John Kerry Statement on Bush's Speech on Iraq

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.johnkerry.com/news/speeches/spc_2003_0907b.html

September  07,  2003

“Tonight, the President offered glowing rhetoric but few specifics on how we will erase the mismanagement of this Administration in Iraq – a mismanagement that has cost America precious lives and valuable time in securing a plan to win the peace.

“The President must now do what he should have done before the war began and go to the United Nations and our allies to build a true international coalition to share the burden of securing and rebuilding Iraq despite the Administration’s abysmal record of doing just that.

“How do we get others involved to take the target off the back of American soldiers?  How will we assure our soldiers they won’t be overextended?  How do we end the sense of occupation in Iraq? 

Other than telling the country that this will be expensive, the President did very little to demonstrate he has a true plan.  This President must offer more specifics on these and other important questions if he is to build the legitimacy and consent of this nation and our neighbors throughout the world to win the peace in Iraq and win the global war on terror.”

[Devils Advocate NZ]

1. I feel sorry for Kerry...

It must be hard to criticise the war without admitting that he voted for it. He does well here though, because rather than criticise the war, or even Bush's handling of it, he is criticising the mismanagement of "post-war" Iraq.

If only Kerry hadn't voted for the war, he could come out with all guns blazing, reminding the people that there are no WMD, there was no threat, there was no justification for this illegal war and the subsequent occupation that is now turning into a quagmire.

I guess he'll just have to settle for "but he did it wrong".

[NewYorkerfromMass]

2. I feel sorry for you (and others who think Kerry wanted this)

The war is now, for better or worse, history (and YES, he did it wrong). The issue now is occupation. Kerry has the credentials and credibilty to attack Bush on this, . He's been saying the same thing over and over since the beginning.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

3. So why did he vote for the war?

He voted to give Bush authorisation to invade Iraq without UN consent, and without proving that there was no other way but war.

Kerry could have voted NO, but he didn't - why?

I think it is reasonable to assume he voted YES because he wanted the war too. Either that, or he was afraid of looking "weak on defense" which is even worse.

So the only thing Kerry can argue with is how Bush planned for and prosecuted the war - he has no right to criticise the fact that Bush started the war because he voted to give Bush authorisation to do that very thing.

Now, Kerry is in the sticky position (as I said before) of having to criticise the war without criticising the war, which as you can imagine is very difficult.

Even if Kerry says "I would have gone to the UN", Bush can say, "then why did you vote to ignore the UN?", and Kerry will have no answer.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

4. Kerry wanted an international coalition and consensus

and he wanted to avoid war at all costs. Remember what he has been saying recently? "We should go to war only when we have to, not when we want to."

[CWebster]

5. political cover

He still voted for it, while others with the same expectations voted against it.

Watch Kerry vote to fund it now--plan or no plan.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

6. Simple question: Why did he vote for it?

It shouldn't be too hard to answer.

Kerry seems to say one thing and do another. Can you reconcile his saying he wanted to avoid war, yet voting to go to war? It seems either he lied about wanting to avoid war, or he voted to go to war for some reason other than believing war was necessary.

Can you clear up this discrepancy?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

7. You act like Kerry was CiC and giving Bush his marching orders

The Kerry bashers really seem to maintain this inverted world view where John Kerry controls the president and everyone else in congress and made Bush act unilaterally and irresponsibly and made Rumsfeld draw up a foolish war plan with poor post-planning.
So O.K. now I see where you're coming from. :crazy:

[molly]

8. They don't understand that the general

public does not share their distorted reasoning. Save yourself some grief and ignore them.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

11. Is that right?

Then why are Kerry supporters so afraid to admit that Kerry voted to go to war?

It seems that even Kerry supporters don't think it was a good idea.

[ModerateMiddle]

17. He did not "vote to go to war"

He voted to give authorization to the President to use force as necessary. There were many other outcomes possible after that vote in Congress. Bush simply chose the most destructive route possible.

John Kerry was NOT in favor of going to war, but he WAS in favor of holding Saddam Hussein accountable for his actions. Saying over and over that he voted FOR the war is a blatant mischaracterization of what happened.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

23. Is that right?

The resolution authorised Bush to go to war, and Kerry voted for it.

Pretty straight forward if you ask me.

Now if the resolution had been entiled "Authorization for Use Diplomatic Measures Against Iraq Resolution of 2002" instead of "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002" I might believe you. However, it wasn't and I don't.

