News Flash — Kerry Lied!

To be charitable, he embellished the truth. Again.

Remember Mr. "I will never mislead the American people"? Well, this time Joel Mowbray at the Washington Times caught him in a fish-story he's told more than twice:

At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.

"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."

But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.

Apparently, Senator Kerry met with some, but hardly all 15, of the 2002 U.N. Security Council ambassadors or legations. Senator von Münchhausen rides again.

Capt. Ed weighs in:

We have a presidential candidate who has repeatedly accused George Bush of lying to the American public on the thinnest of evidence, and yet Kerry felt no compunction about telling this lie directly to the cameras during a presidential debate. Kerry spent the past week accusing Bush of using scare tactics to get re-elected, and yet Kerry has spent the past several weeks spreading the lies that Bush has secret plans to start a military draft and to steal the pensions of senior citizens. Kerry and his allies have made wild accusations about Bush's military record but have squealed like schoolgirls every time people ask him to sign a Form 180 to release his own complete military file.

Yes, it reveals nothing that we haven't seen before, but in this case the lie is particularly egregious in that he's using it to undermine our foreign policy and diplomacy in a time of war. It's another indication that nothing, not our security or the lives of our troops, comes before his own overwhelming ambitions to seize power and live out the life of his boyhood idol, John Kennedy. And the fact that he's established a firm pattern of deceit and self-aggrandizement shouldn't be treated with a round of indifference; it should be heralded to the American electorate so that they can see Kerry for the prevaricating narcissist that he so clearly is. [Ed. emphasis mine]

Lots more at Red State (where Joel Mowbray is blogging and answering comments), Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Polipundit, Roger L. Simon, INDC Journal (with even more links), and The Truth Laid Bear here and here.