Posted on 09/21/2004 12:45:41 PM PDT by Howlin
He offered his own four-point plan starting with pressing other nations for help.
Get more help from other nations.
Provide better training for Iraqi security forces.
Provide benefits to the Iraqi people.
Ensure democratic elections can be held next year as promised.
Problem is they are so bland and it's not as if the Bush administration isn't doing them.
So how much of this is already being done?
Sounds suspiciously like what Bush is trying to do. But Kerry's anti-war surrogates and enemy-aiding campaign has been interfering.
No doubt Kerry got Edwards to channel Bush's mind since all 4 thing are already being done.
This IS Bush's plan..Kerry stole it.
And he calls that (or those) a plan?
For the record this is Kerry transcript of his four points (not five, I was wrong before).
______
First, the president has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don't have to go it alone.
KERRY: It is late. I acknowledge that. But the president has to respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.
Last spring, after too many months of delay, after reluctance to take the advice of so many of us, the president finally went back to the U.N., and it passed Resolution 1546. It was the right thing to do, but it was late.
That resolution calls on U.N. members to help in Iraq by providing troops, trainers for Iraq's security forces and a special brigade to protect the U.N. mission, and more financial assistance and real debt relief.
But guess what? Three months later, not a single country has answered that call, and the president acts as if it doesn't matter.
And of the 13 billion that was previously pledged to Iraq by other countries, only $1.2 billion has been delivered.
The president should convene a summit meeting of the world's major powers and of Iraq's neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly, and he should insist that they make good on the U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific but critical roles in training Iraqi security personnel and in securing Iraqi 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.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, is this more difficult today? You bet it is. It's more difficult today because the president hasn't been doing it from the beginning. And I and others have repeatedly recommended this from the very beginning.
Delay has only made it harder. After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this president may not have the trust and the confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq.
But I'll tell you, 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 be successful in the end.
(APPLAUSE)
Second, the president must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.
Last February, Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that -- claimed that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform. This is the public statement to America.
KERRY: But two weeks ago he admitted that claim was exaggerated by more than 50 percent. "Iraq," he said, "now has 95,000 trained security forces."
Well, guess what, America? Neither number bears any relationship to the truth.
For example, just 5,000 Iraqi soldiers have been fully trained by the administration's own minimal standards. And of the 35,000 police now in uniform, not one -- not one has completed a 24-week field training program.
Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces can't stop the insurgency or provide basic law and order?
The president should urgently expand the security forces' training program inside and outside of Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double the classroom training time, require the 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 and start behaving like we really are at war.
(APPLAUSE)
Third, the president must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people, all of which, may I say, should have been in the plan and immediately launched with such a ferocity that there was no doubt about America's commitment or capacity in the very first moments afterwards. But they didn't plan.
He ignored his own State Department's plan, he discarded it.
Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise the spending priorities in Iraq. It took them 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority, 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical, 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers.
(APPLAUSE)
One year ago, this administration asked for and received $18 billion to help the Iraqis and relieve the conditions that contribute to the insurgency. Today, less than $1 billion of those funds have actually been spent. I said at the time that we have to rethink our policies and set standards of accountability, and now we're paying the price for not doing that.
KERRY: Now the president should look at the whole reconstruction package, draw up a list of high-visibility, quick-impact projects, cut through the red tape, make it happen.
He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers instead of big corporations like Halliburton.
(APPLAUSE)
In fact, he should stop paying companies under fraud investigation or corruption investigation. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon who are responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.
(APPLAUSE)
Fourth, the president must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee that the promised election can be held next year. Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly that could write a constitution and yields a viable power-sharing agreement.
Because Iraqis have no experience in holding free and fair elections, the president agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role, yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. secretary general and administration officials say elections are in grave doubt, because the security situation is so bad, and because not a single country has yet offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission.
KERRY: The U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff in Iraq that it needs to get the job done, and whole communities are even inaccessible to the delivery of ballots or participation in an election.
The president needs to tell the truth. The president needs to deal with reality, and he should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force.
Now, this is not going to be easy. I understand that.
Again, I repeat, every month that's gone by, every offer of help spurned, every alternative not taken for these past months has made this more difficult and those were this president's choices. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq ought to still be prepared to help the United Nations hold an election.
We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S. forces will end up bearing that burden alone.
If the president would move in this direction, if he would bring in more help from other countries to provide resources and to train the Iraqis to provide their own security and to develop a reconstruction plan that brings real benefits to the Iraqi people, and take the steps necessary to hold elections next year, if all of that happened, we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring our troops home within the next four years.
That can achieved.
It's a plan...just not his.
He won't say which one of his many statements is "the" position.
This is Kerry's Iraq plan of the week. How many more will he offer before the election?
just one problem for Kerry ... We are ALREADY doing those things
Guess he missed those meeting too huh?
Well, today is Tuesday, so his one position on Tuesdays is that he is for the war. See, he gets one position per day.
A socialist's mind is a wonderful thing to discard.
What does he think we are doing over there? Target practice? The jerkwad.
Building everything from water pumping stations, to schools, to waste treatment plants, to a democratic political infrastructure, to an armed militia, to revitilizing the GDP of the entire country must just be fluff.
Here's a good article about it:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1222726/posts
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