PS: I know the convoluted explanations for Kerry’s position, and why Bush’s assertions are disingenuous. With respect to the former, Kerry claims the 2002 resolution to authorize force was actually intended to authorize negotiations, not force. With respect to the latter, Bush knew, or should have known, either that Iraq did not have WMDs, or that intelligence that it did was so weak it did not justify a war. But none of that changes the current positions of the two men on this issue.
Please share widely!
Both he and Blair expressed far more regret than Kerry or Clinton did for their votes. It is harder to directly order men to go to war than it is to vote on it, and let us hope Obama can learn from Bush and not have that sickening feeling when Afghanistan and Iraq continue to be lost causes. Hopefully he will have the courage to cut our losses.
Kerry is 2003 was already far better than Bush or Blair 2010! If you include later Kerry comments – the Take Back America “the war is immoral” is far better than both Bush an Blair still saying the war was right.
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p>Here is the Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
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p>The first time was in his October 2005, Path Forward, where he suggested a strategy that would have had the US out of Iraq in 18 months – very close to Feingold’s timeframe given in August 2005. He said in that speech that his vote was wrong.
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p>He was stronger in speaking against both the vote and the war in his speech at Take Back America in 2006 – where he said in a simple sentence – “My vote was wrong and the war is immoral”.
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p>He also spoke of his vote and the responsibility it gave him to work to end the war in his Senate speech saying that he would not run for President in 2006.
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p>There is a WORLD of difference between Clinton who still supports her vote and Kerry, who has repeatedly spoken of his regret.
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p>In addition, there is the fact that Kerry, and not either Clinton, spoke against going to war in early 2003 before the war started.
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p>What is absurd is that Neer is holding Kerry to a reporter’s summary of his position – ignoring hundreds of direct Kerry quotes from 2003 and 2004 saying he would not have gone to war and it was not a war of last resort. (He even said the latter on the Daily Show! Likely the first time the phrase was used.)
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Bob is right, he put himself through several rhetorical contortions in the 2004 campaign to the point where few knew what his purpose or plan regarding the war was. The other big difference is Kerry clearly played politics. He voted for the war after saying he was against it, he then said he was against the war before he changed his mind and said he supported it and even without WMDs. Then after the election he said he was against it again when it was politically safe to do so, and when he had his eye on 2008.
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p>Give Dean and Obama credit they have been consistent, give Bush and Blair credit they were for it and had to make the tough call to go, without considering the political consequences but with concern for the safety. If you read Angler I think it is pretty clear that Bush, mostly because of Colin Powell was cautious about going to war and then did so reluctantly because Cheney and Rumsfeld convinced him the WMDs were imminent threats and the war would be a cheap cakewalk. Now Bush should have had the judgment to do the right thing and not go, and he should have had far more foreign policy experience than he did, but I think he genuinely thought he was helping Americans, albeit not hard enough about it.
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p>I used to think Clinton held a political position on the war, but seeing as it was to her advantage, a la Kerry, to repudiate the vote, and she didn’t, I honestly believe she felt it was the right thing to do. It was probably because of her experience at the high levels of gov in the 90s back when liberal hawks were paranoid about Saddam creating instability and he regularly threatened to invade Saudia Arabia and had to be pummeled back every two years or so by bombings (am I the only one who remembers Desert Fox?). He also repeatedly violated UN sanctions, international law, and refused inspectors. There are solid, liberal internationalist rationales for going to war to save the credibility of the UN, even if it means doing so unilaterally. Again, never my position, but I think one can more credibly make the case for the courage of Clinton than for Kerry, and to a lesser extent Bush.
It could have and should have been avoided by diplomacy.
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p>He always said that diplomacy was not exhausted and that it was not a war of last resort. It is clear from all his summer and early fall comments that he was trying to stop Bush from going to war. Even his speech before the vote made clear that his vote was designed to give Bush the leverage he asked for to help diplomatically end the war.
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p>Not to mention – Bob is NOT right in saying AT THIS POINT that Bush and Blair have expressed greater doubts than Kerry about the war. He is using 2010 Bush and Blair comments and holding Kerry to a reporter’s agenda driven paraphrase of arguably one of Kerry’s worst 2004 answers.
