Kerry Still Dogged by Questions on Vote to Authorize Iraq War

[pruner]

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
Published: October 24, 2003

DAVENPORT, Iowa, Oct. 23 — It dogs him at nearly every step on his presidential campaign: If Senator John Kerry is so critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath, why did he vote to authorize the use of force in the first place?

The question comes at house parties, Q. and A.'s and fund-raisers, and from every kind of voter: retirees and students, housewives and doctors, those already aligned with outspoken antiwar candidates like Howard Dean or Representative Dennis J. Kucinich and those who say they prefer Mr. Kerry but are nervous about what they see as his most glaring soft spot.

Mr. Kerry's vote last week against President Bush's request for $87 billion for military efforts and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan has not necessarily helped. He is having once again to square his vote in favor of last year's Iraq resolution with his opposition to the president's postwar policy.

"I voted against that $87 billion in Washington yesterday," he told an audience in Waterloo, Iowa, on Saturday. "But let me make it clear, I'm for winning the war in Iraq."

That Mr. Kerry is forced to explain himself so frequently, and how he handles the task, says a lot about where he finds himself in the campaign. Less than a year after being widely viewed as a front-runner in the Democratic field largely because of his foreign-relations expertise and his questioning of Mr. Bush on Iraq, Mr. Kerry still has to defend himself in the area that was supposed to be his greatest strength.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/politics/campaigns/24KERR.html?ex=1067572800&en=bf2913bd7b63f73a&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

[Feanorcurufinwe]

