Posted on 08/11/2004 8:49:13 PM PDT by Pikamax
August 12, 2004 POLITICAL MEMO Bush's Mocking Drowns Out Kerry's Explanation of Iraq Vote By DAVID E. SANGER
ASHINGTON, Aug. 11 - For five days now, as the long-distance arguments between President Bush and Senator John Kerry have focused on the wisdom of invading Iraq, Mr. Kerry has struggled to convince his audiences that his vote to authorize the president to use military force was a far, far cry from voting for a declaration of war.
So far, his aides and advisers concede, he has failed to get his message across, as Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have mocked his efforts as "a new nuance" that amount to more examples of the senator's waffling.
Mr. Kerry's problems began last week when President Bush challenged him for a yes-or-no answer on a critical campaign issue: If Mr. Kerry knew more than a year ago what he knows today about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, would he still have voted to authorize the use of military force to oust Saddam Hussein?
As Mr. Bush surely knew, it is a question that can upset the difficult balance Mr. Kerry must strike. He has to portray himself as tough and competent enough to be commander in chief, yet appeal to the faction of Democrats that hates the war and eggs him on to call Mr. Bush a liar.
It is a problem that has dogged Mr. Kerry since he walked through the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire, and suffered the barbs of Vermont's former governor, Howard Dean, who made Mr. Kerry's vote to authorize action an issue. Now Mr. Bush has taken up where Dr. Dean left off.
"Kerry has always had this vulnerability of looking flip-floppy on the issue and Bush is using this very shrewdly," said Walter Russell Mead, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. He added "Being silent on the question makes him look evasive, and saying something, anything, gets him in trouble with one side of his party or another."
Mr. Kerry's friends concede the first rounds have gone to the president - "it's frustrating as hell," Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware said on Wednesday - but Mr. Bush has his own problems, since the argument re-ignites the question of whether he rushed to war without a plan about what to do next.
It is an issue on which Mr. Bush can still sound defensive. On Wednesday in Albuquerque, he responded to Mr. Kerry's suggestion that the United States could begin pulling troops out of Iraq next year by saying, "I know what I'm doing when it comes to winning this war, and I'm not going to be sending mixed signals" by discussing pullouts.
Mr. Bush also reaffirmed his stance on the war when he challenged Mr. Kerry. "We did the right thing,'' the president said on Friday, "and the world is better off for it."
Across the weekend, the Kerry campaign debated how Mr. Kerry should respond. "There were a lot of ideas," said one official, "from silence, to throwing the question back in the president's face."
But the decision, in the end, was Mr. Kerry's. He chose to take the bait on Monday at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Asked by a reporter, he said he would have voted for the resolution - even in the absence of evidence of weapons of mass destruction - before adding his usual explanation that he would have subsequently handled everything leading up to the war differently.
Mr. Bush, sensing he had ensnared Mr. Kerry, stuck in the knife on Tuesday, telling a rally in Panama City, Fla., that "he now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq." The Kerry camp says that interpretation of Mr. Kerry's words completely distorted the difference between a vote to authorize war and a decision to commit troops to the battlefield.
Mr. Kerry's answer is being second-guessed among his supporters, some of whom argued that he should have been more wary of the trap.
"I wish he had simply said no president in his right mind would ask the Senate to go to war against a country that didn't have weapons that pose an imminent threat," said one of Mr. Kerry's Congressional colleagues and occasional advisers.
Senator Biden argued that Mr. Kerry is being "asked to explain Bush's failure through his own vote. I saw a headline that said 'Kerry Would Have Gone to War.' That's bull. He wouldn't have. Not the way Bush did. But that wasn't the choice at the time - the choice was looking for a way to hold Saddam accountable."
Such distinctions don't exactly ring as campaign themes. On Wednesday, Vice President Cheney did his best to worsen Mr. Kerry's troubles. He issued a statement noting that Mr. Kerry "voted for the war" but turned against it "when it was politically expedient" and now has his aides "saying that his vote to authorize force wasn't really a vote to go to war."
"We need a commander in chief who is steady and steadfast," he said.
Rand Beers, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton and Bush administrations before he left to help Mr. Kerry formulate his foreign policy positions, said in an interview on Wednesday: "We have said we think there are four elements" in Mr. Bush's approach to the war that are clearly different from how Mr. Kerry would have handled the confrontation with Mr. Hussein.
"Rushing to war is one, doing it without enough allies is two, doing it without equipping our troops adequately is three, and doing it without an adequate plan to win the peace is a fourth," Mr. Beers said. "If you want to add a fifth, it's going to war without examining the quality of your intelligence."
In fact, in interviews since the start of the year, Mr. Kerry has been relatively consistent in explaining his position.
