Connie Wilson: John Edwards Holds “A Conversation with Women and Families”

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Young Democrat: 4-year-old
Caeleisheal Kurylo from Davenport

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When
Edwards begins speaking, he announces that his topics will be the war
in Iraq and the war on terror. I am delighted to hear this….finally! I
feel like I am ten years old at one of those old westerns where the
cavalry is riding in (Noise of cavalry bugle here) to help the soldiers
isolated in the fort, which is being circled by blood-thirsty Indians.
(In this case, make that blood-thirsty Republicans.)



To quote
Matthew Brzezinski’s new book Fortress America: An Inside Look at the
Coming Surveillance State (Bantam Dell Publishing Group), “In the game
of smoke and mirrors that is otherwise known as national politics,
Americans will go to the polls in November to choose a leader who they
think can best protect them from terrorist attack. Other issues will be
important in the presidential election–Iraq, the economy, taxes–but
none will be as central as which candidate can keep us safe.”



The
September 27th issue of “Newsweek” covered the new shift in campaign
tactics. Bring on Clinton’s people (John Sasso, Mike McCurry, Stan
Greenberg, Joe Lockhart, Jonathan Winer and  Michael Whouley).
Downplay Mary Beth Cahill, Bob Shrum, Jamie Rubin, Stephanie Cutter and
John Martilla. The quote: “A group of fresh but familiar faces have
come aboard to push John Kerry’s flagging campaign in a different–and
more aggressive–direction. But is it too little, too late?”



As
Michael Moore has noted in his recent online letter, Bush is running on
9/11. If the Johns take it to him (as I have urged on this blog) on the
issue of Iraq, where the administration is undeniably vulnerable, they
won’t be so easy to “flush,” (as the Bush/Cheney sticker attempts to
humorously put it.)



Edwards
throws out a startling statistic: in George Herbert Bush’s first War in
Iraq, the price tag was $5 billion. At this point in time, we are in
$200 billion and still counting. Notes Edwards, “There are parts of
Iraq, especially in the Sunni Triangle, that are not under our
control.” He concludes: “The only two people left in America who
believe there have been no mistakes in Iraq are George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney.” The crowd of 1,000 loyalists roars its approval. “John Kerry
and I will do everything to find these terrorists where they are, to
crush them, to destroy them. And you can take that to the bank!”
Another enthusiastic round of applause. Meanwhile, I smile, thinking of
how Defense Secretary Rumsfield inserted Saddam Hussein’s name, instead
of Osama Bin Laden’s, in a public address, noting that he was “hiding
out” somewhere. (Whoops! Wrong terrorist!) Next, he’ll start using Cat
Stevens’ Muslim name in his speeches, I suppose. [Another thought: if
you’re the Secretary of Defense and you can’t keep your terrorists’
names straight, let alone their current locations, maybe it’s time for
a long rest or retirement. Or memory games.]



 “John
Kerry and I supported the creation of the 9/11 Commission and when we
are elected, we are going to put every one of the terrorists
responsible behind bars.” He goes on to note that he is
“extraordinarily proud of the men and women putting their lives on the
line in Iraq.” But, he says, “Iraq is a mess. And it’s a mess because
of two people: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. They told us they had a
plan: not true. They told us we had enough troops: not true. They told
us this war could support itself: not true.”



Edwards
notes that the war’s death toll now tops 1,000 and that more died in
August than in July; more died in July than in June, and more died in
June than in May. When he was questioned about the actual death toll
statistics of the war, President Bush said, “They were just guessing.”
Asks Edwards: “Does that make you feel safe? They were just
guessing?”  Edwards notes that President Bush “needs to come back
to planet Earth and quit living in Fantasyland.”



Questions
he poses: “Don’t you think that the American people deserve a candidate
for President that will actually tell the truth?” Roar of approval.



