Kerryism of the DayThe senator's caveats and curlicues.

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"So I think it is a war on terror^{₁ 2 3 4 5}."
—Washington Post interview, May 28, 2004

[1] in a sense

[2] but it's got to be framed differently.

[3] It's not just a military operation. In fact, I think it's far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, economic—

[4] I mean, you know, the war part of it ought to be the last resort

[5] or first resort when your intelligence shows you that there's a cell somewhere that's planning X, Y, or Z, you know it, and you can go in and take them out.

Verbatim:

So I think it is a war on terror, in a sense, but it's got to be framed differently. It's not just a military operation. In fact, I think it's far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, economic—I mean, you know, the war part of it ought to be the last resort, or first resort when your intelligence shows you that there's a cell somewhere that's planning X, Y, or Z, you know it, and you can go in and take them out.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. Follow him on Twitter here.

Photograph of John Kerry by Marc Serota/Reuters.

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