1. War - a last resort

MATTHEWS: Were we right to go to Iraq?
KERRY: Not the way the president did it. Clearly, no, because he didn’t plan for how to win the peace. He didn’t build the kind of coalition he said he would. He didn’t keep his promises to the American people.
He promised he would respect the U.N. He promised he would, in fact, build an international coalition and he promised he would go to war as a last resort. And, Chris, one of the great lessons I learned in Vietnam is the meaning of the words “last resort.”
I think the test for a president as to whether or not you send young men or women anywhere to fight is whether you can look in the eyes of parents-if you lose one of them-and say to those parents, I tried to do everything in my power to avoid this happening to your child. But we had no choice for the security of our country. I believe the president of the United States fails that test in Iraq.
MATTHEWS: Would you have gone to war with Iraq if the U.N. had supported it?
KERRY: Well, we...
MATTHEWS: Well?
KERRY: The answer-the answer is very simply yes. If the U.N. had supported it, there was a very...
MATTHEWS: Would you have gone to war if the U.N. had not supported it?
KERRY: If I were president at the time?
MATTHEWS: Right. Right.
KERRY: I would have made the judgment of whether or not to go to war, which is what a president is supposed to do.
The United States of America should never be perceived as or never should go to war because we want to. We should go to war because we have to.
MATTHEWS: Did we have to go to Iraq?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Did we have to go?
KERRY: ....until you’ve exhausted the remedies of....
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you. Howard Dean is opposed to going to Iraq.
He’s simple. Absolutely, bottom line, against the war.
KERRY: Well, he’s not, actually....
MATTHEWS: Joe Lieberman is for the war. Dick Gephardt is for the war, John Edwards sat right there last week and he is still for the war despite the bad intelligence he got. He says, “I’m still for the war.” How are you different than Dean on this issue?
KERRY: Let me correct you. Howard Dean is not clear and he is not simple. He has, in fact, embraced several positions. One of which is the Biden-Lugar amendment which, in fact, gave authorization to the president but under a slightly different wrinkle than the one we passed. Howard Dean also said he believed there were weapons of mass destruction. He believed that Colin Powell was correct.
Now the question that has to be asked is, once you’ve come to that conclusion, what are you going to do about it?
What you should do about it is precisely what I and Tom Harkin and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and a whole bunch of us thought we should do. Which is, go to the United Nations. Properly go through the inspection process. Build a legitimate international coalition and, in fact, exhaust the remedies available to you. And if you need to go to war, you go to war because you have a sense that the country has come to the point where it has no other option.
I don’t believe the president did that.
MATTHEWS: Would you have gone to war if the French had said under no circumstances we would go to war with you?
KERRY: I would do whatever is necessary to protect the security of the United States.
MATTHEWS: We’re going in circles here.
KERRY: No, we’re not going in circles.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: In retrospective, Dean says, I think it was wrong to go to war. In retrospect, Lieberman says we were right to go to war. Dick Gephardt says we were right to go to war. John Edwards says we’re right to go to war. General Clark says we’re not right to get to war-go to war. Where are you in that-with that kind of clarity?
KERRY: I just answered-I answered your question.
MATTHEWS: Were we right to have gone to war?
KERRY: I answered your question right up front. I said to you....
MATTHEWS: Well, yes or no?
KERRY: I said no. Not under the circumstances he went. I told you that, Chris.
MATTHEWS: So were we wrong to go to Iraq in war?
KERRY: The way the president did it, yes.
MATTHEWS: What was the right way to go to war?
KERRY: As a last resort, when you exhaust the remedies available to you and you have proven that you have to do it because there is no other alternative.
In other words, in Iraq, we had a legitimate threat, according to every intelligence indicator we were given. But we hadn’t built the coalition. We didn’t have a plan to win the peace. The president rushed to war. I said so at the time. I said I would have preferred that he did more diplomacy. I don’t know how you can be more clear than that.
MATTHEWS: Well, because, you know, when you came back from fighting in Vietnam, so nobly and courageously, and you had been honored for your service to your country, and you come back and-you said you were leading up Vietnam veterans against the war. You were clear cut then.
I don’t hear that clarity in your answer right now-the clarity of being for or against the damn war.
KERRY: Well, Chris, God bless you, but I have to tell you, man, sometimes in foreign policy, certain things are complicated. Life is complicated. And the fact is, that there was a legitimate rationale for the United States to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, but there was every reason in the world to hold him in the world to hold him accountable properly.
Now, you know, Joe Lieberman was prepared to go under any circumstance. I wasn’t. The president evidently was too. I wasn’t. I thought we had to build the consent and legitimacy of the American people and I remember that because of my fight in Vietnam. I remember it because we had a divided nation. I remember what happens when you lose the consent of your nation fighting a war.
MATTHEWS: Right.
KERRY: But it is perfectly legitimate too-in fact, in 1998, when Bill Clinton was president, and Saddam Hussein brought the wall down on the inspectors and Clinton brought them out so he could bomb, I said at that time, together with Chuck Hagel and John McCain, that the president should have taken the issue to the United Nations; that we should have been prepared to have a legitimate force in order to get him to live to his agreements.
So there was always legitimacy to living up to the agreements. And it was appropriate for a president, and that’s why I voted for him...
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this....
KERRY: ..to hold him accountable.
MATTHEWS: To try sharpen your position so we all come out of this room knowing your position. Had you been president earlier this year when they went up against the blank-the stonewall at the U.N.. and the U.N., and the Security Council, the Russians and the French, did not go along with the war, what would you have done differently than the president did? At that point, would you have said another two months I’ll argue with you guys? I’ll try to hold a carrot or a stick out to you and the French and try to get them to board? Or would you have finally said, I’m tired of waiting for the French. We’re going alone in our national interest.
What would you have done?
KERRY: I would have done exactly what I said at the time, which is we should have pursued more diplomacy at the time to exhaust the remedies. And Chris...
MATTHEWS: It’s now October. How-would you still be exhausting the remedies now?
KERRY: Why not?
MATTHEWS: OK. That’s a position. I didn’t know you would go this long.
KERRY: Why not?
MATTHEWS: Would you have gone all these months?
KERRY: Why not? Absolutely. It’s cool in the fall as much as it is in the spring.
MATTHEWS: So you would have waited at least a year.
KERRY: I would have done-no, Chris, I would have done what was necessary to know that you had exhausted the available remedies with the French and the Russians.
MATTHEWS: The French said this week they will not send troop or spend a dollar in Iraq. It’s clear the French don’t go along with this war.
KERRY: And I understand why they won’t right now. And I’m not going to give them a veto, Chris. And I wouldn’t have given them a veto then.
But I talked to Kofi Annan on the Sunday before the president decided to go to war. And I knew at that moment in time that the Russians and the French were prepared to, in fact, make a further offer. And the administration, in fact, informed Kofi Annan, Sorry, the time for diplomacy is over.
Had I been president of the United States, I would have explored what those possibilities were.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/983074.asp

