Blue Mass Group

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Too little, too late, Senator Kerry

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Quoted in today’s Globe, John Kerry says, “How much longer will some in this Congress fail to vote their conscience and do what’s right to bring about change in Iraq?” and criticizes Republicans for their “politically motivated votes.”

Let’s turn back the clock for a bit of history. In the weeks leading up to October 2002, John Kerry publicly wavered on how he was going to vote. He hemmed. He hawed. It felt to me that he had strong doubts about the validity of the Bush Administration’s case for Congressional authorization to launch a war against Iraq. But his presidential ambition trumped his skepticism, or so it seems to me. In the end, he was one of the 77 who voted yea, not one of the 23 who had both the wisdom and the political courage to vote nay.

And now we have 3628 Americans dead, 26,558 American wounded, and 10’s, if not 100’s of thousands of Iraqis dead.  Oh yes, and an Iraq in chaos and a less stable planet. And a drained Treasury. And a dangerously overstretched military. And the Halliburtons and Blackwaters raking it in. And “weapons of mass destruction” exposed as an outright fraud.

Right though he may be, does anyone else have trouble listening to John Kerry tell his colleagues to vote their conscience?

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  3. No, he did not give the order to invade.

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    What did Kerry do exactly?  History is our friend.  Let’s look at his own words on 10/9/2002:

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    “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.“

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    Now Kerry basically comes right out and says that this vote is a pressure tactic to force Iraq to allow UNSCOM to resume unrestricted inspections.  Guess what?  He was right.  It worked.  That is, it worked according to Hans Blix in his report given to the UN security Council on 3/7/03 — just before George W Bush (remember him?) ordered the invasion of Iraq. 

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    Blix says (with emphasis mine):

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    “Inspections in Iraq resumed on 27 November 2002.  In matters relating to process, notably prompt access to sites, we have faced relatively few difficulties and certainly much less than those that were faced by UNSCOM in the period 1991 to 1998.  This may well be due to the strong outside pressure.

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    Some practical matters, which were not settled by the talks, Dr. ElBaradei and I had with the Iraqi side in Vienna prior to inspections or in resolution 1441 (2002), have been resolved at meetings, which we have had in Baghdad.  Initial difficulties raised by the Iraqi side about helicopters and aerial surveillance planes operating in the no-fly zones were overcome.  This is not to say that the operation of inspections is free from frictions, but at this juncture we are able to perform professional no-notice inspections all over Iraq and to increase aerial surveillance.“

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    Is is Kerry’s fault that Bush lied?  Is it Kerry’s fault that Bush was not satisfied that UNSCOM inspections were allowed to resume?  Is is Kerry’s fault that Bush rejected Saddam’s offer to step down and go into exile?

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    So whose war was this?

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    It was Bush’s war.  He started it.

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    It’s the Republican’s occupation.  They perpetuate it.

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    Is this John Kerry’s fault?

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    No.  It’s not.

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    Get over it.

    • Thank you, Banned. I’ve been making the above argument for a while.

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      However, one has to accept that the Bush Administration’s mendacity on this issue was only thinly disguised. They managed their deceptions imperfectly. Plenty of us saw through it. It wasn’t just a matter Bush-hating or partisan shrillness or prejudice: the preceding and equally mendacious campaign for tax cuts and the bait-and-switch on climate change nourished a healthy skepticism among alert liberals. We knew then that taking the Bush Administration at its word was reckless even if the Very Serious People said it was rude to say so.

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      There have been 3 other problems with Kerry:

    • Weak communicator His fascination with policy means he communicates tweaks, adjustments, and nuances to the exclusion of progressive values, vision, and direction.
    • Label avoidance After the Reagan Revolution and its Gingrich echo and their attack on Liberalism, Kerry worked too hard to avoid the L-word label.
    • Lost We are mad at him for losing in 2004. How could he — especially when the argument was that he was more electable than Dean.

      • My take from this is that liberals have a certain justifiable impatience with our junior Senator. Since the election, he has reformed and in a very good way. He made a mistake in 2002 and for the above three reasons we tend to blame him more than I think we should.

      • My only response to your valid point that “plenty of us saw through it” is only that such egregious violations of the constitution and the public trust is something that I personally had never really thought possible.

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        It’s an anecdotal argument I know.  I hate hearing them and I hate having to use one even more, (I would hate it even more if I was one of the Dem senators that voted in favor) but it’s all I’ve got other than to be dishonest and to pretend that I saw it coming all along as well.

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        I was very nervous and very disturbed when I heard the hard line rhetoric that started directly after 9-11, but my agitation was only that.  It was not real prescience to the jingoism, newsspeak, and endless war that was to come. 

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        As for your other points, I am not a groupie.  I’m not here to defend JFK’s campaign or his failure to fight the shenanigans in Ohio.  I liked Dean before “the scream” did him in.  (Damn you Munch)

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        I just cannot stand idly by and let anyone, conservative or purist liberal alike, blame JFK for Iraq when the facts are clear on that issue.

        • durng the run up to the war.  I also remember Bush’s non-interventionist image won him a lot of good public relations in the 2000 election v Gore.  He sucked in all the isolationist right wingers and he seemed benign enough to make ideological progressives comfortable voting for Nader.

          • I simply thought he was just another republican.  A typical re-re leech robbing the poor to pay the rich; when it turns out he was actually more like a scorpion, willing to kill his host to get one good meal.

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            Too many people make the mistake of pretending that what we all know now, was common knowledge since 2002.  I remember the slow burn of outrage was almost constant over the years as each new abuse of power came to light.  I remember the constant discrediting of any source that reported something unfavorable about the administration.

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            I for one will not take for granted how difficult it was to get the truth out there, and treated as news rather than the opinion of “those crazy Bush haters”.

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            alas, people have short memories.

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            Now we have a contingent who wants to cut off one of our best liberal senators at the knees? 

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            If someone wants to suggest we replace him, you better be showing me Bernie Sanders as a primary challenger.

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            Is O’Reilly of the caliber of Bernie?  I doubt he’d still be unknown to me if this were the case.

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            You don’t throw away a pair of aces hoping to make a straight.  It’s a sucker move.

