Call me stupid -- but exactly how does John Kerry's position on Iraq differ MATERIALLY from George Bush's position?

I mean I'm still voting for the guy on other issues that are also important but why is he utterly incapable of articulating himself on Iraq?

Two points:
Kerry sees it as a mess while Bush sees it as a "catastrophic success".
Kerry wants to mend fences and get other countries involved, Bush is happy snubbing his nose and driving away other countries.

John Kerry knows we can't just throw down our weapons and run. Even I agree with that. Monkeyboy has pretty much painted us into a corner--and we are there alone. John Kerry can fix that.

The problem is, Kerry HAD a clear plan for Iraq, but Iraq is so screwed up right now, that there's really not much more that can be done (other than actually brief the U.S. and Congress on what's going on, which Bush doesn't do at all).

It's going to be very hard to get anymore troops from other countries in there. I think the main priority would be getting NATO more involved, which still wouldn't be easy, but it could be done.


Here is the 'official' statement...

He's saying the right things. The problem is he screwed it up with two major flubs: 1) The 'voted for the war and then against it' (and, yes, we all know how to parse what he said into something that's consistent with his current message, but it was a terrible statement and one that he deserves all the 'flip flop' ridicule for). 2) The 'if I had to do it again, I would have done what was done' statement--that he would have gone after Saddam just like Bush did.

Whatever he says is colored by his flip flopping. That's why no one's getting his real message.

If the Democrats had gone for 'charisma' instead of 'electability,' they wouldn't be in the mess they are now. Kerry is electable on paper, but he's so not-charismatic that it's hard for him to escape his flubs. He's not likeable enough that the public will forgive him for the 'voted for the war and then against it' type flip flopping. And they drown out whatever he has to say after that because it's too long and complicated, and listening/watching him for any length of time is just painful.

Just about all his momentum is anti-Bush driven. And that's what you get when you pick someone who lacks charisma.

Okay, to recap.

In 2002, Kerry, like most of the Senate, voted to give Bush the authority to use force against Iraq. HOWEVER, that force was only supposed to be used in a multinational coalition, and AFTER inspections had been tried and failed.

As we know, Bush basically said the inspections failed before they even started (and now has repeatedly claimed inspectors were not allowed into Iraq, a lie the media does not seem to pick up on), and the "coalition of the willing" is a joke.

So, when the $87 billion request for funding the rebuilding of Iraq came up for a vote (I believe about $20 billion of that was direct military $$), Kerry voted against it - because the bill basically gave Bush a blank check and Kerry wanted to see more controls over the $$. He was not voting against the war, or against the troop, he was voting against the Bush version of the bill.

I wouldn't refer to Kerry changing his position as "flip-flopping". I would call it just what it was a "change" in position or if you'd like, his position "evolved". I believe when we first went into Iraq about 80% of the American public approved of the action, now support hovers around 50%. I guess that means 30% of the American public has also "flip-flopped" their position on Iraq. I think as situations, issues, and times change people also change their opinions. I don't think that in any way should be looked upon negatively.

This is what Kerry said: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

Yes, we all know what he meant...later. But he said it. And he isn't likeable enough to get past it.

As anyone knows who has more than a superficial understanding of this situation - there were two different bills, one he voted for and one he voted against. Republicans continue to hammer away at this because they're confident that the public doesn't fully understand. Typical smear tactics without all the facts.

Typical smear tactics that somehow came out of Kerry's mouth. Those Republicans sure are powerful. Kerry said it, now he has to eat it.

His Iraq problem is that he voted for Bush's war. The only thing he can do is now is say Bush executed it badly and can't be trusted to get us out of it successfully. He's got a lot of ammo there in that Iraq's a real mess. But we're too bogged down in 1973 to notice.

actually, he didn't. he voted to give permission for bush to execute a war with certain provisos -- namely, u.n. resolutions, coalition backing, etc, and under the pretenses that america was under immediate threat from iraq's wmd's, and the further pretenses that the iraqi population would rise up in support of the american, er, coalition, forces.

what we got was something else entirely. no weapons of mass destruction, no petal-throwing children lining the streets, a coalition of the "willing" (give me a coalition of the "able" anyday) which altogether anted up, what, 1000 troops and $27.50?

kerry is not faultless, however. his mistake was in saying that given what he knows now (or knew at the time of the question), he would still vote for the resolution to give bush the authority to execute the war.

that is the answer that should come back to haunt him, and rightfully, since it had political calculation, rather than conviction, written all over it.

The bill Kerry voted against included having no bids for contracts in Iraq, they would just be given out. Hmmm, Haliburton at it's best!?

Bryan - I understand your point about the different bills -- and the fact that the GOP is molding Kerry's now famous statement into something that it isn't.

BUT, why hasn't Kerry been able to set forth a coherent, detailed plan about what the hell he is going to do with the mess Bush created over there. When I hear the man say that he has a four year plan to get us the hell out of there -- well, that's just plain nuts. The Iraqis don't want us there, our brand of "democracy" (that we are trying to force down their throat) isn't wanted and won't work, our Allies (what's left of them) don't want anything to do with this debacle. Yet, Kerry is ceding this issue to Bush by virtue of his fuzzy message.