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p>Neither Blair or Bush have said the war was wrong – Kerry said that hundreds (maybe thousands) of times in 2004 alone. In addition, Bush and Blair did order their troops to war. It is very clear from Kerry’s early 2003 comments that he would NOT have done so.
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p>It is fair to blame Kerry for his vote. It is not reasonable to say that Kerry has expressed concern about going to war than Bush and Blair. He expressed them in a speech BEFORE the war began – and said that they should have allowed more time for diplomacy and called for regime change here when the war was favored by 80% of the country.
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This discussion ignores the fact that all of the “justification” for the 2003 invasion was fundamentally dishonest. Sadly, the political reality at the time (and it was a failure of our democratic process) was that it was impossible to prove that dishonesty.
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p>The Republican administration intentionally stoked a lynch-mob mentality in America, with “Saddam” and “Iraq” as its scapegoat, culminating in the persuasive — and utterly false — address of Colin Powell.
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p>A “no” vote from Senator Kerry or Clinton was, therefore, tantamount to calling a then-popular President Bush — and an extraordinarily well-respected Colin Powell — liars. Neither Senator Kerry nor Senator Clinton had the evidence to support such an accusation at the time of the vote, because the entire GOP had so effectively politicized the governmental mechanisms designed to prevent such acts of tyranny.
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p>Our much-vaunted political system failed, and we launched an indefensible and illegal invasion. We are still paying the consequences of that systemic failure.
between a statement now and a statement in 2004. Bush expressed no regrets then.
Bush now speaks of being one who did not want to attack – wanting more diplomacy and going to war as a last resort. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. In March 2003, the inspectors had been in for Iraq for at least 4 months and had found nothing. Saddam allowed the destruction of missiles that were found to go further than allowed (without payloads. The IAEA director ElBaradei argued that their were likely no WMD.
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p>Bush at this point had the chance to stop and no go to war. Iraq was agreeing to increasing invasive inspections. Bush actually had the opportunity to make this a real victory. He could have called for continuing inspections and monitoring and ended the sanctions that led to unhealthy conditions that killed hundreds of thousands of the poor.
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p>He didn’t. In March 2003, he – and he alone – called for the invasion to begin – and in the current interviews he still says that the war was the right thing to do – in spite of his (actually non-existent) reluctance. I still remember the excitement in his voice as he announced it.
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p>Kerry did vote for the IWR, a vote he has repeatedly said was wrong and apologized for – but even in his speech on the vote he spoke of Bush having told Senators that he would go to war only as a last resort and that the vote would give him leverage to avoid war. Biden has said the same thing. In that speech Kerry promised that he would speak out if Bush did not keep that promise – and he did.
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p>On January 23, 2003, Kerry spoke at Georgetown University ending with a call not to rush to war. He also, at this Jesuit Catholic University, said that it would not be a last resort. I would doubt that few Georgetown University students did not know that not being a war of last resort means that the war is unjust. In the same time frame Pope John Paul II spoke of it not being a war of last resort and it not being a just war. David frum in National Review in early February 2003, referring to Kerry’s speech, lumped Kerry with Germany and France as never likely to agree they were not rushing to war. He made the case that they had been proceeding very slowly and cautiously.
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p>The fact is the media labeled Kerry as anti- war in spite of his vote – until mid 2003. In fact, it might have been his absence from the DNC candidate’s forum, because he was being treated for cancer, in early 2003 where Dean gave a powerful anti-war speech that was responsible for Dean being seen as the only anti-war voice of the major candidates.
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p>There are questions about what the unrecorded question really was at the Grand Canyon. Kerry’s full answer, which said nothing of WMD was the stock answer he gave on questions about the vote – including that he would have used the authority differently. Kerry’s response as recorded still indicates that he would not have gone to war.
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p>Have we all not seen enough instances of how the media distorts thing? Your excerpt is not Kerry’s words and it is in direct contrast with Kerry saying each and every day for over a year that “this was not a war of last resort” and speaking of the long list of things that Bush did not do – especially exhausting the diplomacy. He also was saying “Wrong war” repeatedly. That excerpt conflates the vote with going to war.