Edwards
makes a plea for forming coalitions around the world. “This is how we
won World Wars I and II and the Cold War.”  He notes that,
although Congress has allocated $16 to $17 billion to rebuild Iraq,
only $1 billion has been spent “due to this administration’s
incompetence.” He adds, “We need to accelerate the training of Iraqis
to take care of their own security.” This is met with applause. And,
again, Edwards underscores: “George Bush made this mess and he can’t
fix it.”



Moving
on to the war on terrorism, Edwards says, “We will do absolutely
everything that is needed to keep this country safe. We will finish the
job in Afghanistan.” Edwards alludes to increased drug trafficking
coming out of that country. He comments that the United States must put
people inside terrorist organizations, not just rely on sophisticated
spyware.



Edwards
makes a good point about Homeland Security. “People in most cities in
America don’t have a clue (what to do in the event of a homeland
emergency). This is all a failure of pResidential leadership.” Edwards
continues: “We know what needs to be done, offensively and defensively.
Every single day that John Kerry is President, he is going to tell you
the truth.” (For the true story of how ineffectual our current Homeland
Security program under Tom Ridge is, see the October issue of “Mother
Jones” magazine, page 39.)



Kristen
Breitweiser now takes the floor. Her husband, Ronald Breitweiser, 39,
worked at Fiduciary Trust International on the 94th floor of Tower Two
of the World Trade Center. Their daughter, Caroline, is now five years
old. She was two years old when her father was killed.



Kristen tells the crowd about her husband’s final phone call to her on September 11th.

Kristen
had never been on a plane before this flight to Iowa. She was
apprehensive about flying at all, but she felt that this mission was
important enough: support the Kerry/Edwards campaign. She tells her
story, calmly, without histrionics, compellingly:  “I voted for
pResident Bush. My husband voted for pResident Bush. After the World
Trade Center bombing, it was clear that there were failures in our
nation’s security if this nation could be brought to its knees by 19
hijackers with box cutters.”



Kristen
goes on to explain how she and other World Trade Center families bonded
together to ask the White House for an investigation. After Pearl
Harbor, such an investigation was ongoing within 11 days. “This
administration stone-walled for over one year. It was a battle,” says
Kristen. “We gave pResident Bush every opportunity to do the right
thing. The Senate voted 90 to 8 to allocate funds for such an
investigation, but then we had to have negotiations on how to
investigate. We were given only $3 million to investigate the worst
terrorist incident in this nation’s history. By comparison, $50 million
was allotted for the space shuttle. We had to negotiate with the White
House all summer before they finally gave us $13 or $14 million for the
investigation to go forward.” We all know that none of the Bush
insiders testified willingly and that Bush, himself, only testified in
closed door session, with Dick Cheney by his side. Condoleeza Rice was
politically pressured and shamed in to testifying at all, and it was
during her testimony that we learned that the memo Richard Clarke sent
to pResident Bush only days before the WTC said, “Osama Bin Laden
Determined to Strike Within the US.”



Concludes
Kristen: “The only way we will be safer in this country is if we have
John Kerry and John Edwards as President and Vice President. I know we
will be safer with Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry.” Later, during
the question and answer period, Mrs. Breitweiser noted that the attacks
on 9/11 were meant to be “spectacular” to help gain recruits for Al
Qaeda. She says that that ploy failed, but that Bush’s war in Iraq “has
increased recruitment for Al Qaeda.” It was reported on CNN on Monday
that even the President of Iraq has noted that “terrorists are flooding
over our borders” and that Iraq has now become a “magnet” for
terrorists. Therefore, by taking this nation to war against Iraq (“the
wrong war at the wrong time against the wrong country,” as Howard Dean
said, at the time), notes Kristen, George W. Bush has achieved what the
actual terrorist act of 9/11 could not achieve: greater recruiting of
terrorist forces for Al Qaeda. Notes Kristen: “I am scared that our
intelligence community is as broken as it is. Look at those facts and
the record. It is not being political; it is being factual. The facts
don’t lie.”



