I find myself a bit itrritated to have to re-parse what Kerry did a pretty good job of parsing himself:
BostonHerald.com – Opinion: Kerry’s newest `nuance’
Prodded earlier by Bush to answer the “knowing what we know now” question about flawed intelligence in Iraq and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, Kerry responded Monday, “Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have.”
Could he parse that phrase any more finely?
Then, of course, he charged that Bush sent troops into war “without a plan to win the peace.”
That prompted the president to say yesterday, “Almost 220 days after switching positions to declare himself the anti-war candidate, my opponent has found a new nuance.”
During a campaign swing through Florida, Bush added, “After months of questioning my motives and even my credibility, Sen. Kerry now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpiles of weapons we all believe were there . . .he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power.”
But why in the world doesn’t he say “I could not have done so on the basis of what I know now— that he did NOT use the authority wisely. INstead, Kerry says Yes, which leads me to believe that the question was not put to him directly as Bush asked it (none of the transcripts have the original quation as a quote — the reporters who use the Kerry quote just TELL us that someone asked him to reply to Bush — saying YES and then following it with what he said right after that mkaes me REAL SUSPICIOUS of how the question was framed and to which he answered.