[George_Bonanza]

30. Bush was always "authorized" to go to war

As Kerry said on MTP, Bush, on the basis of Saddam's UN issues, could've invaded Iraq (or the "region) solely based on that, like Clinton with Kosovo. So the IWR did nothing really new in the authorization field. But some of the useful things it did was limiting the theatre of war to Iraq, which was a big plus.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

33. If so, then why did Bush ask for authorisation?

And why does the resolution specifically claim to be authorisation for the use of force? Of course Kerry would try to deny his role in authorising the war, because now that the war has been PROVEN to be a war crime, he needs to distance himself from such charges.

It seems that many people have never read the Iraq resolution, nor have they read the War Powers resolution. Both of which make clear that a President is never authorised to make war unless there is a specific resolution that refers to itself as authorisation under the War Powers resolution.

The Constitution says that only Congress can declare war, and the War Powers resolution defines how that declaration must be made.

What Clinton did in Kosovo and Haiti before it was contrary to both the Constitution and the War Powers resolution. The fact that he was only reprimanded for Haiti and was given a pass on Kosovo does not mean that this did not occur.

What it means is that under Clinton, both the President and Congress ignored their Constitutional duties and breached the Constitution. It seems that Americans don't really care.

At least with Bush he followed the Constitution, but probably only because he knew that he could safely do so without fear of being denied authorisation.

[CWebster]

9. He is responsible

for his own vote.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

10. Ok, so voting for the war is not the same as voting for the war...

That makes sense.

Bush said: "I want to go to war."

Kerry voted to say "Sure Mr Bush, whatever you want."

Now you are trying say his vote meant nothing?

WHY DID HE VOTE TO GO TO WAR???

It is a simple question, why can't you answer it?

[blm]

13. Kerry voted because Bush agreed not to invade Iran and Syria

and to go to the UN and present evidence and allow further inspections first, and exhaust diplomatic efforts.

YOU want to go on record and say NO Democrat should have negotiated for those things? YOU want to go on record and say that you prefer that Bush have the REAL blank check he wanted?

Senators who negotiate for the better deal pay with their vote. If you don't like our system, then come here and lobby to change it. I'm sorry there are so many Americans who are just as ignorant of the process of government and validate your mistaken perception of that vote.

[DJcairo]

16. well said

[Devils Advocate NZ]

24. So why wasn't that included in the text of the resolution?

Why did it not say in the resolution:

The President is NOT authorised to use military force unless:

1) UN inspections have run their course and reported to the UNSC, and

2) the President gains UNSC approval for military force to be used against Iraq.

After all, if Bush agreed to these things, he should not have had any problem including them in the resolution, should he?

Or perhaps the reality is that Bush and the Dems who voted for his resolution only said these things to make their war crime a little more palatable?

[blm]

27. It's in the congressional record.

It's in botjh Kerry's and Clinton's floor speeches.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

29. And that binds the President does it?

So they say in their speech "The President promised me", and the President has to deliver on the promise? Yeah right.

As I said, if Bush ever had any intention of honouring his word, he wouldn't have had any problem having those promises written into the resolution. They weren't because Bush objected to them. That tells you something.

[blm]

31. But...he is being held accountable...

his credibility is shot now because of his overreach on the evidence which he NEVER would have done if it hadn't been forced on him. He got no blank check to invade other countries.

Kerry also asked for a full accounting to Congress of all the money Bush spent and WANTS to spend. Say hello to opening Halliburton's books.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

34. What?

Bush was over reaching the evidence LONG before the resolution was proposed (by Bush). In fact, the reason the resoltuion was even considered was because of Bush's over reaching on the evidence.

I will admit that the war was restricted to Iraq by the resolution, but there is no doubt in my mind that Iraq was all Bush wanted. The bullshit about Syria and Iran was promulgated merely as a threat to those two nations to keep out of it, and as a means of having something to "negotiate" in order to get what he actually wanted.

As for the accounting side of it - well tens of thousands of innocent people may have died, but at least we know how much money was spent killing them!

Very noble.

[blm]

36. Then you prefer Bush have the REAL blank check.

That was the ONLY alternative.

The forced presentation of evidence before the Congress and the UN was the reason Bush overreached as much as he did. Guess you can't appreciate how important it is that Bush lost so much credibility with the American people and with some fair-minded journalists. It was abysmal seeing the polls that rated him as an honest person. That's the biggest reason why he will fail in 2004, his credibility is now shot.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

37. What "forced" presentation?

Bush was forced to go to Congress by the Constitution, and he was NEVER forced to go to the UN.