[Sean Reynolds]

3. Why didn't Kerry question Bush before hand?

Did he actually believe Bush would have "exhaust the remedies available" before going to war? I mean c'mon, every person here on DU knew Bush wouldn't have gone to the UN and gotten their support. Why did Kerry? The fact remains, Kerry could have voiced his concern and stated he would NOT vote for this resolution because he knew President Bush would NOT get UN support. He did not. He voted for it and now continues to back track on the issue.

[MrPeepers]

6. Here's why.

As a Senator, Kerry has a lot of power. The issues placed before him are incredibly important, they are life and death in many cases, and he can't afford to make decisions based on cynical assumptions. No one could truly stand up before the United States Senate and say they KNEW for a fact that Bush would not get UN Support. To do so would have been irresponsible, because no one could have known for a fact that Bush would bypass the UN. There comes a time when one has to put faith in the Administration. Kerry put his faith in Bush, and the President didn't live up to it. Kerry won't make that mistake again. The hope with the resolution was that Bush would have the leverage he needed to bring Saddam around, and it wouldn't be an issue anyway. It turned out that was not the case, and then Bush mangled anything resembling diplomacy. John Kerry did not vote for the war. He has been against the war throughout. He has been against any war which was not approved and supported by the international community.

Here's the real heart of the issue though. What would have happened were Kerry president instead of Bush? Would we have gone to war unilaterally in Iraq and without sufficient evidency to justify that action? No! THAT is the key here, Kerry would never have gone to war as Bush did, so how does this tarnish his righteousness?

Peepers

[CWebster]

22. Sort of like Chamberlain giving Hitler the benefit of the doubt .

It didn't constitute leadership then, why should it now?

[MrPeepers]

30. I think there is a bit of a distinction to be made between Bush and Hitler

[Egnever]

38. not much

[thebigidea]

24. well...

"they are life and death in many cases, and he can't afford to make decisions based on cynical assumptions."

He also can't afford to make assumptions based on the word of a proven liar.

[MrPeepers]

31. Yes, he can

if that man happens to be President. It's irrisponsible to assume someone is lying based only on precedent when the decision is of such monumentous importance.

Peepers

[Sean Reynolds]

28. So you're saying all the Democrats that voted AGAINST the war were wrong?

You know I would have a lot more respect for Kerry if he were to just COME OUT and say he was wrong. That if he could do it ALL over again he'd vote NO on the resolution. But he doesn't. He continues to still state Saddam and Iraq were a threat to the American people - which I think we all can say is not true.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

29. And THAT is one of the waffles.

Basically, "I was lied to but it was still the right thing to do."

:wtf:

[MrPeepers]

34. Or, more accurately,

"I was lied to, but I maintain that it was the right decision to make given the circumstances."

Peepers

[MrPeepers]

33. No.

What I'm saying is that neither those who voted against, nor those who voted for, were wrong. I'm saying that President Bush was wrong to rush to war unilaterally, and that John Kerry was not wrong for voting for the IWR. What he continues to state is that the fall of Saddam was a good thing, but the way it happend wasn't. Kerry dosn't need to come out and say he was wrong, because he wasn't. Bush screwed up, Kerry didn't.

Peepers

[Pez]

15. none of us thought uberlib CA would vote in arnold either. weeeeee...

[Pez]

16. oh and...

...if it weren't for those repuke "cockroach" traitors like kerry BUSH INC. would have carpetbombed the whole ME by now... but oh forget that.

