National Guard Hears the Truth - But Will They Listen?

Excerpts of Senator John Kerry's remarks yesterday to the National Guard:

Two days ago, the president stood right where I'm standing and did not even acknowledge that more than 1,000 men and women have lost their lives in Iraq.

He did not tell you that with each passing day, we're seeing more chaos, more violence, more indiscriminate killings. He did not tell you that with each passing week, our enemies are getting bolder -- that Pentagon officials report that entire regions of Iraq are now in the hands of terrorists and extremists. He did not tell you that with each passing month, stability and security seem farther and farther away.

He did not tell you any of this, even though -- as the country learned today in the New York Times -- his own intelligence officials have warned him for weeks that the mission in Iraq is in serious trouble. But that is the truth -- hard as it is to hear. You deserve a president who will not play politics with national security, who will not ignore his own intelligence, while living in a fantasy world of spin, and who will give the American people the truth about the challenge our brave men and women face on the front lines.

The National Guard has been ravaged and abused by this president. They have come home dead and injured and unable to get decent, responsive medical care. They have been deployed way past their maximum times. They have come home to shameful employers who did not hold their jobs. They have been deployed and been unable to accomplish their primary mission: protecting their own states.

Yet many of them continue to give George Bush undeserved slack.

This is way past loyalty.

This is way past patriotism.

This is a time to take off the blinders and confront the real truth, Guardsmen & women.