Gwen
Walz, who follows Kristen Breitweiser as a speaker, says, “I teach 11th
and 12th graders and I know nonsense when I see it.” She calls the
administration’s pronouncements “empty rhetoric.” And Gwen adds, “At a
time of war, you expect leadership. You do not expect empty rhetoric.”
Of Kerry and Edwards she comments, “Look in their eyes. They tell the
truth. They say what they mean and they mean what they say.” She adds
that “Hope is on the way. This is a vote for Hope,” also noting that
Hope is her three-year-old daughter’s name.



The
second most-powerful speaker for Kerry/Edwards was Lieutenant General
Claudia J. Kennedy, who is the first and only woman to ever receive
this flag rank in the United States Army.  Says Kennedy, “It
breaks my heart what the Bush administration has done to the Army. They
have sent men in to combat without good planning, good equipment or
good training.” Others in the crowd, during the Q&A, note that the
training period for military (some who are being sent are the sons,
husbands or brothers of members of the crowd) has decreased from 16
weeks to 4 weeks (in psy ops, for example) and then it’s off to Iraq.
Troops are being sent in to battle without proper body armor and
families back home are trying to send their sons and daughters the
equipment that the U.S. Army has not provided.



The best
question of the day comes from Dale “Sparky” Lane of Princeton, Iowa,
who asks the first question, noting, “Welcome back to Iowa.” The
questioner goes on to emotionally say, “I’m a veteran of Vietnam. U.S.
Navy and Senator Kerry could be my Lieutenant any day. If Bush were my
commander, I’d desert.” His voice quavers as he describes the Veteran’s
hospital that he must depend on for medication as a disabled veteran,
saying that they are understaffed and that the staff “doesn’t give a
damn.” The question: “I want to know if you guys are going to take care
of the vets coming home? We need health care.”



Edwards
answers, “We’re with you brother. We’re with you and we will always be
with you. It’s heartbreaking to see what is happening to veterans.
There is a one-year wait for health care. John Kerry and I will be
there for you and 26 million veterans like you, because you were there
for us.”



The
question brings up the entire issue of health care, as Edwards notes,
“Our health care system is in crisis.” He notes that there are 45
million Americans with no health care coverage and says, “pResident
Bush has been traveling around giving his Health Care speech. I
understand it’s a very short speech.” This is not an attempt at humor.
I just heard Bush’s health care speech, in Denver on September 14th at
Coors Amphitheater. This was it: “We’ve (Bush and Cheney) got a
practical plan to cover people without health care.” End of health care
speech. After that, Bush mainly attempted to blame all the health care
woes of today on litigious lawyers.



It is
disquieting, at 3:20 p.m., to have an exodus of a large group of
students. It is nice that they came, but to have 50 people trotting out
in the middle of your post-speech comments is not good. Somebody either
tell the school(s) to only bring those who will “ stay the course,” or
to have the speechifiers (a) show up on time (we waited until 2 for the
rally to start) or (b) shorten it up.



Some other notable after-speech quotes:

 

1)  
 “John Kerry has led men into combat under withering fire, and
when they fell overboard, he went back and got them back.” I liked the
quote, but the image of men randomly “falling overboard” distressed me
a bit.

2)  
 “Bush said he was ‘a uniter not a divider.’ What a joke! This is
the most partisan administration that any of us can imagine. John
McCain and I wrote a Patients’ Bill of Rights and got it passed in the
Senate. George Bush blocked it because the big drug companies were
against it.”

3)    “Bush’s friends obviously profit from higher oil prices.”

4)  
 “The Kyoto Protocol was his first shot across the bow. ‘We’re
going to do whatever we want, regardless of what the rest of the world
thinks.’”

5)  
 “Iranians are moving forward on nuclear weapons. North Korea’s
nuclear weapons program? Bush has left it to the Chinese to stop them.”

6)    “The reason they don’t do the right thing is purely ideological.”



(*Note: While the rally was taking place, a bank in Davenport was robbed.)