Talk about cringing -- Fallout from the ill-fated "Yes" answer

On the 8-10-04 post below appears: "Kerry said what about Iraq? -- Be careful here Senator" concerning the headline "Kerry says Bush was right to invade Iraq." The post predicts that "We will hear more about this Kerry "yes" between now and November than his earlier I did but I didn't."

Frankly, I was then and remain in shock that this was the response. Maybe there was some purpose in the response that was going over my head, that I was missing. I mean after all, it wasn't like the Senator responded to a question at a news conference that he had no clue was coming.

I e-mailed someone much wiser than myself seeking answers: "I must be missing something, his advisors can't be wishing defeat so early. What am I missing?" I asked.

Today we learn more about how the Kerry answer in the New York Times:

-- Mr. Kerry's problems began last week when President Bush challenged him for a yes-or-no answer on a critical campaign issue: If Mr. Kerry knew more than a year ago what he knows today about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, would he still have voted to authorize the use of military force to oust Saddam Hussein?

As Mr. Bush surely knew, it is a question that can upset the difficult balance Mr. Kerry must strike. He has to portray himself as tough and competent enough to be commander in chief, yet appeal to the faction of Democrats that hates the war and eggs him on to call Mr. Bush a liar.

[T]he Kerry campaign debated how Mr. Kerry should respond. "There were a lot of ideas," said one official, "from silence, to throwing the question back in the president's face."

. . . .

Across the weekend, the Kerry campaign debated how Mr. Kerry should respond. "There were a lot of ideas," said one official, "from silence, to throwing the question back in the president's face."

But the decision, in the end, was Mr. Kerry's. He chose to take the bait on Monday at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Asked by a reporter, he said he would have voted for the resolution - even in the absence of evidence of weapons of mass destruction - before adding his usual explanation that he would have subsequently handled everything leading up to the war differently.

Mr. Bush, sensing he had ensnared Mr. Kerry, stuck in the knife on Tuesday, telling a rally in Panama City, Fla., that "he now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq." The Kerry camp says that interpretation of Mr. Kerry's words completely distorted the difference between a vote to authorize war and a decision to commit troops to the battlefield.

Mr. Kerry's answer is being second-guessed among his supporters, some of whom argued that he should have been more wary of the trap.

"I wish he had simply said no president in his right mind would ask the Senate to go to war against a country that didn't have weapons that pose an imminent threat," said one of Mr. Kerry's Congressional colleagues and occasional advisers.

-- I once heard a joke about a guy praying to the good Lord that he win the lottery. After much prayer, he heard a deep voice from above saying "Help me here, buy a ticket."

Senator Kerry, help us here. Buy some advice; listen to some advice; do something.