Hopefully, he will have a clear and direct plan to state during the debates.

I think Kerry's problem - not getting his message out - is twofold:

He doesn't have the personal charisma to overcome the mistaken, or mis construed statements.

No one is hearing what his message is because he is to busy being 'handled'; the political gurus are so busy putting the right 'spin' on hundreds of issues - and in REACTING to Bush gurus, that a clear concise message is not being articulated.

An idea would be for him to do a series of short, informal, me to you commercials stating "X is our problem, Bush is making it worse, here is what I think should be done"
on no more than three issues.

Of course that kind of commercial has not been tried in almost 30 years; it is very old fashioned in that it treats voters like equals: it assumes that the individual American voter can think for themself.

Think about the 20th C Pres's who did just that kind of commercial - FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, R Reagan, and most recently B Clinton.

This is not rocket science - you don't need to reinvent the wheel - just get the message out there by concentrating on a concise, clear vision.

Back to the original topic of how he differs from Shrub:

Kerry has always stated that the US should not be doing this alone - we should be part of a broad based international coalition. Further Kerry has publicly stated that Iraq's middle east neighbors need to take a bigger share of the responsibility diplomatically.

Shrub ignores or insults the international communitty so that we are now considered the worlds largest threat to global peace. He gives lip service to the Saudi's and other gulf states while totally ignoring their advice.

Rob

[ September 15, 2004, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: ITJock ]

theresis: He may not have liked the outcome, but he voted for Bush's war.

He can't benefit from hindsight and now say, well I voted for a different outcome to the war, one that turned on x and y happening before you attack and z happening afterwards. We all wanted those good things, Bush included.

The problem was it was an insane idea to begin with, and Bush was wrong from the start. And, most importantly, we're less safe because of it.

Kerry endorsed this failure. Bush should lose based on it, but Kerry's no saint here.

With all his experience (remember, he has more experience than Bush), Kerry should have seen it for the mess it was and voted against it. That's the problem. He didn't. He read the intelligence reports. He knew what the administration was saying about Saddam before 9/11 (that he could be easily contained). He shouldn't have bought into the new fake threat. He had years of experience to use to decide that WMD was a ruse, as others could tell.

Instead, he voted for it, didn't like how Bush ran it, didn't like the outcome, and then said he voted against it. No wonder he polls so badly when it comes to conviction, trust and strength. Not saying Bush is great (as John Stewart put it, there's not a whole lot to admire about someone who drives you into a wall, but does so with conviction). But Kerry's a mess on this issue, and he's a mess because, like it or not, he endorsed the war.

The only honorable people standing are those who were against it from the start. Take a bow Dean.

To now claim that there were "certain provisos" attached to his 'permission to wage war' vote is laughable--sure, we all hoped the crack UN forces that are Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy would wrap it all up, and democracy would spread.

But our trusted Senators should have known better, and they all suck--Republicans and Democrats--for rubber stamping the failure that is Bush's Iraq war. They were cowed by Bush and 9/11. If they had been doing their duty, they would have risked their political careers by opposing him every inch of the way, and would be heroes today for it. But they didn't. Bush failed. Kerry's supposed to get us out of this mess, but his problem is he and the others who voted for this helped get us into this mess in the first place. Again, the problem was the war itself, not the outcome.

If he had been strong when the first vote came around, he wouldn't be in the trouble he's in now. Too bad no one was listening to people like Dean and Pat Buchanan back when it would have made a difference.

Tom, to be fair, a reason why there was not more 'challenging' from Congress was because it is a majority Republican. If this was a Democrat House and/or Senate, I think the situation would have been much different. Congress was given very little information and briefed very little going up to the war and during it. However, since Republicans were just going along with it (well, except McCain wanted more), there was little anybody could do.

When the same parties have the Congress and White House, we've seen that it can get rather un-democratic. There's very little questioning and at least to me, that's scary.

Yes, illini, it's scary, but it's also inexcusable. If they were given very little information and briefed very little going up to the war and during it, they shouldn't have voted for it. You don't go to war on very little information. That's his credibility problem. He was supposed to be the check on the President's power. Instead, he was a lemming, just like the rest. And now we're told this same lemming can get us out of it successfully. Uh, sure, until he gets wind that lots of people want more war or something and then he'll be all more war-ish...but with provisos!

[ September 15, 2004, 01:03 PM: Message edited by: TomFord ]

Tom Ford, you are exactly right about Howard Dean who I supported from the get go. Wrong war at the wrong time, and he sure paid for the truth didn't he? How sad.

Tom, I agree that the Congress jumped the gun on the 'permission' vote. No doubt. I'm just saying that it was hard to accomplish anything after that vote because of the situations. Like we see all the time, we learn from our mistakes and assumptions. Now that this has happened, we probably won't be seeing Congress give out this 'permission slip' to another President for quite sometime without a clear, convincing argument that has no doubt.

