A slam dunk debunk of the inane GOP flip flop cries of Kerry on Iraq:
John Kerry, October 9, 2002 on the Senate Floor:
John Kerry’s Statement on Iraq Before the War
Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.
In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days–to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.
If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent–and I emphasize “imminent”–threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.
Does it take a genius to not catch the meaning here? Our president is either a calculating deceiver, or a complete dunce. I think it is 8 parts A and 2 parts B. He’s an embarrassment to the office.
I’m reading Clinton’s My Life over the next month or so, and in it is 900 plus pages of a man who , despite his obvious personal flaws, was eons beyond and above W in mental capacity and preparedness for office. Bush doesn’t read (his staff told briefers that “the President isn’t a big reader, so keep your documents for the President to under a page”. Clinton stayed up late into the night, reading, talking, consuming more in a single month of his presidency than Bush may have read and consumed in his entire political career. I’m looking forward to hearing the Audio Book version (which Clinton himslef reads). As a conversatioanlist, the glaring superiority over the present president is all too apparent for the world to see. But beyond all this, its the unseen , non-public RESULTS stuff that makes it all the more important to get this president out of office for the sake of the nation’s economy, education, environment, health, and national security. When you sell off the privilege and responsibilty to lead this nation to the highest bidders, and to people whose sole aim is to remove responsibility from corporations to respect the publich trust, one is betraying the lectorate. He purposely deceived the nation into believing that he was concerned about such things as environment, educaiton, etc. and then handed over the reigns of leadership in those areas to those whose sole aim was to increas their bottom line. Shame on him. As the President himself said (or tried to say):
Fool me once, shame on you…..fool me twice, shame on me”. If we give him another 4 years, shame on us.
Senator Kerry is waffling more than you think, Dale. He says all of this, but put none of it into the bill he was voting for, so why would anyone believe that he wasn’t trying to have it both ways?
And even if you take him at his word with what he said there, how do you reconcile this, which Senator Kerry said during the primary campaign to Howard Dean:
“those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president”
He’s clearly saying that Iraq and the world were better off without Hussein than they were with him.
If I’m following what he’s said, it boils down to this, doesn’t it?
– In October, 2002, Kerry voted for the bill authorizing the war, but only after adding several conditions verbally that he did not add into the bill.
– When President Bush went ahead and did what he was authorized to do by the bill, Senator Kerry didn’t initially speak out against it as he said he would. I’m speculating here, as you don’t talk about that directly in your article.
– During the campaign, in January, 2004, after he decided to run for his party’s nomination for President, he spoke in favor of the effects of the war to another candidate.
– After he was nominated, this month, he turned around and spoke out against the war, saying “It’s the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place”.
How is it that he’s not flip-flopping on this issue?
There are very few that opposed Bush from the beginning. Kerry was not among the early doubters. He has said OVER and OVER that he voted for the authority—- and assumed that authority would be used for leverage to get strong UN resolutions. EVERTBODT who pays attention to news other than Fox knows the situation has grown progressively worse. Kerry was opposing Dean, and he is not as strongly opposed to war as Dean was. I know this. But his stance has been MUCH MORE consistent than the lies of Bush. I now see that a different administration is needed…it’s not just Kerry; it’s a whole new leadership. The neo-conservatives are the closest thing we’ve had in my lifetime to outright evil.
Bush lied about ecvery aspect of his campaign, knowing that they were going straight into appointing their biggest supporters to regulatory positions. Bush clearly has no clue about international OR domestic issues, nor is he a competent president, or competent at much of anything than playing the connections, manipulating the meduia, and selling out the American people (except for the top 1%, who fund his atrocities. He has to go. Simple as that. He is a supreme waffler (because he actually is two faced– his waffles are in the form of completely ignoring any hint of any “Compassion” after he talkas about “Compassionate Conservatism”. Bush is a danger to the nation, and to the world (and when I say Bush, I mean especially his neo-conservative, corrupt, evil cabinet, who are driven by their lust for power and money (ie Halliburton). I am convinced , via my faith in a God who tells us via scripture that justice is impotant, that liberty is important, and that the love of money is the root of all evil. Bush and his legions are possessed by it, and they must be stopped, for the sake of the world.
