Read his speech at Georgetown University, here:
http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/cfm/record.cfm?id=247764snip//
Let’s be straight about Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not the reason America went to war.
The country and the Congress were misled into war. I regret that we were not given the truth; as I said more than a year ago, knowing what we know now, I would not have gone to war in Iraq. And knowing now the full measure of the Bush Administration’s duplicity and incompetence, I doubt there are many members of Congress who would give them the authority they abused so badly. I know I would not. The truth is, if the Bush Administration had come to the United States Senate and acknowledged there was no “slam dunk case” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, acknowledged that Iraq was not connected to 9/11, there never would have even been a vote to authorize the use of force -- just as there’s no vote today to invade North Korea, Iran, Cuba, or a host of regimes we rightfully despise. I understand that as much as we might wish it, we can’t rewind the tape of history. There is, as Robert Kennedy once said, ‘enough blame to go around,’ and I accept my share of the responsibility. But the mistakes of the past, no matter who made them, are no justification for marching ahead into a future of miscalculations and misjudgments and the loss of American lives with no end in sight. We each have a responsibility, to our country and our conscience, to be honest about where we should go from here. It is time for those of us who believe in a better course to say so plainly and unequivocally. We are where we are. The President’s flippant “bring it on” taunt to the insurgents has found a meaning beyond his wildest expectations, a painful reality for troops who went for too long without protective armor. We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure, and the mission the President once declared accomplished remains perilously incomplete. To set a new course, we must be strong, smart, and honest. As we learned painfully during the Vietnam War, no president can sustain a war without the support of the American people. In the case of Iraq, their patience is frayed and nearly to the breaking point because Americans will not tolerate our troops giving their lives without a clear strategy, and will not tolerate vague platitudes or rosy scenarios when real answers are urgently needed. It’s time for leaders to be honest that if we do not change course, there is the prospect of indefinite, even endless conflict - a fate untenable for our troops, and a future unacceptable to the American people and the Iraqis who pray for the day when a stable Iraq will belong to Iraqis alone. The path forward will not be easy. The administration’s incompetence and unwillingness to listen has made the task that much harder, and reduced what we can expect to accomplish. But there is a way forward that gives us the best chance both to salvage a difficult situation in Iraq, and to save American and Iraqi lives. With so much at stake, we must follow it.
We must begin by acknowledging that our options in Iraq today are not what they should be, or could have been. The reason is simple. This Administration hitched their wagon to ideologues, excluding those who dared to tell the truth, even leaders of their own party and the uniformed military. When after September 11th, flags flew from porches across America and foreign newspaper headlines proclaimed “We’re all Americans now,” the Administration could have kept the world united, but they chose not to. And they were wrong. Instead, they pushed allies away, isolated America, and lost leverage we desperately need today. When they could have demanded and relied on accurate instead of manipulated intelligence, they chose not to. They were wrong - and instead they sacrificed our credibility at home and abroad. When they could have given the inspectors time to discover whether Saddam Hussein actually had weapons of mass destruction, when they could have paid attention to Ambassador Wilson’s report, they chose not to. And they were wrong. Instead they attacked him, and they attacked his wife to justify attacking Iraq. We don’t know yet whether this will prove to be an indictable offense in a court of law, but for it, and for misleading a nation into war, they will be indicted in the high court of history. History will judge the invasion of Iraq one of the greatest foreign policy misadventures of all time. But the mistakes were not limited to the decision to invade. They mounted, one upon another. When they could have listened to General Shinseki and put in enough troops to maintain order, they chose not to. They were wrong. When they could have learned from George Herbert Walker Bush and built a genuine global coalition, they chose not to. They were wrong. When they could have implemented a detailed State Department plan for reconstructing post-Saddam Iraq, they chose not to. And they were wrong again. When they could have protected American forces by guarding Saddam Hussein’s ammo dumps where there were weapons of individual destruction, they exposed our young men and women to the ammo that now maims and kills them because they chose not to act. And they were wrong. When they could have imposed immediate order and structure in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, Rumsfeld shrugged his shoulders, said Baghdad was safer than Washington, D.C. and chose not to act. He was wrong. When the Administration could have kept an Iraqi army selectively intact, they chose not to. They were wrong. When they could have kept an entire civil structure functioning to deliver basic services to Iraqi citizens, they chose not to. They were wrong. When they could have accepted the offers of the United Nations and individual countries to provide on the ground peacekeepers and reconstruction assistance, they chose not to. They were wrong. When they should have leveled with the American people that the insurgency had grown, they chose not to. Vice President Cheney even absurdly claimed that the “insurgency was in its last throes.” He was wrong. Now after all these mistakes, the Administration accuses anyone who proposes a better course of wanting to cut and run. But we are in trouble today precisely because of a policy of cut and run. This administration made the wrong choice to cut and run from sound intelligence and good diplomacy; to cut and run from the best military advice; to cut and run from sensible war time planning; to cut and run from their responsibility to properly arm and protect our troops; to cut and run from history’s lessons about the Middle East; to cut and run from common sense.
And still today they cut and run from the truth.
snip//
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