            • I think that’s the point, though. New York State, with its Republican upstate, Republican state senate, and former Republican Senator is amazingly represented by two Democrats of the caliber they now have. One would hope that Massachusetts, with its solid blue House delegation and its overwhelmingly Democratic legislature would have not one, but two Senators of the caliber of Kennedy, Boxer, Feingold, or Wellstone. I’m heartened by Kerry’s improvements: he’s much stronger on Iraq, he campaigned for Lamont, he is working to put pressure on exactly the Republican Senators that need pressuring (Collins, Sununu, Coleman). Hopeful. Some argue that’s a

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              And speaking of Collins, Sununu, and Coleman, when people talk about replacing Kerry, I wonder, wouldn’t that energy be better spent deflating Collins’ undeservedly high favorable ratings in Maine?

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              There’s research to be done.

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              There are letters to the editor.

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              There are ad buys.

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              Canvassing, too.

              • Completing a sentence:

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                Some argue that’s a once every six years thing. I’m willing to be more generous and chalk it up to his having run for president.

    • He gave the Presidenta  blank check, the phrasing of the resolution he voted for that passed did not mention anything about forcing the vote to the UN, using the threat of invasion only to allow inspectors in, etc. He could have voted for the war authorization after SH said no the inspectors, instead he voted for the war authorization before and with language that clearly allowed the President to invade Iraq at any time for any reason and gave him far too much discretion.

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      After the Gulf of Tonkin ‘attack’ the entire Congress gave LBJ the leverage he needed to escalate the war and nobody questioned the duration, the length, or the real need of such leverage. In effect they okayed an open ended committment. In 1972 testifying before Congress John Kerry said “How can we ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam, how can we ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”. In effect the 2002 Iraq Resolution was our generations Tonkin Gulf Resolution, it was just as ambigiously worded, gave just as much leverage to the President, and similarly are forcing us now to ask the very same question the Senator did more than 35 years ago.

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      My problem is he saw this before and should have known better, but he didnt want to look soft on defense like Dukakis the other MA liberal the DNC nominated.

      • You’re right, Conway, it was a blank check, and we know that if Kerry could have amended the authorization before voting, he would have. It was a black or white issue at that time. Do you force Saddam to open up to inspectors under the threat of force, or do you not.

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        Knowing what we know now, Kerry made the wrong choice. I think we all are clear on that. But knowing what we knew then, those people who say “they knew Bush was going to use this to go to war no matter what” ended up being right. But most of us didn’t know that for sure at the time. At the time, Bush’s demands of Saddam sounded reasonable. It was only after the authorization that Bush’s demands started to change.

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        Kerry and many other good Democratic senators were wrong on that vote. I don’t question that his political people were telling him he had to vote in favor. I don’t doubt that his vote against the ’91 war in which he probably voted correctly but took a huge amount of heat for doing so weighed on his mind. We don’t give him any credit for that vote, do we? Even though the supposedly more progressive Al Gore voted for that war.

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        In the end, I think the propaganda machine of the Bush Administration was at full tilt, and it would have taken a huge amount of cajones to vote against this war. I wish he had done so. But I refuse to hold it against him 5 years later, when clearly he’s been out front for the last 3-4 years in his opposition to the war, probably as much as any other Senator in the country.

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        (Any guesses on whether this thread is a test for the O’Reilly campaign?)

        • but thus far, this thread has been a test of the credulity of anyone who is not a kerry flak.

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          btw, where’s diane and  [the gang http://www.johnkerry… ]? does she have the day off today?

          • Me and my Kerry peeps were chilling in the crib on Beacon Hill.  Sorry, I couldn’t hear you, I was rifling through my money.  Just got paid my minion $$$$$ and I had to gloat.

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            I’ll comment later; we cracked open the wine cellar and I’m feeling a little tipsy. 

          • I think that Kerry is doing at least as much if not more than anyone else to end the war. 

        • and I’d only add that I’ve heard Kerry more than a few times talk about how he’d sought out the opinion of Colin Powell, who he greatly respected, and how influential Powell’s words were on his vote. 

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          One of the best descriptions I’ve read of what was actually behind that vote comes from Jonathan Winer, a longtime friend of Kerry’s:

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          The vote for the resolution to go to war in Iraq — did you ever discuss this with him?

          A few times. I was not on a staff at that point, and so I wouldn’t participate unless he called me in for what was a group meeting. I participated in a couple of them by telephone from my office. ? It was a very hard vote, because he could see the arguments, both directions, as to whether you vote yes or no on the resolution.

          He would have preferred, like a lot of other people, the resolution that Joe Biden and Richard Lugar had come up with, which would have slowed the rush to war while putting the authority behind the president to get U.N. inspectors back in, to make sure Saddam Hussein couldn’t use WMD. That was the point of the resolution.

          The Bush administration wanted something more than that. They wanted something without any strings attached, so they could just go to war. John was [not] comfortable with it. Democrats were not comfortable with that, because they didn’t want Bush just going to war unilaterally. They felt that was risky. John definitely was unhappy with that, and expressed it.

          He’d been boxed. The Bush administration had chosen to box him and all the other Senate Democrats. “You either vote with us, in which case, you’re responsible for it, too — and we’re going to do whatever the heck we please — or you vote against us, and allow Saddam Hussein to be not held accountable. The president’s position will be weakened, the United States’ authority will be weaker in dealing with the rest of the world, and you not having stood up for American strength.” ?

          The vote was designed to be an impossible vote for someone like John Kerry. That’s why the Bush administration insisted on making the vote that way. It’s a vote either to support the president, or undermine the president as the president’s trying to deal with weapons of mass destruction that may be in the hands of an evil dictator.

          John Kerry was not going to vote to undermine the president when the president was being directed to go the U.N. Remember, President Bush didn’t even want to go to the U.N. There was a question of even going back to the U.N. to get inspectors back in. So it was a way of pushing it in the right direction, and hoping that the Bush administration would then do the right thing.

          You’re not given the choice of being 100 percent on these issues. You’re not given the choice of doing exactly the way you would want to do it when you’re a senator. You may not even be given the choice of doing exactly what you’d want to do when you’re president, but you have a lot more power to shape the world.