As for this "REAL" blank check bullshit, that is not what would have happened. Why? Because the resolution was coming up for a vote in the form we now have it, the Dems voting no would have been unlikely to change the outcome, so we still would have had the same resolution, there just wouldn't be Dems jumping on the bandwagon. If the Dems voting no WOULD have changed the outcome, they could have voted NO on ANY version of the resolution and prevented the war.

In fact it seems to me that it must have been a few Republicans that REALLY forced Bush to accept the SLIGHTLY more restricted version that he got - after all, if THEY all agreed he would have gotten any version he wanted, regardless of the Dems.

So every argumment you have given as to why it was a good thing for Kerry to vote for this crap has been shot down. In many cases numerous times. Why don't you just give up and accept that Kerry voted to authorise the war, and by doing so he helped Bush to ignore the UN and participated in a war crime?

[blm]

38. He was forced to present the evidence to the UN.

Remember when Powell went there in February? He went because they promised the Dem lawmakers that they would. If they didn't Bush would be in much better shape today with fewer Americans questioning his veracity, because he never would have proferred the evidence.

Bush HAD the votes for a REAL blank check already from centrist Dems like Miller and Lieberman. So, those negotiations DID make a difference whether you acknowledge it or not.

[ModerateMiddle]

19. But Bush did not say

"I want to go to war". He said "War is the last resort."

[styersc]

18. He voted to give the President the tools of the military.

The same way every president in the past has recieved same. Did Kerry want to set a precedent that would tie the hands of the Whitehouse when he was hoping to sit in the Whitehouse?

Regardless. You're right. Four more years....four more years....four more years.

[ModerateMiddle]

14. "then why did you vote to ignore the UN?"

I know that there was a huge amount of angst around here and around the country about the time that Congress was voting on the Iraq War Resolution.

And I realize that there are a good number of folks, especially here on DU, that will never forgive him for it.

But I hardly would characterize his vote as having been "to ignore the UN."

[Devils Advocate NZ]

26. I would, because I have read it.

And I also know that BEFORE the resolution was passed, Iraq agreed to allow the inspectors back in, and Bush tried to prevent it, and after the resoltuion was passed, he went ahead and ignored the inpectors, in fact he gave them a deadline to get out of Iraq, and attacked anyway.

[styersc]

15. It is sad.

Kerry voted to give the President tools to do a job then the pres botched the job. For this the Dems will refuse to give the most qualified candidate the nomination and we will get four more years of Bush (and atleast two Supreme Court nominees).

Truly sad.

[ModerateMiddle]

20. I'm not willing to admit defeat on this

I don't believe that the folks at DU represent the vast diversity that is the Democratic Party. I still believe that the Dems will nominate the best candidate for the job.

[sandnsea]

22. Why didn't Dean get his 16 questions answered?

Bush doesn't react until Kerry's statements start making news. Why do you think he's talking about the UN now, because of Howard Dean? Dean couldn't even get his 16 questions answered and Kucinich can barely get any press at all. Kerry and Democrats like him are the only ones who have ever made this Administration move at all. So if you really care about the troops and the Iraqi people, you might want to consider getting behind the only candidate that actually carries enough weight to scare this Administration into appropriate action.

[Parche]

28. He didnt vote for any war

He voted for the use of force
that does not mean he voted for a "war"
Alot of congressmen and senators voted
They and Kerry thought that smirk would build an international
coalition of more forces, and use peaceful means.
It was bush who invaded another country illegaly.

[George_Bonanza]

32. Read this, Devils Advocate

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&ncid=694&e=3&u=/ap/20030908/ap_on_el_pr/kerry_interview

[Devils Advocate NZ]

35. You're fucking kidding me? Kerry is worse than I thought!

"I'm not going to vote for an open-ended ticket," Kerry told The Associated Press. He said Bush should get more foreign troops into Iraq and use oil revenues to help pay for reconstruction before Americans are forced to foot the bill. Kerry said the United States cannot abandon the Persian Gulf nation.

First he votes to authorise Bush to devestate a sovereign nation, kill tens of thousands of innocent people, and all because of what he now admits were lies, but now he says that Iraqis should have to pay for it?

This guy advocated murder and now theft? Great.

