"He clearly has an obligation to, you know ? you put up or you shut up. You don't make up reckless charges and then say, 'Well, it's really secret, I can't tell you.' "
- Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), re: Senator Kerry's now-infamous "foreign leaders" quote, which incidentally turns out to have been misquoted by the Boston Globe journalist who originally reported on the story
That's funny - I remember the Bush Administration claiming they had "bulletproof" evidence about Saddam Hussein's WMDs that for some reason they could only share in secret with the world leaders they'd duped into teaming up with them on their crusade. I don't remember Senator Coleman getting all hot and bothered about Dubya's obligation to "put up or shut up"...
...and as for the identities of the "foreign leaders", I'm guessing incoming Prime Minister of Spain Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero might be one person more keen on Kerry than bullish on Bush:
"Mr Blair and Mr Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism... One cannot bomb a people by chance, one cannot lead a war with lies, one cannot accept that."
But suppose that Kerry did speak off-the-record with various foreign leaders who expressed their dislike for the current occupants of the White House - does anyone honestly think that, given the President's Tony Soprano-style of dealing with nations who dare to dissent, the Senator would cough up any names? He wouldn't exactly be doing anyone any favors that way, unless the political equivalent of a baseball bat upside the head could be considered a "favor"!
At any rate, this was a bad thing for Kerry to say, in either the quoted or misquoted form, as any whiff of international consideration in American politics is red meat for the "Black Helicopter, One World Government" constituency, who fervently believe that the United Nations is headed by the Antichrist because Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (of the Wal-Mart Recommends bestselling Left Behind series of novels) told them so.
Oh, and Catholics worship the Whore of Babylon - but not Mel Gibson, because he made that great Jesus film!
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