          As a senator, you’re often forced to vote between two very difficult propositions, neither of which may be attractive. This vote was designed to be as unattractive, ugly, unpleasant, difficult, horrible, and damaging as possible by the Bush administration for Democrats, and in particular, any Democrat running for president. That was the point. That was the intention. It was designed to be a wedge vote, separating a John Kerry, for instance, from his natural constituents.

          It actually worked very, very well for them. Remember, after that vote, they got the Senate back, and they increased the number of seats they had in the House. That’s because the Democrats’ base were depressed, were made miserable by that vote. It was designed to do that. It was a wedge vote. It was a brilliant move by Karl Rove. ?

          • This vote was designed to be as unattractive, ugly, unpleasant, difficult, horrible, and damaging as possible by the Bush administration for Democrats, and in particular, any Democrat running for president. That was the point. That was the intention. It was designed to be a wedge vote, separating a John Kerry, for instance, from his natural constituents.

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            I can hardly believe this is supposed to be a pro-Kerry statement. How self-serving does a person have to get before we say they are only thinking of themselves? Is it OK that Kerry voted to send men and women to kill other men and women because he wanted so badly to be president? This reads like standard MSM talking head punditry, focusing on the political game and avoiding the human reality. A wedge vote indeed, inserted between the candidate’s conscience and his will to power. I’ve had enough of politics as game. Kerry’s willingness to play this game is what marks and disables him.

            • supposed to be a pro-Kerry statement.  That’s the whole point.  It’s supposed to be a truth statement.

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              Kerry was put in a box, and there was no good vote to be made.  If you actually read what Winer was saying you’d see that the alternatives that would have been acceptable to Kerry had been taken off the table.  A complex issue was reduced to black and white.  Would you rather he’d abstained?  I can only imagine the accusations of cowardice that would have been flung his way if he had.

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              Hindsight is 20/20.  As others have said before me (and better) on this thread, it is ridiculous to judge Kerry’s vote today by what we know now.  He made his best judgement, it turned out to be wrong, and he has admitted so many times over.

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              The arguments being made here are so muddled that they make no sense at all.  I don’t think Kerry is god incarnate.  I don’t think he is perfect.  I don’t actually even worship at his feet.  I just know a good senator when I see one.  Kerry is a good senator – in fact, he’s one of the best in the country.

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              I don’t believe in term limits.  I’m a practical voter, not an ideological one.  To date O’Reilly has given me little reason to pay much attention to him, let alone get me to vote for him.  End of story.

              • Kerry was put in a box, and there was no good vote to be made.

                Whoa. We’re talking about an invasion and war and the argument is that the senator was in a political box? That is about as crass as a politician gets. How can this guy ever be trusted again?

                … the alternatives that would have been acceptable to Kerry had been taken off the table.  A complex issue was reduced to black and white.

                Acceptable to Kerry? To make it easy for him to run for president?  There were many other senators and representatives who had no trouble choosing to vote no. There was nothing complex about the invasion vote, unless you count deception and lies as complexities, and then there’s still nothing complex unless you are hoping to be popular among people who are fooled by the deception and believe the lies. That’s not leadership. That’s not representation. It’s pandering. It may be the best he can do, but it’s not the best we can do.

      • waited too long in Bosnia.  I dont know for sure since we needed NATO involved. 

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        Many many otherwise liberal people thought that Bush should have had the right to invade Iraq if needed.  I didnt support the IWR, but I did have this arguement with a lot of liberals at work; some more liberal than me.  I was equivocal on the IWR–it was just relexively being against it.  The run up to the invasion after the IWR struck me as more ominous.  The constant media reports and ridicule of Hans Blix and the inspectors made it obvious the game was rigged. 

        • “Otherwise liberal” says it all. Where do those people get their news and their ideas? What motivates their thinking? If a “liberal” was not reflexively against invading Iraq, then I question what they mean by liberal. Anyone who believed Bush/Cheney wasn’t paying attention. The invasion was an evil game, and it was rigged, and all this was visible, just as visible as the naked emperor in the children’s story. If I remember the story, it was a child who saw the emperor had no clothes; the adults were too scared to look. Have liberals become too scared to look?

  6. We had a Kerry thread on here that was just getting interesting when it was pushed off by a spate of new diaries coming in furious succession.

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    So forgive me for repeating my point:

    Senator Kerry has a strong record on reproductive rights and the environment.  Of course, his military service is unimpeachable (though he let the Bush machine stain it in the minds of too many voters). 

    On the other hand, Kerry supported authorizing Bush to go to war, supported No Child Left Behind, supported the Patriot Act, opposes marriage equality, ran a savage primary campaign attacking fellow Democrats followed by a general campaign that tried to beat George W Bush with a wet noodle.  He also says that he wasn’t able to perceive what so many of us were, that Bush was the type to use that authorization to justify his campaign of war and chaos in Iraq.  This from someone who ran in 2004 on the idea that you have to “be smart” in how you deal with conflict.

    If all Ed O’Reilly is doing is offering himself as an alternative to this, that’s already quite a powerful reason to vote for him.

    • If all Ed O’Reilly is doing is offering himself as an alternative to this, that’s already quite a powerful reason to vote for him.

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      Irrespective of your feelings for Kerry (or mine), have you actually, personally, spoken with Mr. O’Reilly for any length of time–I mean for like two hours or so?  I suggest  you do.  Really.  Nice guy, but.

      • I took a CPR course with O’Reilly a few years ago.  It was better than the Red Cross classes at that time.  I wouldnt back him for Senator based on that when we have two of the all time greats in Kerry and Kennedy.

      • Speaking with candidates for federal office for two hours isn’t a common experience of mine…or of almost anyone.  I have spoken with O’Reilly on two different occasions and came away thinking that he was far more reasonable than many current Democratic Congressmen and women.

        • an opportunity to listen to Mr. O’Reilly–at length–on the issues.  He’s available to speak at group meetings, DTC meetings, etc., where you will have a chance to get to evaluate his candidacy. 

          • I hope to talk with him a third time next week.  Would you mind laying out your concerns, rather than darkly alluding to them?

            • except to say that actually knowing the issues and problems as well as having an actual plan to solve them would be helpful in a US Senator.

  7. his new ‘blame the iraqi government for the mess’ tack was quite the hoot.