Americans SHOULD be forced to "foot the bill", because they fucking CREATED IT! They broke it, they damn well bought it.

What Kerry is saying above is the equivalent of saying "I broke into your house and killed your children, but I refuse to pay the cleaning costs - in fact, I am going to sell your car to cover the bill."

It's down right criminal.

He supported the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force — a vote Dean has used against him on the campaign trail — but Kerry said he did so based on U.S. intelligence that has since been proven wrong and upon Bush's word that he would build a global coalition before fighting Saddam Hussein

Here of course is a DIFFERENT story to what the Kerry supporters claim. Now, instead of the resolution not authorising the war, the new story is that although it DID authorise the war, Kerry only voted for it because he believed Bush's lies - the very lies people like me were pointing out over and over again for MONTHS before this resolution ever got anywhere near a vote.

What a great President this guy will make - he will ignore the people, believe lies, and go to war for oil, then blame the victim and require the victim to pay for it all!

Brilliant.

[polpilot]

39. Which is why Kerry is 'like-Bush' not 'Bush-lite'.

Kerry really seems out of it on most days...nearly all days...how can he make a statement like this??

Bomb 'em, take their oil, 'victory'??...

Dean '04...

[DrGonzoLives]

12. Then why didn't he bring this up before?

Why wasn't he making noise about this BEFORE the war vote? These were exactly the kind of issues that needed to be brought to light.

Yeah, I'm glad he's saying it now, but I wish he (and all the other Democrats who went along with the vote) had been more adamant about this beforehand.

[ModerateMiddle]

21. He really was making noise.

But as someone else said, he was giving the power to the Office of the President. I truly believe that without the IWR, Hussein would never have allowed inspectors into Iraq. Inspections were the goal, that an eliminationn of any WMD he might have had - which nearly everyone, including Gov. Dean, believed he had.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

25. I never believed it - the UN inspectors didn't believe it - but...

Bush said it and "everybody believed it"?

A Kiwi was on TV here the other day who had been a weapons inspector just before the war. He told how the inspectors on the ground felt that they were being dicked around by Bush rather than the Iraqis and that the Iraqis had thrown open their doors almost with glee.

He KNEW they had no weapons because he CONFIRMED they had no weapons, nor even weapons programmes - each time that he was sent to a site that Bush said was definately involved in chemical and or biological weapons (which were his specialty) he said that not only were they not WMD sites, but they could be seen to not be WMD sites within minutes of arriving, and he and his fellow inspectors often LAUGHED at how ridiculous the claims were.

He said that a lot of the sites that were marked as definate WMD sites were singled out because satelite photos showed "indicators" which were things like generators or storage tanks. In other words it was "This place has a generator, it MUST be manufacturing chemical weapons". This is the kind of shit the inspectors were being fed by the US.

In fact he was sent to sites that were not even involved in chemical manufacturing such as clothing factories.

But Kerry and his fellow Dems voted to allow Bush to just ignore the weapons inspectors and invade anyway. In fact did you notice that he invaded BEFORE the weapons inspectors could report their findings? The findings that we now know are true? That Iraq had no WMD?

Bush was able to do this because he was given authorisation to do so.

Kerry HELPED Bush to circumvent the UN. He did not FORCE him to to go to the UN.

By the way, you do know that Iraq agreed to allow the inspectors to return to Iraq on Sept 16, and that the US was trying to block this, and that the resolution was pased on October 10?

For example:

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- In a letter handed over to the United Nations on Monday, Iraq said it would allow the return of U.N. weapons inspectors "without conditions" to "remove any doubts Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction."

<SNIP>

A second senior administration official noted various Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions, including ones that deal with repression within Iraq and the failure to make reparations to Kuwait.

"If <Saddam> thinks this is about letting inspectors in, or playing the same old game of give a little when under pressure, he is about to learn differently," this official said.

Despite the White House's skepticism, U.N. officials hailed the move as a major step in the right direction.

"I can confirm to you that I have received a letter from the Iraqi authorities conveying its decision to allow the return of the inspectors, without conditions, to continue their work," Annan said in announcing the news.

Annan credited the Arab League with playing a "key role" in the negotiations, saying Moussa's "strenuous efforts" helped "convince Iraq to allow the return of the inspectors."
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/16/iraq.un.letter/

But hey, don't let REALITY get in the way of a good campaign speech, after all, does it really MATTER if Kerry helped Bush to ignore the UN, after all, his intentions were good...