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p>The worst thing you could say is that in the heat of the campaign, Kerry’s campaign did not make an effort to make the point that this story was not his position. Watching the campaign, I think it at that point, Kerry started simply saying that he would not have gone to war – rather than defending or trying to explain his vote.
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p>Your whole view of Kerry’s position is an answer to an unheard question – where the entire “if he knew” part was in the question and Kerry’s answer clearly does not address the conditional nature ot the question. The correction Kerry made was his excellent Iraq speech at NYU in the first week of September – Kerry said point blank that the war was wrong and he would not have gone to war.
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p>But, you are now taking a Bush comment made this week that oddly attribute to him the position Kerry publicly took on January 2003.
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p>And you are holding Kerry to a reporter’s interpretation of what he said at the Grand Canyon – where his full response actually contradicted the interpretation by saying he would not have used the authority in the same way.
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p>In addition – if you want stronger language – Kerry said at Take Back America in 2006 that his vote was wrong and the war is immoral.
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p>It seems to me that someone is still unhappy over Dean not getting the nomination – even though it is not clear from Dean’s own September/October 2002 comments how he would have vote had he been in the Congress. But, as he did not vote – it was fair that he took Kerry to task for his vote – but it is inaccurate to say that Kerry, had he been President, would have gone to war.
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Could have been reading Knight-Ridder at the time and KNOW that there were serious doubts (indeed, more doubts than there were reasons to go to war) DURing the run-up to the war.
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p>Kerry indeed was smart enough to see what I, a mere middle class, marginally smart person could see. I knew what was really going on, because I was reading all the sources that were making sense.
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p>Bush could have read that same material – but he was in the Rove-Cheney bubble. If he had been the least bit interested in gleaming info for himself, however, again, he could have read the same sources I did – they weren’t hard to find. Information that gainsaid the stovepiped fake intell being fed to him at the time. Cheney might have been the architect of the unverified intell, but BUSH was president.
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p>It still makes me mad that #I# knew more than they did about this. I am nobody. They could all have stopped this.
Bush could have ordered the same attack if Biden/Lugar – the resolution that both Kerry and Dean publicly preferred – were the one passed or if no resolution at all existed and he created (as the Downing Street memos suggest) a bogus national security incident.
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p>Kerry did express uncertainty over the evidence, but there had been no inspectors in Iraq since they left before Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998. That was 4 years. Go to the Senate record, it is NOT the possibility of there being WMD that seem to divide the yeses and nos – many who voted against it agreed they could not be ruled out – they argued Correctly – that it was premature to give authority that Bush would be able to use if he (and he alone) thought the conditions were met.
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p>In Kerry’s speech, he spoke of critics including himself having pushed Bush to go to the UN and to come to Congress accepting that the 2001 war on terrorism vote was not enough. I suspect that Kerry’s real error was that facing a situation where Bush et al were barreling towards war that fighting on the wording of the resolution and removing the worst parts might be a way to divert the path to war and maybe avoid it.
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p>Kerry has said that it was wrong that he voted for the resolution. This directly disputes the entire rationale of the this thread. He, unlike Bush or Blair, has completely rejected the idea that the war was right – both on moral grounds and in terms of the result.
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p>There were 5 months between the resolution and the declaration of war. In those 5 months it became increasingly clearer that Iraq was not a threat to the US. Kerry was among the few who did speak out against rushing to war in 2003 – and throughout 2003 and 2004 called the war wrong.
I understand you want to defend Senator Kerry. However, you are not going to persuade many here if you rely on false information such as “…there had been no inspectors in Iraq since they left before Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998.” here is a story dated March 18, 2003: Weapons Inspectors Leave Iraq. The invasion began two days later. They were consistently reporting an absence of WMDs.
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p>Kerry gave his vote for the resolution. Whatever he got in return, or thought he was going to get, was inconsequential when weighed against the massive brutality of war. Kerry once appeared to understand that. His vote for the resolution demonstrated that he either no longer understood it, or did not care. Whether he could have stopped the war by voting the other way is not the point. He did the wrong thing. I want my Representatives and Senators to do the right thing, even if it’s futile.