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    and when i say ‘new’, i mean new for kerry. the republicans and all of the others who helped facilitate this $2,300,000,000 a week quagmire have been trotting out this excuse to cover their asses for a long time now.

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    but hey, maybe kerry can use it to cover his ass too.

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    • the democrats that want to sway opinion for middle of the road people for at least a year.  I first heard Kerry use this as a persuasion at his speech on dissent  April 2006. 

  8. 3600+ Americans have died and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis — and I am getting from your post that this displeases you.  Kerry has been working harder than probably anyone else in the Senate to end the Iraq occupation. Why you would use this as an occassion to undermine this effort is what is troubling to listen to. 

    • drove the family station wagon into a drainage ditch once.

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      it was very commendable that he was able to help get it out.

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      but he wasn’t entrusted with the keys again after that.

        • Any “driving a car into water” analogy is best used when referring to our senior Senator, not Kerry or Bush.

    • until he comes clean, I cannot forgive. We’re talking about people dead and dying. “News numbness” set in long ago, allowing people to actually joke in this thread. Am I too serious for readers? Do we need to maintain a sense of humor with constant death going on – scores of Iraqi civilians dying each week in sectarian suicide bombings and 3 or 4 of our young U.S. servicemen and women losing their lives every single day? For a war sold to the Congress and the public and the world based on cooked and distorted evidence, i.e. lies? (At least 23 senators had the guts to say no, this doesn’t smell right and I’m not giving Bush a blank check with all these doubts because war (WAR, folks!) should be a last resort and he’s clearly rushing headlong into it). How do people FEEL about that? Am I being too morose? Too “serious?” Shrill? Hysterical?

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      I keep thinking… it’s very comfy here, stateside, in front of our PCs and our Macs, browsing the blogs and typing our posts and comments. It’s otherworldly to imagine what’s actually happening over there, and I think we stop imagining it. News numbness. We’re here and they’re there. They’re clearly in mortal danger. Are we safe here at our PCs? Am I overreacting?

      • The only thing I read is that you have nothing to say about Ed O’Reilly.  I’ve asked before if you want to push for O’Reilly no one is stopping you, do it for god sake.  Enough of the stupid crap.  You’re being to read like spam e-mail and all you are doing is turning everyone else off.  NO, KERRY DID NOT INVADE IRAQ.  The more you say it the more you sound like an idiot.  What’s wrong with talk about your candidate in a thoughtful post?  Can’t do it?  I’ll already aggravated with the guy and he hasn’t posted anything.

        • I’m fascinated that you drew that conclusion or pretended to draw that conclusion. Was it to bate me or discredit my comments or just a careless rush to judgment?

          • because these posts started poping up with O’Reilly supporters in the past week or so.  It’s that simple.  It’s the first I’ve seen them, and this was just another one.

            • as our representative in washington, kerry gave OUR blessings to the people who started the war.

              • If you really believe that, then you have not listened to a single word Kerry has said about Iraq.

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                If you don’t believe it, why are you saying it?  You are not making a good argument for whatever it is you believe in.

      • Back to the original question that started this thread:

        does anyone else have trouble listening to John Kerry tell his colleagues to vote their conscience?

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        Yes, I have trouble listening to this guy talk about conscience. And I’m tired of reading those bloggers who keep repeating the same line like a mantra: “he’s doing more than anyone else in the senate to end this war.” First of all, what, besides his pretense about his conscience, is he actually doing? Second, as hubspoke points out, there’s real killing and dying going on and Kerry has blood on his hands and we’re supposed to read about how sorry he is??!

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        I marched in NYC with thousands, and millions more marched around the world, to protest the Iraq invasion. How did so many people know Bush/Cheney and their enablers (including Kerry) were deluded and dangerous? Were we all prescient? I don’t think so. I think it was clear to anyone who wanted to look at the facts and think for themselves. There was nothing “close” or difficult about the vote to invade Iraq.

          • you think that Kerry should apologize for his vote- which he has more or less done on numerous occasions- and then remain completely mute on the war on Iraq?

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            What kind of senator would he be then?

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            If you’re angry about the war in Iraq, that’s one thing. But it makes little sense to advocate that one of the few Americans actually in a position to do something about the war should remain silent because of a past vote. You’re falling into a black and white trap of your own.

            • Kerry has evolved, I grant you. But he started out blaming Bush 100% for his vote. Early on, he said he would still vote the same way. Then he finally said he wouldn’t. Then he said it’s one of the greatest regrets of his public life.

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              Look, I’m very GLAD he’s anti the war now. All I said was it’s hard for me to hear him utter the words about “voting one’s conscience” when I believe that he and many other colleagues did not do so in October 2002 when it could have made a difference in slowing or preventing this war. I think his presidential ambition trumped his skepticism. I think that many congressmen and senators voted for authorization against their better judgment because they didn’t want to be painted as soft on terror, harming their re-election chances. Big victory to Bush, Rove and the Repugs on that one but no profile in courage awards at the JFK Library for those who knew better but voted yea anyway. 

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              I can’t just say, like so many here, “OK, let bygones be bygones, that was then and this is now.” Sorry, but too much has happened. Too many have died needlessly and this experiment in democracy (the USA) has been put in peril.

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              I am glad Kerry is speaking out against this stupid evil war. But I believe he knew better before his 2002 vote and I cannot just forget about it

              • And, frankly, I haven’t forgotten about it either.  I believe in forgiving; I don’t believe in forgetting.

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                I think it’s a pointless game to try to get inside someone else’s head to figure out their motivations for what they do.  Let their actions speak for themselves – you don’t know why Kerry voted the way he did; neither do I.  What matters is what he did, and what he is doing.  If you can’t get past that vote, well, you can’t. 

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                I can.  I loathe this war, I loathe what is being done to the troops, and I loathe the Bush administration and everything they stand for.  And I have a deep belief in Kerry’s integrity, no matter what anyone else here says to mock me for it.

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                By the way, I never heard Kerry blame Bush for his vote.  I have many many times heard him blame Bush for abusing the power the vote gave him, and disregarding the instructions that went along with that authorization.  Big difference.

  9. There are some questions about what went on in 2002-2003 that really do deserve answers.

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    Question 1 (raised by CentralMassDad indirectly a few times). Did Bush lie about WMD? The argument is that the Clinton Administration certainly was concerned about this issue.

