Posted on 09/20/2004 6:42:22 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - Staking out new ground on Iraq (news - web sites), Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) said Monday he would not have overthrown Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had he been in the White House, and he accused President Bush (news - web sites) of "stubborn incompetence," dishonesty and colossal failures of judgment. Bush said Kerry was flip-flopping.
Less than two years after voting to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, the Democratic candidate said the president had misused that power by rushing to war without the backing of allies, a post-war plan or proper equipment for U.S. troops. "None of which I would have done," Kerry said.
"Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell," he added. "But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."
Bush hit back from a campaign rally in New Hampshire, interpreting Kerry's comment to mean the Democrat believes U.S. security would be better with Saddam still in power. "He's saying he prefers the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of democracy," the Republican incumbent said.
"Today, my opponent continued his pattern of twisting in the wind," Bush said. "He apparently woke up this morning and has now decided, No, we should not have invaded Iraq, after just last month saying he would have voted for force even knowing everything we know today."
Both candidates addressed partisan crowds, drawing cheers and hoots as they stretched each other's records and rhetoric — mixing facts with political creativity toward the same goal: raising doubts about the other man's credibility.
Kerry called on Bush to do a much better job rallying allies, training Iraqi security forces, hastening reconstruction plans and ensuring that elections are conducted on time. But his speech was thin on details, with Kerry saying Bush's miscalculations had made solutions harder to come by.
Bush cited Kerry's four-point plan and dismissed it as proposing "exactly what we're currently doing."
With more than 1,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq, including nearly 900 since Bush declared an end to major combat, with free elections in doubt, reconstruction efforts stalled and violence and kidnappings on the rise, Iraq could be Bush's biggest political liability. Even some Republican senators have begun to publicly second-guess the president's policies.
But Kerry has failed to capitalize thus far, struggling for months to find a clear, consistent way to differentiate his views from those of his Democratic rivals during the primary season and, since the spring, his general election foe in the White House.
Kerry's advisers say they're not sure whether it is too late for the Democrat to make the Iraq critique resonate. Polls show voters favor Bush over Kerry on Iraq and terrorism. The president shines the spotlight on his foreign policy agenda with a visit Tuesday to the United Nations (news - web sites).
Kerry said in August that he would have voted in 2002 to give Bush war-making ability, even had he known no weapons of mass destruction would be found. He stood by the vote again Monday, saying the president needed to use the threat of force to "act effectively" against Saddam.
He made a distinction between that vote to grant a president war-making authority and what he himself would have done as commander in chief with such power.
"Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious?" Bush's presidential rival said at New York University.
"Is he really saying to Americans that if we had known there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is resoundingly no because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe."
Kerry called national security "a central issue in this campaign," a bow to the fact that the race is being waged on Bush's terrain.
"Invading Iraq was a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight," he said.
Kerry used the word "truth" a dozen times to say Bush had dodged it. That doesn't count the number of times he said the president "failed to level" with Americans or misled and confused them. He blamed Bush for "colossal failures of judgment."
"This is stubborn incompetence," he said.
Kerry has sounded more hawkish, as in December when Democratic primary rival Howard Dean (news - web sites) said the world was not safer with Saddam out of power. Anybody who believes that, Kerry said, doesn't "have the judgment to be president."
Reading that quote to his GOP crowd on Monday, Bush cracked: "I could not have said it better."
The running mates got into the act, too. "Iraq's a mess," said Democratic Sen. John Edwards (news - web sites), while Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) said Kerry offers only "confusion, weakness, uncertainty and indecision."
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry (news - web sites) delivers the keynote address to the Redbook Mothers & Shakers awards luncheon, in New York Monday, Sept. 20, 2004. His wife was honored at the event for inspiring Americans to help others. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
John Kerry is in full meltdown mode and he will not do well in the Debates because, unlike the main stream media, George W. Bush will ask him to defend his multiple, and constantly changing, positions on Iraq. In most cases all he is doing is saying he will do what George W. Bush is already doing.
Her parents must have been hippies...I guess "Moonbeam" (Zappa) was already taken...?
"Even some Republican senators have begun to publicly second-guess the president's policies"
Yeah, the typical phot-op hungry ones who love to see the liberal press sing their praises
LOLOL!
I mean Kerry, of course...
They know the MSM dogs are in their laps.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards (news - web sites) speaks before a large crowd at the Bond Hill Recreation Center, Monday, Sept. 20, 2004, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/David Kohl)
...
Kerry said in August that he would have voted in 2002 to give Bush war-making ability, even had he known no weapons of mass destruction would be found. He stood by the vote again Monday, saying the president needed to use the threat of force to "act effectively" against Saddam.
Bush said Kerry was flip-flopping.
"Today, my opponent continued his pattern of twisting in the wind," Bush said. "He apparently woke up this morning and has now decided, No, we should not have invaded Iraq, after just last month saying he would have voted for force even knowing everything we know today."
O.K., The President clearly wins this one on the merits. Now if we can just get the MSM to actually tell the sheeple this. I guess that CBS and CNN viewers will just be out of luck.
Like Rush said today, Kerry would never be able to put together a coalition to fight a war - he couldn't even put together a group of Senators to get a Bill through Congress. (He said that all Kerry every did was go up to the other Senators on Friday afternoon and say "Can you get this thing moving, I want to get out of here."
Iraq is the weak point for the President's re-election, both because the WMD stockpiles didn't turn up and because there's so much going on on-the-ground that is impossible to control. I had some genuine concern last night, reading about "Kerry's new strategy on Iraq" because there's weakness there to be exploited by the Democrats. After hearing Kerry's speech today, however, my reaction was "If that's the best they can do, its not much".
