Again... the key word is THAT. He said he was not THAT concerned.

Osama bin Laden is NOT strapping on a bomb vest. He isn't flying airplanes into buildings. If you are so pig ignorant that you can't understand what the President was saying there, then honestly I don't see how you navigate to JU and get this stuff posted. He was saying that there is much more to worry about than a smelly, impotent Arab squatting in a cave in the mountains. These cells aren't directly tied to him, and never have been. He winds them up and lets them go. To shift all your concern to bin Laden and ignore the people activly seeking to commit terrorist acts would be stupid. Poor reflection on Kerry.

I'm tired of arguing with morons. If you think, for half a second, that your transparent, idiotic, lying garbage is influencing anyone that wasn't already anti-Bush, then you are even worse than you appear.

When, oh WHEN, will we get a filter so that we don't have to see some people's posts?

More blogic propaganda. Bush wasn't wrong, Kerry was wrong. Bush DIDN'T say he wasn't worried, he said he wasn't "that concerned", which, to anyone with a slight grasp of "Ingritch", means he is concerned, but not to an extreme degree.

Nuance reply?

Frankly, I'm not concerned either and I wince everytime Kerry brings up Tora Bora. For all we know Osama could have died from kidney failure, and if he is alive he's a lame duck. Kerry should be more concerned, in spite of Afg. elections, with the warlords hostility to national improvemnet. 

Again... the key word is THAT. He said he was not THAT concerned. Osama bin Laden is NOT strapping on a bomb vest. He isn't flying airplanes into buildings. If you are so pig ignorant that you can't understand what the President was saying there, then honestly I don't see how you navigate to JU and get this stuff posted. He was saying that there is much more to worry about than a smelly, impotent Arab squatting in a cave in the mountains. These cells aren't directly tied to him, and never have been. He winds them up and lets them go. To shift all your concern to bin Laden and ignore the people activly seeking to commit terrorist acts would be stupid. Poor reflection on Kerry. I'm tired of arguing with morons. If you think, for half a second, that your transparent, idiotic, lying garbage is influencing anyone that wasn't already anti-Bush, then you are even worse than you appear. When, oh WHEN, will we get a filter so that we don't have to see some people's posts?

Drmiller, incase you didnt see the word moron in there, I have bolded it.

Bakerstreet, who is the moron here? Kerry said that bush wasn't THAT concerned,

Kerry: Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."

BakerStreet, I enjoy your comments, but I'm more impressed when they're not so belligerent.

Here are the quotes:

Kerry claims that Bush said "I'm not that concerned". At the press conference, Bush said "I truly am not that concerned about him".

At the debate, Bush claimed that this was "one of those exaggerations."

Both Kerry and Bush used "that", so why are you focusing on it? Kerry's description was accurate, and Bush either lied or made a mistake when he said Kerry exaggerated.

I think the difference between what they are saying and what Bush really said goes beyond nuance.

You can say:

"I have never done anything illegal"

and you can say

"I have never done anything that illegal".

Sure, it is a stupid arguement, and I agree with you, steve, I think everyone has been Osama crazy. When we do catch him, he is going to be dead. We can't afford the "human rights" furor, and I can't believe we'd ever make an OJ trial out of it, civilian or military.

The point remains, though, Bush didn't say he wasn't concerned, it was a statement of relavance. Osama squatting in a hole is much, much less relavant than a 19 wanna-bes with box cutters.

BakerStreet, Kerry never said Bush said he was "not concerned". He said Bush said he was "not that concerned". Bush did say that, so Kerry was right, and Bush either lied or made a mistake when he said Kerry exaggerated about that.

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up "that". I understand the distinction you're making, but Kerry included "that" in in his description of what Bush said.

That means Sandy2 was right.

blogic: Your accusastions are belligerent, your articles are belligerent. The droning, pounding tone of your discourse is like an assault. Every stinkin day I can count on coming to JU and seeing more stuff like this from you. So, as long as you are going to post more and more antagonistic, low-brow items, expect antagonistic, low-brow responses.

You posted above that Kerry said:

"asserting that the president once said he was "not concerned" about hunting down Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden."

If Kerry said something different, then you should change your original article to reflect what he really said. Either way, Bush didn't lie. Kerry was exagerating Bush's opinion.

"Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned." We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror."

If Kerry thinks spending billions and tens of thousands of personnel scouring podunk Afghanistan for one man, bin Laden, when the real threat are the cells already here and around the world, then I think Kerry has displayed his own "lack of focus" concerning the war on terror...

Here's Bush's full statement from 2002. Take it how you like, though when you pan stuff like this it just shows how hard you and the other Dem drones are straining to find fault:

""We haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is," Bush said during the 2002 news conference. "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. "I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country," Bush continued. "I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban. But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became - we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his Al Qaeda killers anymore.""

I've never personally attacked you. As I said, I enjoy your posts.

Yahoo News paraphrased Kerry -- leaving out the "that" -- so I'm sorry for the confusion on that. I never noticed it was missing. The FactCheck article correctly quotes Kerry as saying "not that concerned."

That means Kerry's quote of Bush was accurate and Bush lied or made a mistake when he said Kerry exaggerated.

Thanks for pointing out the missing "that" in Yahoo's quote; I'll fix it now.