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    The evidence certainly does not show that they knew there were no WMDs but they said that there were, i.e. that they lied. On the other hand, the evidence does show that they didn’t care whether there were or weren’t. They only cared about whether people believed there were. Contrary evidence wasn’t considered; it was just discredited in a PR sense.

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    As Al Gore points out in Assault on Reason, they didn’t care that the Niger documents were forgeries. They didn’t apologize or investigate.

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    Put a different way. They didn’t lie. They just didn’t care about the truth. Let me call that behavior “mendacious”.

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    Question 2. Could one have known that the Bush Administration was mendacious?

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    On the one hand, the Bush Administration’s mendacity is stunning, spectacular, and radical. No previous Administration comes close. This caught a lot of people off guard. It seems un-American and bad government. It took liberals a long time to realize this and it took Hurricane Katrina for non-conservatives to realize it.

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    Unfortunately, the answer to question 2 is yes. Bush pushed the tax cut for every possible reason. Because there was a surplus. Because there wasn’t. Because the economy was strong. Because it wasn’t. The reasoning was of the “heads I win; tails you lose” style: no matter what the economic circumstance it favored a tax cut. Further, the treasury department started issuing biased reports to support the Bush tax cut. The politicization of formerly neutral parts of government had begun.

    <

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    The Bush Administration has also mastered the ability of saying things without saying them literally, so they can communicate falsehoods without being caught lying. Tying Iraq to Al Qaeda was just such a falsehood. That mendacity lay in plain sight.

    <

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    Question 3. How bad are Democrats who were taken in by the Bush Administration’s mendacity? Are they opportunists, cowards, folks like everyone else, trusting, wrong for the right reasons, disqualified to be President, disqualified from representing liberal states? How bad?

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    Certainly not good enough, but the Republicans have been worse in that they have encouraged mendacity and prevented its exposure from 2002 through 2006. Even in 2007, there are still Republicans in the House for whom lying about Plame or the firing of U.S. Attorneys is peachy. That ongoing and enthusiastic support for mendacity is so much worse that it deserves all our fire power.

    • Does it matter, other than to their defense lawyers, whether “They didn’t lie” or “They just didn’t care about the truth” and were “mendacious”?

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      An unnecessary war – let me rephrase that: a knowingly unnecessary war – is one of the most heinous acts a president can commit. There was ample doubt contained in information available to the public, and certainly to legislators, prior to the October congressional votes. There was an NIE that expressed doubts about whether Saddam possessed WMD and doubts that he would ever try to use such, if he had any, unless backed into a corner by, for example, an attack by the US. In other words, our own government intelligence people provided information that cast strong doubt on any imminent threat from Iraq. Yet BushCo chose to launch an elective war, a “preventive war.” Not an act of last resort, as most sane people used to think about war.

      <

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      Numbness has set in and BushCo is happy for it. They suppressed images of caskets returning to the US for just this reason. They fired and intimidated top military brass who didn’t stick with the script. The MSM parrots the White House line. While our countrymen die daily for a fraud, you and I busily type away at our keyboards, tolerating it.

      <

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      We need to get back to basics. What is the value of a life? A life. To the person who loses it. To the loved ones. As we debate this Iraq war, anguish about the dead, dying and wounded seems missing. We’re able to shove these thoughts out of our mind and go on with daily lives in our calm, safe communities. I grew up learning that reverence for life was one of the deepest spiritual, moral values. Didn’t most of you? If so, how can we tolerate these years of constant death due to a war that was launched on an elective basis, not because there was any direct known threat to us. This “preventive war,” is snuffing out real, individual human lives just as much as a defensive war to counter a real attack or a real imminent threat.

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      It seems to me that we have lost sight of, lost empathy for, the value of human life. We’ve allowed ourselves to go numb and accept the constant death. No war is a good war but I’d accept that WWII was The Good War. People knew why they were fighting and their families knew what many of them died for. This is The Bad War. It was a neocon fantasy, sold to the public with lies. Now that we know this, how can we live with ourselves if we don’t scream for accountability – from Kerry and all who hold power – and for the war to stop as soon as reasonably possible?

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      My hand-wringing and ranting will be for naught unless I and we take actions to stop this bloodletting.

      • Well, it’s quite obvious to me that he blames himself, which is why he’s busting ass to stop it.

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        What I don’t understand is what you Kerry haters want.  Do you want him to resign?  Do you want people to vote for his opponent?  It would be more honest to just come out and say so in a straightforward way.  Most of you seem to want to go back 24 years and unelect Kerry in the first place. 

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        You seem to want to invalidate the hard work he’s doing to end the war by endlessly re-arguing the original vote.

        <

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        No one here is in favor of the war.  We all loathed it, probably most of us since before it started.  But I don’t claim omniscience, and I refuse to listen to anyone who does.  It’s easy to be holier-than-thou when you’re not the one accountable for the results.

        • Personally the bigger issue for me is that even before the war vote he was not that great of a Senator. He kept a much lower profile than Senator Kennedy, he has sponsored and put through much less legislation, his office almost never returned your calls or emails and this got a lot worse when he was running for President, and there are a whole lot of anecdotal examples of this man thinking he is above the law and the people he serves. He had a water main diverted so his backyard in the Cape wouldn’t be altered, he cut in line to get better seats at several events, he just has the provincial air that he is better than us. And clearly he has no interest in being our Senator, he wanted to be President in 2004, again in 2008 and only dropped out when he realized he couldnt win the nod.

          <

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          Granted he is not a bad Senator, not a terrible senator, I respect and admire most of his liberal votes, but it was quite clear throughout his 2004 campaign that he essentially follows the polls, that attack stuck because it was so right. I agree that the MSM should hold Mitt romney to the same standard, but in my view both are equally guilty of being craven politicians. He issues out two letter before the first Gulf War, one to pro-war constituents and one to anti-war constituents saying different things. On the campaign trail he said he opposes gay marriage and believes life begins at conception, he stood by his vote on Iraq until an overwhelming majority of Americans, mind you he ignored the overwhelming majority of his own constituents back in 2002, changed their minds on the war. He is currently going against the war for the same reason he voted for it in the first place, its good politics. There does not seem to be much principle for this man. Ed O’Reilly is a man who feels betrayed, betrayed as i did, and for those asking for a compelling rationale to support him you get a great liberal Senator like Kerry without the pandering, the flip flopping, the ambition to be somewhere else, and with principled guts instead of politicized waffling. 

