"You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext," Kerry said.
As the White House struggled to put pressure on Putin, Kerry accused the Russian leader of acting "in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped up pretext".
When John Kerry said earlier this month that, "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext", it did not take long for social media to hoot with derision at the unironic echoes of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Kerry had said, "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext".
Kerry actually had the chutzpah to say of the Russian troops sent into the Crimea, "You just don't in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on [a] completely trumped up pretext".
I've noticed, for instance, that John Kerry has been taken to the woodshed by critics for supporting the invasion of Iraq in the Senate back in 2002 and then making this statement about Russian actions in the Crimea: "You just don't in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on [a] completely trumped up pretext".
She was referring to Secretary of State John Kerry's criticism of Russia's aggression towards Ukraine on Sunday's "Face the Nation". Kerry had said, "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext". Maddow appeared amused by the comments.
But instead of correcting these mistakes and hunting al-Qaeda, Bush the younger seems fixated, like Captain Ahab on his whale, on trumping up pretexts for a distracting new war against Mr Hussein, the Iraqi dictator Bush the elder failed to finish off a decade ago.
The "awkwardness," Maddow said, came from the United States being "only a couple years out now from our own near decade of war in Iraq, which was a war that was of course also launched on a trumped up false pretext".
Today's tempest over "turnip" is similarly trumped up.
They claim that the charges are all trumped up.