[HPLeft]

25. From a post on the Kerry Blog

On January 31, Dean told Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times that "if Bush presents what he considered to be persuasive evidence that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction, he would support military action, even without U.N. authorization."

And then on Feb. 20, Dean told Salon.com that "if the U.N. in the end chooses not to enforce its own resolutions, then the U.S. should give Saddam 30 to 60 days to disarm, and if he doesn't, unilateral action is a regrettable, but unavoidable, choice."

But a day later, he told the Associated Press that he would not support sending U.S. troops to Iraq unless the United Nations specifically approves the move and backs it with action of its own. "They have to send troops," he said.

Four days later on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Dean said United Nations authorization was a prerequisite for war. "We need to respect the legal rights that are involved here," Dean said. "Unless they are an imminent threat, we do not have a legal right, in my view, to attack them."

Howard Dean spins like a top on Iraq.

[Sean Reynolds]

32. You're forgetting the words IMMINENT THREAT

Basically Dean stated that if the US knew Iraq posed an imminent threat it should attack. No doubt ANY sane person would agree there, but he didn't believe BUSH had made the case for war, thus Dean was correct in what he said.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

37. No, we aren't

Yes, Dean along with any sane President, would act if there was an imminent threat to the U.S.

That doesn't make his contradictory and misleading statements any less contradictory or misleading.

[Larkspur]

4. And that exchange proves that Kerry has a head full of mush on Iraq

He knows he screwed up but won't admit it.

[MrPeepers]

7. Or perhaps...

He knows he didn't screw up, and you won't admit it.

It was Bush who screwed up, don't try to pin it on Kerry.

Peepers

[Feanorcurufinwe]

9. You are

entitled to your opinion, pre-formed and unchanging as it may be.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

27. "pre-formed and unchanging" doesn't sound like an opinion

so much as dogma.

[polpilot]

11. Pro-war...Anti-War..Pro-Antiwar...Anti-Prowar...Vote FOR war...BUT

Against War....

Dean '04...The Clear Alternative to Bush-LIKE!!!!

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ThorsteinVeblen]

2. Gephardt is a worse motherfucker.

That piece of shit was the man with the hammer who destroyed any possibility of a Democratic opposition to the Iraq war.

We Support the War on Terror.
We do not support the War on Iraq.
We do not support George W. Bush.

[w13rd0]

5. Right after he appeared in the Rose Garden, I walked...

...down to his "local" office to register my displeasure. That he undermined the rest of the House democrats is what astonishes me...

[pruner]

8. don't be selling Gephardt short…

he undermined the Senate Democrats too.

[BeatleBoot]

10. That does it. I'm voting for Dean now...

NOT!

Gimme a break.

[LuminousX]

13. I can't remember who said it, but I think it was ProfessorPlum

who basically said it doesn't matter if Kerry voted for or against IWR, because it passed by an incredible margin. The entire Democratic party except for a few wise stalwarts like Byrd abandoned reason and bought into Bush's rhetoric. Bush was so popular, people were afraid to vote against him on anything.

We have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. What if Saddam did have VX Nerve Gas and we didn't take action?

I'm not defending Kerry's vote, because I think he and the rest of the people who voted for IWR did abandon their reasoning, did vote out of political expedience instead of proper Congressional duty, but this is not a silver bullet. We can harp on this all we want but 12 months by now, it won't matter. In fact, it will be a point the Republicans CAN'T use against him.

[George_Bonanza]

14. Voice of reason

You say Kerry voted out of political expedience. I think it was a combo of that and some personal stuff. I'm not ashamed to say that. Like your candidates are so perfect. Even DK switched his lifelong commitment to pro-lifeism out of political expedience. But so what? This man (Kerry that is) stood up for us all throughout the 80s at the birth of aggressive neo-conservatism. I know he will stand up for us at its death.

[kwolf68]

17. 10-4

Kerry has earned it. He is a proven man. The war thing was not handled well and he didn't get it done there, but more than not I believe he can be trusted.