He completely contradicted himself and several of his previous contradictory positions on Iraq, confirming that all the "flip-flop" accusations are based in fact, he looked like he was completely pandering to his anti-war base, his "pull out at all costs" strategy is a carbon copy replay of his Vietnam era beliefs, and his four point "plan" for Iraq offered nothing new at all and certainly is no panacea for the problems in Iraq.
It was just a poor, poor showing. A lot of build-up and bluster but very little at the heart of it (not unlike the man himself, I should add). So if that's the best he's got, then I'm convinced that any chance Kerry has of winning the election is based solely on circumstance: the only real chance he has is to hope that Iraq completely melts down and that he can capitalize on public fears and disillusionment.
And even under that circumstance, I still wonder if enough of the "persuadables" would look at a guy who is *that* conflicted inside his own head and vote for him. I am just astonished that Kerry gave a speech like that, that so played into every negative perception of his as a weak-willed flip-flopping guy with no sense of himself. I just couldn't believe it.
Kerry called on Bush to do a much better job rallying allies, training Iraqi security forces, hastening reconstruction plans and ensuring that elections are conducted on time.
Hasten reconstruction??? Isn't this the guy who said we're spending too much money on Iraq (opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them here)? It just drives me nuts that Kerry and the Dems have so much contempt for their audience's intelligence.
"Hasten reconstruction??? Isn't this the guy who said we're spending too much money on Iraq (opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them here)?"
That was after he said we weren't spending enough on Iraq and that we should spend more to assure victory. But that was Kerry Nuance #312. Long since fallen by the wayside. Until the polls tell him to change his mind again.
Democratic presidential nominee buys a dish of ice cream in New York City September 20, 2004 during an unscheduled trip before retiring to his hotel for the night. REUTERS/Brian Snyder US ELECTION
Got this in email from Kerry. Supposedly he wrote it. The run on sentences gave me a headache. This has been excerpted to show the most ridiculous and inane statements. Feel free to fisk:
Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees. Children wade through garbage on their way to school.
~~~~~
It is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger. But it's essential if we want to correct our course and do what's right for our troops instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
I know this dilemma first-hand. After serving in war, I returned home to offer my own personal voice of dissent. I did so because I believed strongly that we owed it those risking their lives to speak truth to power. We still do.
~~~~
Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.
~~~~~
I would have concentrated our power and resources on defeating global terrorism and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. I would have tightened the noose and continued to pressure and isolate Saddam Hussein -- who was weak and getting weaker -- so that he would pose no threat to the region or America.
~~~
First, the president has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don't have to go it alone. It is late; the president must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.
The president should convene a summit meeting of the world's major powers and Iraq's neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly. He should insist that they make good on that U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific, but critical roles, in training Iraqi security personnel and securing Iraq's borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq's future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq's oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.
This will be difficult. I and others have repeatedly recommended this from the very beginning. Delay has made only made it harder. After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this president may not have the trust and confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq. But we cannot hope to succeed unless we rebuild and lead strong alliances so that other nations share the burden with us. That is the only way to succeed.
The president should urgently expand the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double classroom training time, and require follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries. And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers.
~~~~
Now, the president should look at the whole reconstruction package, draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects, and cut through the red tape. He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton. He should stop paying companies under investigation for fraud or corruption. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.
The president should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force. This won't be easy. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq should still help protect the U.N. We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S forces would end up bearing those burdens alone.
If the president would move in this direction, if he would bring in more help from other countries to provide resources and forces, train the Iraqis to provide their own security, develop a reconstruction plan that brings real benefits to the Iraqi people, and take the steps necessary to hold credible elections next year -- we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring all our troops home within the next four years.
The principles that should guide American policy in Iraq now and in the future are clear: We must make Iraq the world's responsibility, because the world has a stake in the outcome and others should share the burden. We must effectively train Iraqis, because they should be responsible for their own security. We must move forward with reconstruction, because that's essential to stop the spread of terror. And we must help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it's up to them to run their own country. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.
This, from the guy who cannot even run a campaign effectively.
I completely and totally disagree. I know it is conventional wisdom that Iraq is a weakness in the President's campaign, but I think it is a strength. The more Kerry talks about Iraq, the more he exposes his own inconsistencies on the subject, no, his serious character flaws. Moreover, foreign policy and the War are the President's strong suits. Bush is more than happy to have Iraq be the subject. All the damage that Iraq was going to do to the President, was done in the early spring.
I can't recall which poll had this, but since the transfer of authority to the Iraqi's, most Americans see Iraq in a different light. They no longer see us as staying there with no end. It is also clear that right or wrong, the President appears to be restraining further military action in Iraq until after the election. This has kept casualties down and helped to aid in the perception that Iraq is moving ahead.
John Kerry's speech today amounted to nothing, ziltch. Kerry has no plan and could not articulate one if he had too. Basically, Kerry believes that he can call "do over" and stake a new new new new new new new new new new position on Iraq and that NOBODY will realize that his latest position is at complete and total odds with his previous positions. This is arrogance staring us in the face. Kerry and the Dems continue to labor under the illusion that the Old Media will bury Kerry's former positions and statements. Based upon the DNC continuing to run the Favored Son adds, it is clear that they did not get the memo on Rathergate, namely, the Old Media may not be dead, but it is not the power it once was. There is a new power, and it is US!!
The only people who Kerry's speech may appeal to are the people who are already voting for him.
So Kerry's against the war again?
How long will it be until local banks start adding Kerry's current position re: Iraq to their time/temperature banners? Updated daily!
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