IN addtion,
I’m so sick of this inane Republican talking point. EVERY politicain waffles. Bush says ” I mean what I say”, and struts his “plain talk”, but he moves bacvk and forth across poinys (ie. his administration now has allowed the assault weapon ban to end, after they PROMISED in the campaign in 2000 that they would support it. They never intended to. Their waffles are just lies; betrayals. We’ve seen it. YOu have to live in Bush world not to see it and be deeply offended at what theyt’ve done. Look at the people who are HEADS of regulatory or health or education now. NONE are lifelong experts and veterans; they are former lobbyists for companies who support Bush so that they can get appointed to positions reguilating their own clients; in other words, he’s selling us off; the public interest, public health, education; we’re getting raped.
The most despicable thing is that the Churches flock to him because he says “CHrist changed my heart”. I see no evidence of that. In fact, he seems unable to answer the most elmentary questions about his faith. I look for FRUITS. I see only the fruits of greed and corruption.
It’s not “waffling” when somebody receives new and pertinant information that leads one to make a better-informed decision on matters of importance. It’s called maturity. Just because George W. Bush didn’t blink while he ran the bus into the wall doesn’t make him “resolute”– it makes him irresponsible and unfit to lead. I like how the Republican talking points continue to detract away from Bush as if he somehow has no accountability for his actions.
Ties directly into this that I just readon TalkingPointsMemo (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_09_19.php#003500):
“It’s revealing — and the Kerry campaign should make something of it — that whenever Kerry attacks Bush’s management of the war all the Bush team can do is attack the alleged contradictions in Kerry’s position on the war. That may work politically. But it’s awfully telling. They have, quite literally, no response on the merits. Kerry should point that out and tell the president to stop making excuses for endangering the country.”
Responsibility party, indeed.
Eric,
Thanks for chiming in. I got quite agitated last night when I was answeting this. I am so deeply disturbed at Christians’ blind allegiance to this international criminal regime we have in the U.S.
I had just posted this morning from the exact same post from Josh Marshall (he’s a great voice in the blogdom, isn’t he?).
Kerry’s position has NEVER changed, except when he went from VOTING for the AUTHORITY (and it WAS very much under the assumption , and the TRUST, that the President would use this wisely. I would have been much more skeptical myself. But Kerry (did you read that post , Gary?, the graphic which contains the quote on EXACTLTLY what Kerry said when he cast the vote?) and the “one reason and one reason only”. Any “waffling” there?
Why am I explaining this? It is pretty much a done deal that the Republican strategy is to distort, lift out of context, and take their “knowledge” of Kerry’s actual positions directly from the decietful lips and pen of Karl Rove.
I need to turn my attention back to this matter of the Church abandoning its Biblical commitments, especially the “Christian Right” Churches, who drone on endlessly about “believing the Bible”. The Churches who DO recognize and believe the WHOLE Bible, many of them are silent in the face of these momentous evils being carried out by our elected (supposed) leaders.
Since 1980, when Reagan was running and got elected, and I was in Seminary (ironically at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which has become a Religious Right Clone, led by a Stepford Southern Baptist seminary president, Al Mohler…..but prior to 1980, Southern was a true theological education where one had permission to explore, and to put politicians to the Biblical test that went way beyond abortion laws, prayer in schools, and homesexuality. Those “apocryphal” Biblical notions like justice, “the least of these”, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”…..they are relegated to the no-fly zone of fundamentalism, in which the Southern Baptists have now immmersed themselves. They too, like their political counterparts in the US government, eschew cooperation and ecumenicism, withdrawing from the “Baptist World Alliance” and a few years prior , from the National Council of Churches (often complaining that they are “too anti-American”, which seems more important than their allegianace to Christ, or that there’s some automatic incompatibility with Christianity and dissent.)
Anyway……on we go
dale
Yes, Dale, I believe there is waffling there. For exactly the reason I wrote in my original comment. Senator Kerry spoke about all these reasons why he was voting for the bill, but did not bother to put any of those reasons into the bill. In short, he was voting one way but speaking another.
Here’s what he had to say on the vote yesterday:
“The authority is the authority to do the inspections. The authority is the authority to build an alliance. The authority was necessary because it was the only way to make inspections happen so that you could hold Saddam Hussein accountable. But giving the authority did not start the war. The president started the war. The president made the choice of when to go to war. We also gave him the authority not to go to war.”
The bill was to authorize the president to commit US troops to a war in Iraq. The bill wasn’t authoriziation to go to war only if France and Germany said it was okay to do so. The bill wasn’t to ape what was in the previous UN Security Council resolutions. The bill wasn’t to not go to war.
The bill was to go to war. How is it that Senator Kerry isn’t trying to introduce nuance where none existed? How is it that he isn’t flip-flopping on this issue?