(Senator) Kennedy book blasts Bush, 'preventive war'

[sabra]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/05/kennedy_book_blasts_bush_preventive_war/

Kennedy book blasts Bush, 'preventive war'
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | April 5, 2006

WASHINGTON -- In a forthcoming book, Senator Edward M. Kennedy invokes the leadership of his brothers during the Cuban missile crisis to launch a sharp new attack on President Bush, declaring that Bush should have followed the example of President John F. Kennedy and his attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, in forging a diplomatic resolution to the standoff with Saddam Hussein.

The Massachusetts Democrat writes that his brothers were right to resist advice urging them to launch a preemptive strike on Fidel Castro when missiles aimed at the United States were discovered in Cuba in 1962. They correctly argued that ''a first strike was inconsistent with American values," and would be a ''Pearl Harbor in reverse," he writes.

Kennedy writes that preemptive war may be justified to prevent ''an imminent attack on our country." But he puts the Iraq war in a different category that he calls ''preventive war," which he condemns.

''The premeditated nature of preventive attacks and preventive wars makes them anathema to well-established international principles against aggression," Kennedy writes in ''America Back on Track," which is scheduled to be released April 18.

[rodeodance]

1. preemptive mentality has hit much of what we do-include PA!

[mdmc]

2. maybe he will take to the street to stop an Iranian invasion

He should have been in the streets pre-Iraq.