In the past few weeks, several top-ranking Republicans–Vice President Dick Cheney and now Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert among them–have made open statements, with no evidence whatsoever, declaring in essence that a vote for John Kerry will support the terrorists, that the terrorists want Kerry elected or that the United States will again be attacked by terrorists if Kerry is elected president. This is the worst sort of fear-mongering imaginable. That they would use the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans as a campaign bargaining chip is, to me, reprehensible.
In response to these abhorrent accusations, I can only think of the words that Joseph Welch, a Boston attorney representing the Army during the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, famously said to Sen. Joseph McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