Mr. Bush may be seeking his moment now because polls show that Mr. Kerry's approach to Iraq is resonating with voters as strongly as Mr. Bush's - in some cases more strongly. That may explain why Mr. Kerry is willing to suggest some dates for the start of troop withdrawals, something he would not do a month ago.
Mr. Bush still has an edge, polls show, in the handling of terrorism. On Wednesday his campaign released a new television ad in which the president discusses the need for pre-emptive action then says "I can't imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th.''
It is the third spot the campaign has released in the last two weeks that refers to terrorism, the first in which Mr. Bush speaks of it himself.
Democrats said that the Bush campaign's decision to have the president refer so much to the Sept. 11 attackswas a sign of desperation. But Mr. Kerry's team is still trying to figure out how their man can crystallize a message on Iraq. "You have to hand it to Bush and Cheney,'' Mr. Biden said. "When it comes to using the big megaphone of the presidency, they are the masters.''
Break out the Waaaaaaahhhhbulance!
the real issues: Bush is a liar, Bush is a Nazi, Bush is a killer etc.
When Democrats do it its a real issue, when others do it its either an attack or a mock.
The liberal media just wants conservatives to shut up.
Nice. Makes it sound like Kerry has a perfectly reasonable explantion for his vote -- but that mean old Bush, with his mocking and all, just drowns out that poor boy John Kerry.
Asked by a reporter, he said he would have voted for the resolution - even in the absence of evidence of weapons of mass destruction -
Well, it only took them to the 100th paragraph to mention this.
If Libya had WMD, Iraq sure as hell had WMD. Also, anybody that doesn't think Hussein wasn't helping to finance terrorists (in addition to the Palis) is a dumbass.
Two very good reasons, in addition to the fact he violated the cease fire, to get rid of Hussein.
1. 14 months of patient negotiations isn't "rushing."
2. We had more allies in this than Bush senior did in 1991. More than Clinton in Bosnia.
3. Who voted against training and supplies for the troops? Wasn't his name "Kerry?"
4. What does "winning the peace" mean in plain English? Capturing Saddam? Turning the government of Iraq over to Iraqis? Supporting them while they get on their feet? Helping them hold elections? We've done or are doing all of those. What, then?
5. Who says Bush didn't examine the quality of his intelligence? Everyone who voted him the power to intervene certainly did, or at least had the opportunity had he actually attended the briefings, and yes, it's Mr. Kerry we're talking about.
Love to see the liberals flounder...
Hello NY Slimes ! Anybody there?
Your man, Lurch brought this on himself. He first says he voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it and did that so he appease the Deaniacs in the Rat party. Then he says he voted for the war even if Iraq didn't have WMD. Hello, the whole Rat convention was a orgy on how Bush lied to get us into the war. Now Kerry sticks the finger at that crowd and agrees with whom they( and the NY Times) consider a lier. And now you all are surprised that Bush is going to take him to task about his own words about that ?
You should be telling Kerry to shut up and not questioning Bush's motive here, NY Slimes.
And Kerry is a serious candidate only in comparison to Donald Duck and Harold Stassen.
Well, Mr. Bush is certainly unfair!
The nerve!
Ping
Rand Beers speaks...
He wants to take the job away from the man who just outsmarted him and boxed him in. What a hoot!
Latest article addresses this issue:
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com
NYT is whining ... that means it is hitting close to home.
Kerry would have been checkmated if he had said this because he would have been conceding what we already know, which is that Kerry is not prepared to go to war against countries that are trying to kill our people by firing missiles at them.
Well, I have to retract my statement the other day that the NYT's doesn't have a sense of humor. They had me at the Headline. LOL
Now that's nuanced!
Now question Kerry on Cambodia. Were you in Cambodia while serving duty in Vietnam, yes or no?
George W. Bush on the other hand has taken the tough times head on and has consistently stood by his positions and those who stood with him. He has been unjustly attacked by the democrats since the day he was sworn in and he has been underestimated by them. They said he would have no mandate and he could kiss his tax cuts goodbye, Yet he passed three of them. They said he would lose the House and Senate in 2002, and he gained seats in both Houses (First time in decades)
By the time election day is here, the choice will be very clear. We will have a choice to either reelect a President who led this country like few have since 9/11, at a time when we needed it most. Or we could elect a new President who has never stood for anything but his own political well being. A man who slandered our troops for no other reason than his own personal gain. When the going got tough in Vietnam, John Kerry sided with the enemy. His trip to Paris to meet with the N. Vietnamese leaders should have earned him a starring roll for a firing squad.
The Choice is clear, and soon the fog will lift
So now the new line is that Kerry's vote wasn't to go to war, but just to authorize the use of military force?
I really do hope that John Kerry gets to spend a lot of time in the public eye, because the general public isn't going to eat this type of stuff up like the DU crowd will.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.