[sandnsea]

18. It's just not true

Kerry has been for getting tougher on Saddam since 1997. He saw a Saddam with WMD as a very dangerous threat, something that just couldn't be allowed to happen. He has always felt that if our policy had been clearer in the late 90's, the UN would also have acted in a more consistent manner and Iraq would have been compliant. I believe he was seriously concerned with the way George Bush was handling the situation even before going to the UN in September, as well as the outcome of the war because of that. It seems not only was he trying to avoid the disaster the war has become, but also the disaster of having the whole world turn against us which also happened. He sincerely wanted to address Saddam Hussein and WMD, just not anywhere near the way George Bush did it. So he voted his conscience, a UN process with war as a last resort. An America speaking with one clear voice on the issue. A chance for George Bush to handle the situation correctly. George Bush failed.

[unfrigginreal]

19. Kerry deserves no leeway on this

You don't abandon your conscience on a vote that will DEFINITIVELY determine whether our country goes to war or not. Kerry knew, just as we did, that giving Bush the authorization meant that there would be no turning back.

[sandnsea]

20. Are you psychic?

You suspected, perhaps strongly suspected, but it is 100% impossible for anybody to KNOW what George Bush would do. It is further impossible to KNOW what the inspectors would find in Iraq or KNOW what the reaction of all the countries in the world would be. It is further impossible to KNOW that if more countries had sided with the U.S. what Saddam's response would have been.

There are WAY too many variables in this situation and the only responsible thing for Kerry to do was take what was in front of him. Saddam with no inspectors, Saddam and the possibility of WMD. Do you vote to pressure Saddam to comply with the UN resolutions or not. Do you vote to go to war to enforce those resolutions with the UN. Do you vote to protect U.S. security. Duh. The answer is obvious to me. It was apparently obvious to Dean too, at the time, seeing as how he supported Biden-Lugar. Which, as I've said, Bush met the legalistic criteria of anyway.

[CWebster]

23. This aspect is consistantly overlooked:

When it was clear that Bush was abandoning diplomacy, after fulfilling his task of going through the obligatory motions (while the Bush team stayed on their preplanned schedule), Kerry was given the opportunity to sign on a second resolution proposed by Kennedy and Byrd to reevaluate Senate support and he declined.

When it was obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bush did not intend to fulfil Kerry's "expectations"- for which Bush had no obligation to comply with, Kerry still was a coward and unwilling to make a political stand for fear that it would hurt him politically.

All the medals in the world won't erase that cowardice.

[sandnsea]

36. He could have

Kerry was serious about Iraq, I've already said that. I don't really know why he didn't support this resolultion. Perhaps that resolution would have given the UN more support or maybe it would have given the UN more wiggle room. I can only figure that he thought it provided wiggle room and would have sent the wrong message to the UN and Saddam. That the U.S. was backing off their insistence that Saddam disarm. Possibly weighing that Resolution against consistent pressure on the UN, he decided consistent pressure was the better choice to make the UN continue pressuring Saddam to comply completely. I've said he is serious about weapons proliferation and wants a strong UN in that regard. I really think he wanted the UN to beef up its attention to WMD and get tough about it and wants them, and all countries, to know the U.S. expects it. That doesn't mean he thinks we had to do this the way George Bush did it, but it does mean that he wanted to send the message that we expect it to be done. And since France, Britain and Germany just got cooperation from Iran, maybe the point has been made.

[HPLeft]

26. The Vemont Messiah spins like a top

He changes his positions like he has a weather vane implanted in his skull.

[CWebster]

21. Kerry has friends at the NYTimes

No surprise--Kerry is their kind of guy---Washington Insider Establishment elite with superficially liberal affectations while maintaining the fiscal status quo and pandering to Israel.

It isn't the first time they've tried to jumpstart his campaign or do damage control.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

35. Any media outlet that puts out something favorable about Kerry is biased.

The only trustworthy source for news is deanforamerica.com -- gotta have that filter!