          • “Granted he is not a bad Senator, not a terrible senator, I respect and admire most of his liberal votes, but it was quite clear throughout his 2004 campaign that he essentially follows the polls, that attack stuck because it was so right.”

            <

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            That’s pretty much what representation is: keeping in touch with what your constituents want.  If that means he’ll get sniped for practicing politics or called unprincipled, so be it.

            <

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            I have to ask why you are looking for a man of principle who will defy constituents’ will and be resolute about it?  That sounds like another politician that we all want very badly to remove from the WH.

            <

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            So what I am hearing is that Kerry’s problems are twofold:

            <

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            — He follows the polls to evolve with the will of constituents, and
            — he doesn’t work hard enough to follow the will of his constituents.

            • Yes, I don’t understand how exactly our elected representatives are supposed to behave either. They aren’t conduits for plebiscites. They aren’t aristocrats.

              <

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              If we focus on results rather than process, we want leaders who accomplish good. That means changing public opinion not reacting to it, but changing public opinion in ways that are positive not harmful.

              <

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              What has not been so good about Kerry is that he exerts less leadership than he could given his constituency. He doesn’t represent Ohio.

            • You did not reply to any of my criticisms that he is no solidly pro choice, pro gay rights, or that he voted against Kyoto, or the Patriot Act, or that he really screwed up on the war, especially considering his history as an anti war activist. You dodged my criticisms and instead cherry picked my comment on polls and tried to paint a contradiction where there was not one.

              <

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              He followed the national polls that showed Americans wanted to go to war and abandoned the own will of his constitutents who were 9 to 1 dead set against the war. Thats a bad Senator if I ever heard one.

              <

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              Even if his conversion on the war is sincere, which believe me it is not, again he is following national polls since we citizens in MA were ahead of our junior Senator on this issue for quite sometime, he still is not providing real leadership. All the major resolutions were proposed by Finegold, Levin, Reed. On the GOP side Warner and Lugar. But Kerry as usual has been all talk and no action.

        • that’s what you’re not getting.

          <

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          while kerrys self-motivated vote helped to enable the bush administrations rigged war, that is only a secondary point.

          <

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          the fundamental issue is what that act proved about john kerrys integrity as our representative.

          <

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          these arguments sound like a someone saying, ‘oh yeah, my spouse cheated on me. but he’s whispered lots of sweet nothings in my ear since then. so why should i worry about anything now?’

          <

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          john kerry cannot be trusted. john kerry does not have the integrity to represent us as our senator. the most important vote as our representive of his career has proven that.

          <

          p>
          and we’re not married to john kerry.

          <

          p>

        • Diane, the choice is not between hate and infatuation.

          <

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          Some of us think he is flawed as a Massachusetts Senator. Could you perhaps acknowledge some of the criticisms of him? Are they true or not? If true, why weight them lightly?

          <

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          As I’ve written, I think this stop-the-war energy is better spent in Maine where it could actually stop the war even if Rudy McRomney gets elected. So I’m not unsympathetic but you are descending a bit into ad hominem.

          <

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          Please, take this ladder and climb out!

          • It is too easy to get bogged down into a discussion of details in such a way that you lose the point of the discussion.  I think we are approaching that point here.

            <

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            The criticisms of him seem to fall into two categories:

            <

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            personal attack (preening, self, absorbed, doesn’t listen).  I’ve met the guy and disagree with all those characterizations; they do not describe the man I met.  So how do we resolve that?  You’re not going to talk me out of what I’ve personally observed, and I’m clearly not going to convince you that my impression is correct.

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            political (Iraq war vote, Cape wind, etc)  I have already publicly stated that I disagreed strongly with that vote on the IWR in 2002. I made my views known to Sen. Kerry’s office via phone calls and faxes that I sent and I have taken part in public protests of the war.  I disagreed with him on that. vote  But, I also listened to what he actually said about his vote and not just to the one sentence things said by others that basically begin and end with,”‘He voted for the war.”  I disagreed with the vote, but I understood why he voted that way.  I understood that he thought at the time this was a way to get inspectors into that country and that, if the original IWR had been followed, it might have prevented war.  I did what the what you are asking me to do now, I listened to all the arguments.

            <

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            I have disagreed with Kerry on many things.  Kerry has publicly said that there were votes he wished he could have a do over on.  He voted for Justice Scalia and against Justice Souter when their nominations were before the Senate.  I bet he would reverse those votes now, based on what he now knows.  But, he can’t.  Those decisions were made based on the information he had at the time.

            <

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            You vote for people for public office in part based on the feel you have for them as people.  I don’t expect the politicians I vote or volunteer for to be perfect.  They are going to make judgments and calls I disagree with from time to time. That is inevitable.  It has happened with Sen. Kennedy, it has happened with Sen. Kerry and probably will happen again in the future with these folks and others.

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            I was already on that ladder KBusch.  I don’t believe there are any perfect people around, never mind perfect politicians. Perfection is not what I am looking for when I decide who gets my vote.  The overall record and the overall commitment these people have is what I look at.  I am, based on that, very happy with my decision to back John Kerry.  I think he is an excellent Senator for Massachusetts and does great work for this state and for the country.  And yes, he has made mistakes.  I don’t know anyone, anywhere who hasn’t.

            • In addition to NCLB, Patriot Act, and the war, he voted for Scalia as well?  I’m sorry Diane, but I want my senator to get it right the first time, not repeatedly vote the Republican line and come back and say “I was wrong, but everyone makes mistakes.”

              • The vote on Scalia’s nomination was 98-0 (Goldwater and Garn absent).

                <

                p>
                So which Senator are you against, again?

                • Thanks for the correction — I didn’t realize it was that bad.  Nor did I realize there was once a “Senator Garn”.

                • So, along with Barry Goldwater, I feel that I can confidently state that the vote would have been 100-0, had they shown up.

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                  That was before Bork, mind.

      • For all of those who are so anxious to hear why Ed O’Reilly should receive our support, I’ve got a great answer.