The problem with Kerry is not lack of charisma or electibility, it's his lack of conviction and integrity. Even at this stage of the game, he refuses to stand up and forthrightly denounce the war in Iraq for the criminal fraud that it is. The only thing that was keeping Kerry remotely honest on Iraq was Dean's pressure on his left flank. Once that was removed upon his exiting the campaign, Kerry was free to return to his old centrist behaviors.

Kerry thinks that he is winning "moderate" and "swing" votes with his hypocrisy and two-faced double-talk. Unfortunately, he's too stupid to realize that he has thrown away one of his strongest issues against Bush.

John Kerry is trying to get across the point that he would take a different path toward the same goal. That is a distinction without a difference to most citizens of this country. If too few people in the "right states" are willing to take a chance on him he could still lose this election while winning the majority of votes because of the distribution of the "energized" opposition in this country. This nation's position on its current electoral system may prove more important than Kerry's views on Iraq.

illini--the aftermath of 9/11, and the hysteria drummed up about the Iraq threat play a part in that, but still, I guess I figured older, experienced people who made their way to some of the highest offices in govt would have known better (unlike, say, fools like me).

sportinlife: That's part of the problem. Much as I want Kerry to win, as puckman and down low point out, it's hard to be enthusiastic about his Iraq position because it's basically Bush-lite (a different path toward the same goal). It doesn't make sense for Kerry to keep saying he would have done what Bush did but done it better because the Bush war was based on WMD. Without the Bush administration's fudging/forcing of WMD intelligence, Kerry couldn't have convinced the nation that it was a necessary war. And he certainly couldn't have had any more success convincing the world. So, what would he have gone to war on?

His position doesn't help him win all those on the right disaffected with our going to Iraq in the first place. As time goes on, more and more people are getting wise to the idea that it was going in was a mistake in the first place, and not just that Bush executed badly. The biggest knock on Bush is that what he did in Iraq has made us less safe. It took a long time for people to realize this, but now they get it, Kerry isn't providing much an alternative. I just hope that enough voters will decide that Bush's failures are enough to kick him out of office, and we're better off with someone new trying to clean up the mess he's created in Iraq (a mess that will have repercussions for us for years to come).

[ September 16, 2004, 07:02 AM: Message edited by: TomFord ]

Actually, not everyone voted for the war. Russ Feingold holds the distinction, I believe, of voting against both the Patriot Act (which has not netted ONE Al Qaeda terrorist who has subsequently been convicted either by our usual or the military court systems) and giving W the authorization on the War. THAT is what Kerry and others voted for--not for the war itself, but giving W the authorization to do the right thing.

As we see, he has botched it up SO badly that he refuses even to admit how dreadful it is. And you've got all these pro-W zombies shrieking anytime you mention how bad it is. Sad, sad, sad.

One thing we should keep in mind is that if Kerry is elected, the chief architects and bunglers of this war will be out of office too: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, etc. These are the people who coddled Chalabi; who were fixated on Saddam at the expense of ObL; who will jump if Saudi Arabia claps; and so on (including hosting Israeli spies). I'm not sure who Kerry is going to seat as Secretary of Defense, but I doubt he'd emasculate his Secretary of State as W has. It's likely that Richard Holbrooke, whose speeches could tranquilized a crack-addled bull, would have that role, and he has shown more than once that he can bring the Europeans (and others) to the table and literally bore them to agreement.

Another issue is the insurgency in Iraq. There is no way the American force alone is going to quell it. We allowed it to get out of control, and now it grows increasingly sophisticated. Meanwhile, Iran sees our troops bogged down and builds up its nuclear program with impunity--and it had and has spies in Iraq, lots of them, who are circulating freely in the Shi'ite south. There's no way we could do anything to Iran at this point, even though it has always posed the greater danger to US.

Then, there's Afghanistan. We never committed enough troops there to root out Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and they're back in business, killing government officials, potential voters and aid workers, and keeping the government of Karzai, which already has enough problems dealing with tribal and regional challenges, from achieving real stability. Plus, despite Pakistan's periodic bursts of assistance, the failure to focus on eastern Afghanistan has allowed ObL and his henchpeople to keep plotting and planning, which is why we've seen Al Qaeda-linked terrorist attack after terrorist attack (in Indonesia, in Turkey, in Morocco, in Spain, in Saudi Arabia, etc.) across the globe, even if they haven't occurred (thank God!) in the USA. We actually have coalition forces (including the hated France and Germany) over there, but we don't have enough--we've never had enough. We especially need some of the US's best forces over there--we should have done this from the beginning, but again, W and his idiotic krewe were far more fixated on the former best pal-turned-key menace of HW's term (Saddam).

Finally, North Korea is emboldened as well, because the USA is pulling troops from South Korea and would hardly have the humanpower to launch an invasion of the well-armed North. They brazenly lit up the sky with a mushroom cloud just the other day. What are we supposed to do? W actually SHRUGGED the other day when asked about them. I can't say Kerry has ANY answers, but at this point, I'm willing to let him propose some possible useful questions, if not solutions--or even just ANY other plan of action.