a Kerry presidency would cause another terrorist attack. At the very least, this is a plausible interpretation of Cheney's quote.
Granted, Cheney's fundamental point is that treating terrorist attacks as a law enforcement issue will lead to more terrorist attacks -- over time. And, of course, the Bush Administration wants the public to believe that Americans will be safer under Bush than under Kerry.
But there is a difference between saying, on the one hand: "John Kerry will respond to terrorist attacks in an inappropriate fashion, which will eventually lead to more terrorism," and saying, on the other hand: "If you elect John Kerry, we are going to get hit with another terrorist attack." The former charge is standard campaign rhetoric. The latter charge, which implies an immediate and direct causation between a Kerry presidency and an act of terror, is one that many Americans would see as needlessly controversial and inflammatory.
By snipping the quote where they did, and declaring that Cheney made the latter, more controversial accusation, the folks at the AP deprived their readers of the ability to interpret Cheney's quote for themselves. Unless they happen to have heard the entire quote in context, as I did, AP readers will have no idea that Cheney appeared to be making a different, less inflammatory, and more defensible point.
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