        <

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        He questions and he listens.  He does not presume to know what people want.  He is actively seeking information, ideas and feedback (which is something that Deval Patrick was astonishingly good at).  Interaction with constituent groups should be a new requirement for senators.  John Kerry famously refused to even discuss the war vote with people who were demanding the right to speak with their elected representative.  Ed O’Reilly is far superior to Senator Kerry in this regard.  Much as Deval Patrick did, Ed O’Reilly is out and about seeking input as to what people think and want.  To say, at this point in his campaign, that he has not generated enough policy positions is absurd.  He is in the process of finding out how people want to be represented.  Good for him.  Bad for John Kerry.

        <

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        For all those naysayers who feel that our illustrious senator should not be challenged, I say that is the same argument that Karl Rove has used to insulate the emperor bush from reality.  I vehemently object to that ideology in the democratic process.  We need to demand that we have input and say in the voting process.  Senator Kerry forgot for awhile that he was elected to represent us, not himself.  His recent shift back to voting more in line with constituents wishes does not make up for his failure to do so when it counted most.  I find it quite amusing that his voting record has shifted in advance of an upcoming election.  He is still failing to vote the wishes of a majority of his constituents and the democratic party, but many here would prefer that those votes not be questioned.  Bull sh*t.  We are responsible for making ourselves heard.  We have a right to question. 

        • I haven’t heard anyone hear say Kerry shouldn’t be challenged.  That would be undemocratic.

          <

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          What I do hear is people trying to explain why they support Kerry.  And why they are unimpressed so far with O’Reilly. 

          • Yet you find it impossible to believe that anyone could question John Kerry.  I guess we have new definition for “straw man arguments”.  Thanks so much for helping us all understand the meaning.

            <

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            I guess I find it impossible to believe (0.00 / 0) 
            that anyone who actually is aware of everything Kerry does in the senate could make such claims.
            I do find it interesting that I posted an article about Kerry’s work on getting the troops out of Iraq in 2005, and yet that piece of evidence has been entirely ignored.

            Whatever.  A straw man argument over terminology is a waste of time.

            ——————————————————————————–

            by: diane @ Tue Jul 17, 2007 at 21:32:53 PM EDT

            <

            p> 

          • “What I do hear is people trying to explain why they support Kerry.  And why they are unimpressed so far with O’Reilly.”

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            That may be the talking points coming out of headquarters, but you have a half-dozen active liberals right here in this discussion clearly supporting O’Reilly.  Both times I’ve seen him at Democratic events, people have wanted to talk to him.  You seem to be hearing what you want to hear.

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            PS:  Will the Kerry campaign be actively organizing to ensure that O’Reilly does not receive 15% of the votes at the next state convention?

            • supporter — sneaking in a little time to post occassionally from work a couple times per week.  If you doubt that let me know.  One could make the same inference about anti-Kerry posters.  The Bush family has hated Kerry for decades and wouldnt be above posing as progressives that are anti-Kerry

              • By reading that last sentence, it seems that you are implying that a notable number of O’Reilly supporters are actually moles inserted by the Bush family.  Please tell me I’m misreading that.

                • hyperbolic statement—-I was implying (with exaggeration)  that the reasoning your statement that  “That may be the talking points coming out of headquarters”  suggests can be applied to anti-Kerry posters as well.  I have conversed with you on several issues not related to the Senate race so I dont doubt your sincerity. 

                • for pointing out the obvious as well.  It’s gonna be a long primary season, and the games have just begun.  You and I both know how bad the games can be because we’ve seen them firsthand.  The good news is that many of us recognize the same old tactics for shutting down dissent.  All we need do is expose them for what they are.  I’m thinking about playing some old Dean CD’s and the twisted  responses from Senator Kerry as a refresher.  I’ve got an old “Dated Dean, Married Kerry” sign in my garage for the purpose of raising blood pressure.  We would have been so much better off with Dean, at least he proudly declared his objections to the war. Not too many people understand fully that there are clean campaigns and not so clean ones.  Every time a Dem runs a nasty, controlling, vicious and inaccurate campaign, it should come back to bite them in the ass.

                • also, i don’t hate kerry. i just think that we can do better. maybe no viable alternative will emerge, and we’ll end up tossing kerry another 6 years. but at this point in time, i’m not satifisfied with john kerry as my representative in washington. and with that as a starting point, i am wide open to consider alternaives.

                  <

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                  and a lot of this is gut. and i can’t provide a link to my gut. and the reason that a lot of people across america didn’t warm to a president kerry as their representative isn’t because they were all conservative zombies. a lot of people who were entirely amenable to an ‘on paper’ kerry couldn’t ever get a handle on what the guy really stands for. and will fight for no matter what. people want to know that. we want someone or something we can count on. remember clinton’s “til the last dog dies”?

                  <

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                  what kerry fights for, and what he stands for seems to be some complex equation that exists only in his own mind. and which is certainly (not entirely) influenced by personal ambitions and posturing that have nothing to do with the real life concerns of his constituents across massachusetts.

                  <

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                  there are those who might mock statements like ‘you may not agree with him, but at least you know where he stands’ as simplistic or illogical. but there is a gut truth in that. people want that. and people know in their gut when they can’t feel like they can count on someone no matter what. and it’s just getting tiresome to be always worrying about where sen. kerry is going to come down on an issue today. and then next month. and then next year.

                  <

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                • The “tiresome to be always worrying where [he] is going” comment is right on. It says it much simpler than I have been able to so far. And the reference to what people thought around the country is also right on. I was in contact with lots of folks across the US in that election and nearly every Kerry supporter I encountered was doing it only because the alternative was Bush/Cheney (which also goes to show that lots of people knew B/C for what they were way before the Iraq vote).

      • While I probably sympathize and agree with every line of your appeal, I think it’s crucially important to get our story correct and accurate because we have to win over moderates. Do you think it’s liberals in the Senate that are sustaining a filibuster? Do you think it’s liberals that recoil from defunding the war? Do you really think your appeal will change their votes? And yes, stopping this war in 2007 — not 2009 — is a matter of changing the votes of Congressional moderates. One prerequisite: getting the story absolutely solid and convincing. That requires accuracy or “splitting hairs” if you like.