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p>I do think giving any credence to anything Bush says is foolish. The man is an alcoholic, spoiled, child of privilege who has never had to face the consequences of his actions.
You seem to have missed that. Here is a BBC article speaking of them returning – for the first time since 1998 – in November 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/mid…
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p>As I said, I did not defend Kerry’s votes – however, you are completely wrong on the chronology of when the inspectors were there. The fact is that your article speaks of the inspectors – who arrived in November 2002 being kicked out.
…but we can always count on you to defend Kerry in general. That’s fine; he has plenty worth defending. I remember during the 08 Senate primary you took offense to being asked if you had a connection to him you haven’t disclosed. I can’t help but notice that even since then it seems that we never hear from you unless Senator Kerry comes up in conversation.
The only thing I did not disclose is that I am a NJ resident, which explains why I rarely comment on anything other than federal officials. The closest connection I had to MA was a daughter who graduated from college in MA in 2009. I never claimed a MA town of residence.
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p>I readily admit that I Think Senator Kerry is among the best statesmen of my generation and why I have advocated for him. It is readily apparent that many do not share that opinion.
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p>Although I strongly disagree that Kerry was pro-war, I understand the anger many felt when their Senator voted for the IWR. It was likely what I felt when my Senators both voted for the “torture” bill. Lautenberg, who I saw at a Democratic event in my county later that week, was questioned by many and really never gave a good answer. But, I have heard him speak on many things and know his strong liberal record – though I still do not understand that vote and it was bad one, I have immense respect for him.
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p>I read this board in 2008, because Senator Kerry was rerunning for office. I continued reading it because it is a very interesting board.
He says we went to war for a lie. He argues completely unambiguously that the war was completely wrong – on all levels.
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p>Kerry in 2003 was already far better than Bush or Blair 2010 in his Georgetown speech.
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p>Here is the Youtube of Take back America 2006 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
…but only in the privacy of the voting booth.
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p>Think Progress reports that he endorsed McCain because he felt he had to, but “I’d have endorsed Obama if he asked me.”
I was more disappointed Lauer didn’t hit Bush on the divisiveness of his presidency going against the ‘uniter’ message, or his consistent bending to the political base of his party on gays, abortion, and the war. Those do not strike me as characteristic of his, otherwise, decisive nature.
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p>Bush also reportedly expressed regret for the gay marriage resolution, and I honestly wonder how he could support that to Dick Cheney’s face, who hate him or not, has never appeared anything but supportive of her. Its one area where I wish he listened to Cheney more.
On 9/28/04, John Kerry said “wrong war, wrong time, wrong place”. And Bush repeated it in the first debate, accusing Kerry of being unable to lead the troops because of that statement. Bush went on to say that he would stay the course, of course.
The big lesson I think Obama should not take is that he needs to emulate dubya in one respect: decisiveness. Obama needs to take the lead and act more presidential and not simply be a manager of Congress but a real commander of the nation. At his best Bush appealed to a common, almost divine purpose and mission for the country, and that kind of mission should drive Obama and anything that supports it he should decisively endorse. I do appreciate that we have a more deliberative President, especially on national security and foreign policy, but give dubya credit he never cared what the polls thought and governed from his gut, Obama could do more of that.
First sentence should read: one big lesson obama SHOULD take from dubya
He lived through Vietnam, he should’ve known better and he let his fellow and future veterans down.
Back in the ’70s, people in the VVAW who’d been with John Kerry told me he was an opportunist using the antiwar movement to advance his political career. At the time, he had not run for any office, and I didn’t give what those vets said a whole lot of weight. Up until the vote on the authorization to invade Iraq, I didn’t really watch his performance in office, and figured he was still a staunch antiwar liberal. That vote was like a slap in the face. I started paying attention, and did not at all like what I was seeing. The words of the antiwar vets came back to me, and I realized they’d been right.