No, Kerry WAS exaggerating Bush's position, as I said. He took the very sensible position of focusing on enabled terrorists and depicted it as a lack of interest in terrorism. That's a solid misrepresentation on Kerry's part, and if he really feels that way, then he showed a total lack of capability for fighting terrorism.

The fact is, had we killed bin Laden a month or more BEFORE 9/11, it still would have happened. When Bush said he wasn't that concerned, he meant that bin laden running for his life in rural afghanistan isn't on the top of the list of terrorist threats. If you read the entire quote from 2002, it makes perfect sense.

Not that sense matters. Articles like this go for instant outrage, the bubble-headed who read the title and a few lines, say "hell yeah" and never question the material itself.

"I've never personally attacked you. As I said, I enjoy your posts."

Your articles ARE attacks. You are fighting a war of attrition, apparently, and you are going to hammer home every tidbit of silliness you can twist into something that might appear reasonable. You aren't talking about issues, you are making lies where there are none, talking about "smirks".

No, to a Bush supporter this constant stream of stuff is very antagonistic. At this point it is like some guy yammering at the top of his lungs in a restaurant. If you are going to scattergun half-truths and misrepresented facts you should expect people to react the way we do.

Okay conservatives, concede that Kerry quoted Bush correctly.  Libs, concede that it was taken out of context because the rest of what he said was that he was concerned when OBL was still calling the shots for the Taliban.  If you want to pick nits, Bush said "I don't think I ever said.....".  He didn't explicitly say "I never said that!"  If anyone thinks this is "smearing" Kerry, you haven't been paying attention to politics for the last couple of decades.  Come on people, you can rise above this stuff.  Take the high road even if your candidate won't.

Reply #33 By: sandy2 - 10/15/2004 3:12:33 PM Again... the key word is THAT. He said he was not THAT concerned. Osama bin Laden is NOT strapping on a bomb vest. He isn't flying airplanes into buildings. If you are so pig ignorant that you can't understand what the President was saying there, then honestly I don't see how you navigate to JU and get this stuff posted. He was saying that there is much more to worry about than a smelly, impotent Arab squatting in a cave in the mountains. These cells aren't directly tied to him, and never have been. He winds them up and lets them go. To shift all your concern to bin Laden and ignore the people activly seeking to commit terrorist acts would be stupid. Poor reflection on Kerry. I'm tired of arguing with morons. If you think, for half a second, that your transparent, idiotic, lying garbage is influencing anyone that wasn't already anti-Bush, then you are even worse than you appear. When, oh WHEN, will we get a filter so that we don't have to see some people's posts? Drmiller, incase you didnt see the word moron in there, I have bolded it.

Now, you want to offer an apology? Most especially since it was "bakerstreet" that said that not me.

I stand by the "morons" statement. If it quacks like a duck...

You guys spent months banging away about "issues" when Swift Boat Vets were challenging Kerry's stream of military self-love. Now, you want to take a long debate and talk about a smirk and the word 'concerned' that Bush said two years ago. Credibility, anyone?

You guys are smarter than this. Like I said, you are just mass posting "hell yeah" articles now for people to get their quick outrage fix. These posts have as much to do with the election as a fashion critique...

JillUser, I appreciate your effort to mediate. I invite you to look at the FactCheck quote I posted above. I read it twice before writing this response, and have checked it periodically as I've been writing.

I've consistently focused on Bush's "exaggeration" line, and the way he drew it out -- and he did dramatize it -- as the smear. Bush didn't say "it might be one of those exaggerations," -- he said it was one. Bush left himself a way out on the "I just don't think I ever said" line, but he didn't leave himself a similar exist on the "exaggeration" line. He either lied or made a mistake on that.

I don't think Kerry implied that Bush wasn't concerned about Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks and before the fall of the Taliban. I've never seen Kerry claim this, and I don't know any liberals who claim it. So, I'm not sure how the quote was taken out of context, since to take something out of context is to try to imply something different that one would think had one heard the whole quote. I don't think Kerry was trying to convince anyone that Bush wasn't concerned about bin Laden in the months immediately following 9/11.

Kerry was telling the audience that Bush said he was "not that concerned" about bin Laden six months later. Kerry was implying that he believes the president should have been more concerned than "not that" concerned. You can disagree with Kerry about that, but that doesn't have to do with the question of whether Kerry exaggerated (he didn't), whether Bush's claim it was "one of those exaggerations" was accurate (it wasn't) or whether Kerry implied Bush didn't worry about bin Laden in the months immediately after 9/11 (Kerry didn't imply that, and I've never seen any evidence that he or any other mainstream Democrat has claimed it).

Once again, thanks for bringing some rationality back to this discussion.

Awesome reply Helix.

Insightful coming your way from myself.

- Grim X

"Once again, thanks for bringing some rationality back to this discussion."

That's the problem, these petty harrowing articles aren't rational in the first place. You would be hard to lower the level of discourse the original article sets.

Kerry needs to be bafooned, and frankly so do you at this point. This is knee-jerk, preaching to the choir. Pretty irrelvant stuff, just like the timber company accusation. Had I been Bush, I would have thought it strange too. God only knows what Mr. Heinz's wife is hiding in her financial statements. Probably a lot more interesting stuff than timber.