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        If you care about stopping this war, you have to be effective at it. That effort is multi-faceted. On blogs, we can figure out how to get the story right. Lots of moderates are turned off by hyperbole and hysteria (what you and I might regard as appropriate outrage and moral clarity).

  10. I understand that some are disappointed with Senator Kerry – he certainly tacked to the center in support of his presidential ambitions.  I think we’re seeing him come back to the left, and back to anti-war positions that are more natural for him, now that he’s focused just on Massachusetts – a constituency that is significantly more liberal than the country as a whole. 

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    Given that, I can’t see the point of spending effort in trying to unseat him the primary.  All that would seem to accomplish would be to provide a weaker candidate against a potential Republican challenger.  I doubt Reilly would represent us that differently than Kerry going forward – assuming he could succeed, it would just mean swapping in an inexperienced liberal Senator in place of an experienced one.

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    For me, it’s simply a matter of priorities. We’ve got a presidential race on our hands and the opportunity to strengthen Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate.  I think anyone who’s a progressive and has some dollars or energy to give should spend them on those campaigns, which have the potential to meaningfully change the direction of the country, rather than on Democratic primary fights.  We need aggressive action on climate change, ending the war, healthcare, we need to stop the rightward slide of the federal judiciary, we need to end cronyism and politicization of government functions that should be nonpartisan.  We can’t make the progress we need to make with a closely divided Congress or with any of the Republican candidates elected to the White House. 

    <

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    • I’ve seen this objection made periodically.  However, it’s not as if we’re talking about pushing against John Kerry in October 2008.  This question will be resolved in early September, right when people are starting to tune into the presidential question.  We have plenty of time to try to have an impact in New Hampshire or Maine, after we’ve settled the O’Reilly-Kerry question.

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      I disagree fully with the suggestion that because there’s a presidential campaign underway, we abdicate the right to closely examine our senators.  Minnesota will be having a senatorial primary on the Democratic side — and that’s a swing state!  Why do we deserve less?

      • How is pushing to elect O’Reilly going to result in enough benefit over what we’d get with Kerry?  I haven’t heard a strong case.  Maybe I just can’t hate Kerry for doing what he thought he needed to do to win.  We wouldn’t have Roberts or Alito if he had.  We’d have saner policies in a lot of areas.  He came close, and I don’t think he lost because he wasn’t liberal enough, or because he voted to authorize the war.  He lost because he’s a wealthy, somewhat stiff New England guy without quite enough personal charisma and ability to connect with sufficient voters beyond his base.

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        To win in 2008, we need to do what Deval Patrick did here -change the conversation – and waiting until September to start isn’t going to cut it.  Unless we work to nominate a charismatic candidate who can communicate a new vision for the country, unless we push strongly and continuously to keep the focus on our issues, we’ll have an election about resentment, fear and selfishness – illegal immigration, fighting terrorists “there” instead of here, taxes – and despite voter anger at the war, we could well lose.

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        This isn’t an argument against primary elections – by all means, watch debates, read coverage, vote for the guy you think will do the best job.  What I’m talking about is what campaigns are worth working on – hoisting a sign, canvassing, making phone calls, writing checks.  For me, O’Reilly vs. Kerry doesn’t make the cut.

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        I think anyone who sees him or herself as a serious progressive should be giving their dollars and time NOW to Democratic presidential candidates, to national Democrats challenging sitting Republicans or facing Republican challengers themselves, or to progressive issue campaigns (climate change, healthcare, anti-war etc.)

        <

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        I was twenty years old in 1984.  Reagan vs. Mondale was my first presidential election.  I watched incredulously on election night as my candidate was crushed by a guy whose appeal I never felt or understood.  I’ve spent my entire political adulthood under the dominant Reaganite anti-tax, anti-government conversation.  Even Clinton accepted the paradigm and tried to achieve modest, incremental progress within its constraints.  It seems to me that we’ve finally got a shot this cycle to break the grip of a failed philosophy that has had very bad consequences for our country.  I don’t want to spend one minute on hair-splitting between liberal candidates.  I want to see the entire conversation shift. 

        <

        p> 

        • In my mind, the term progressive is preferable.  I want a candidate who is NOT AFRAID to say that woman should always have a choice over their bodies, abortion should be available with no strings, gay couples should not be excluded from the same civil rights as the rest of the citizenry and the right wing is against the very values that this country was founded upon.  Kerry seems to want to have everything both ways.  He is not my definition of a liberal nor a progressive nor a leader.  I want to see the conversation take place, and I’m tired of those who wish it would go away.  Nice try, but I don’t buy your premise for a second.

    • this is massachusetts, for crissakes!
      does anyone see this state breaking republican next year? c’mon!
      (or i am underestimating the hidden power of jack e. robinson?)

      <

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      our next senator is going to be a democrat. nuff sed. and right now, it’s just a question of whether we’re going to send sen. where-does-he-stand-today back for his 30th year in the office. or whether folks will decide that the time is about now to stop fearing change and pass the torch to the next generation of democratic leaders.

      <

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      like we did with deval.

      <

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      • I’m arguing that electing a marginally better Democrat (if, in fact, the other guy is marginally better – haven’t heard much of substance about him yet) from Massachusetts is of less importance to the country than electing a Democratic president and strengthening Democratic majorities in Congress.  I’d rather see progressive energy and dollars devoted to working on the presidential race and on Congressional races in battleground states.  That’s where I’ll be putting my efforts and spare change in the next year and half, as well as on protecting pro-marriage state legislators here in Massachusetts.  I hear that there’s distaste for and disappointment with Kerry, but I  have yet to see a positive case made here for why the Kerry-O’Reilly primary race deserves to be a focus.

        • Then tell Kerry to give his massive warchest to progressive candidates and not spend a single time on his re-election. That way he and Ed can have an honest debate and the best man can win and progressives can spend their money elsewhere. But if our Senator tries to buy our votes again or distort who Ed is then i might just have to give to Ed. Its just the way things go, I live in MA. Frankly we will get a Dem president as long as we dont choose Hillary, the Dem congress is not going anywhere in 2008, demographics show that the Senate will be more advantageous to us and the Congress is going to hold with the Dem slide for the presidency.

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