John Kerry: The goods news and the bad news. - An Iraq Policy, Better Late Than Never.
From The Washington Post:
The good news: John Kerry settled on his Iraq policy yesterday.
The bad news: He did so 51 weeks after losing the election.
The vanquished presidential candidate . . . delivered the plain and simple alternative to President Bush's Iraq strategy that aides had pleaded with him to deliver when it still counted.
Kerry called for withdrawing 20,000 troops from Iraq by year-end and most others within another year.
"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," Kerry said of his vote to authorize war. "I know I would not."
It was a political do-over, the answer Kerry opted not to give in the summer of 2004, when Bush was demanding to know if the senator from Massachusetts would still vote for war "knowing what we know now" -- that is, the absence of WMD. Instead, standing at the Grand Canyon on Aug. 9, Kerry uttered the words that may have cost him the presidency: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for the president to have."
To reach this moment of clarity, Kerry had to jettison some earlier, inconvenient positions. For example, he had, nine months ago, emphatically opposed a "specific timetable" for withdrawal from Iraq. During the campaign, he alternately suggested increasing troops, withdrawing troops and leaving it to the generals.
In other words: I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.
Kerry's speech -- and Bush's latest defense of his Iraq policy on Tuesday -- brought back memories of last year's electoral choice: between a president who wouldn't shift course no matter what, and a challenger who seemed to shift course perpetually. A year later, Bush still won't budge, and Democrats still don't agree on an alternative.
He called Iraq "one of the greatest foreign policy misadventures of all time," and asserted: "It is time for those of us who believe in a better course to say so plainly and unequivocally."
The good news: John Kerry settled on his Iraq policy yesterday.
The bad news: He did so 51 weeks after losing the election.
The vanquished presidential candidate . . . delivered the plain and simple alternative to President Bush's Iraq strategy that aides had pleaded with him to deliver when it still counted.
Kerry called for withdrawing 20,000 troops from Iraq by year-end and most others within another year.
"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," Kerry said of his vote to authorize war. "I know I would not."
It was a political do-over, the answer Kerry opted not to give in the summer of 2004, when Bush was demanding to know if the senator from Massachusetts would still vote for war "knowing what we know now" -- that is, the absence of WMD. Instead, standing at the Grand Canyon on Aug. 9, Kerry uttered the words that may have cost him the presidency: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for the president to have."
To reach this moment of clarity, Kerry had to jettison some earlier, inconvenient positions. For example, he had, nine months ago, emphatically opposed a "specific timetable" for withdrawal from Iraq. During the campaign, he alternately suggested increasing troops, withdrawing troops and leaving it to the generals.
In other words: I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.
Kerry's speech -- and Bush's latest defense of his Iraq policy on Tuesday -- brought back memories of last year's electoral choice: between a president who wouldn't shift course no matter what, and a challenger who seemed to shift course perpetually. A year later, Bush still won't budge, and Democrats still don't agree on an alternative.
He called Iraq "one of the greatest foreign policy misadventures of all time," and asserted: "It is time for those of us who believe in a better course to say so plainly and unequivocally."
posted by Sid Cottingham | 10:05 AM
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