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September 8, 2004
Cheney: A Vote for Kerry May Kill Your Children

New York Times headline this morning: Cheney Warns of Terror Risk if Kerry Wins.

I nearly fell out of my chair. Can he really be saying this publicly? That voting for the opposition candidate literally puts your life in danger? How low can you get?

The Bush campaign claims that the remarks were taken out of context, and here's the thing -- they were. The Times even links to a transcript of Cheney's speech, in which several of the quotes attributed to him do not appear.

For example, the Times quotes the following:

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice," Mr. Cheney told a crowd of 350 people in Des Moines, "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."

The transcript they have linked to this article does not contain the words "right choice," "devastating," or "standpoint."

BUT, while the remarks were poorly quoted, the idea was the same. Here is what he actually said (according to the transcript, that is. If anyone has video of his speech, that would be keen.):

And secondly, if they hit us hard enough, they could change our policy -- because they did, for example, in Somalia in 1994, when they killed 19 of our guys, and within weeks, we had pulled everybody out of Somalia. So the choice we're going to make is absolutely essential, and I feel especially strongly about it. I think everybody does. When you start to think about the kind of decision we're going to make now, if you put it back into that late 1940s, early 1950s time frame and think about how long those policies were place, and how vital they were to our success in the Cold War, and to our emerging from that period of time without all the potential, the negative effects that could have emerged from it. And remember, the decisions we're going to make this year will probably set the terms and conditions for our kids and grandkids in terms of what kind of world they're going to inherit, whether or not we'll be safe and secure here in the United States -- or whether or not we're going to be faced once again with a series of terrorist attacks the kind that we've seen around the world since 9/11.

While not in quite such strong terms as the Times quotes, Cheney is saying here that electing Kerry will open us to a "series of terrorist attacks." That our choice in November will determine whether or not our children and grandchildren will be "safe and secure."

The weird thing about what he says is that he's citing attacks that have happened since 9/11 -- under his and Bush's watch.

So.. how does this work? If we elect the other guy, things will be as bad as they have been under you guys?

Bush/Cheney : We're Starting To Get The Hang Of This

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