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p>I’ve said this before (and have tried to say it to John Kerry himself): I will never vote for him again. His vote for the Iraq resolution was a betrayal of values that I thought we shared. Some may think that makes me a single-issue voter. I’m not, but no one who has witnessed war can pretend that many other issues are as important. Sending our young men and women to kill and die is literally the last thing we should do – it should be a last resort. Using a vote for war as a political ploy was reprehensible, and for me, unforgivable.
Nor the fact that he was one of strongest opponents to the first Gulf War, which even Dick Lugar has said was for oil.
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p>You ignore that if Kerry were an opportunist, the easiest way to have had a political career was to have run as a Republican. He could have immediately after getting out of the Navy, gone to law school – probably in another state. He could then have done the same job he did as an excellent prosecutor. His Yale contacts might actually have helped him more if he was a Republican.
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p>He would then have won easily a Senate seat as a Republican – a young, articulate, eloquent, war hero, who fought crime as a prosecutor. The official Navy accounts of his medals read like 1940 movie stories – and as a Republican they would have been not just have been lied about.
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p>The VVAW history easily explains what you heard. It splintered with Kerry leaving with the moderates to eventually form Vietnam Veterans against the war. Kerry fought hard against the more radical part of VVAW. They included a leader who had completely lied about his background. Even from the Nixon tapes, it is clear that the one they feared and who was effective was Kerry. Kerry was arguing that they stay within the system – while many of them were more radical.
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p>Not to mention, there was likely some jealousy that Kerry, with his connections and his ability to get in to speak to leaders, immediately became the face of their organization. The truth though is that it is unlikely that any of the other leaders could have done what Kerry did.
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p>Maybe if you had followed Kerry’s record, you would have seen that he investigated illegal funding of the Contras, when the Republicans and about half the Democrats were in favor of them. An opportunist would not fought to take this on and done it in spite of death threats. It was to Kerry that people like Olive North and Abrams lied under oath – and he exposed them.
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p>Kerry also Investigated BCCI – and inspite of enormous stonewalling by the Bush administration (including Weld, then in the Justice department) eventually unraveled enough of their international money laundering for terrorist and crime rings. Here, he fought both parties in continuing it until his committee was taken away – and having no subpoena power he took what he had to NYC DA Morgenthau who had jurisdiction to close BCCI.
He used to be a Senator.
Talk about a false equivalence. What is the point of this? Ridiculous on its face. BTW this is a good discussion of the quote and media spin–From the Daily Howler.
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p>This reminds me of when the Democrats started pressing Cheney on torture –the media turned it around to blame Nancy Pelosi and the lefty blogs (and Ed Schultz on the radio) bought it hook line and sinker
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p>Bush and Cheney invaded IRaq. Bush and Cheney pulled out the UN inspectors.
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p>Current George Bush nostalgia demonstrates the way the public wants to forget the real culprits.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh0…
It is pretty sad when many genuine liberal Democrats willingly quote the various distortions, when Brit Hume of Fox News was actually more honest than the NYT!
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p>From your link:
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p>”Yes, Sanger just happened to choose an expert who thought Kerry looked “floppy” and Bush looked “shrewd.” But over at Fox, in striking contrast, a Big Scribe was honest about Bush’s latest clowning. On Tuesday, Bush was out playing the rubes, pretending that Kerry had said things he didn’t on Monday. Indeed, Brit Hume just flat-out said so, chatting last night with the all-stars:
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p> BUSH (shown on videotape): [Kerry] now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq. Knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power. I want to thank Senator Kerry for clearing that up.
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p> HUME (8/11/04): Well that line got a big cheer, as you saw yesterday when the president said it. But what Senator Kerry has said is not quite as the president has characterized it…Basically what Kerry has said, correct me if I’m wrong, is, Look, I would have wanted the authority if I’d been president. That’s why I voted to grant this authority to go to war to the president…But he said he would have used it differently. He would have used it to as more of a lever for diplomacy. He would have used it to bring more allies aboard. He would have used it to as a threat behind inspections, to leave them going longer.
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p> But the question is, the Bush camp knows what it’s doing here. They know that they’re stretching what the senator has said in trying to keep this the subject for the day. What about all this? “