John Kerry, Bush's Advisor On Iraq

I would have to post this entire article for it to make sense, so please take the time to read it.

This is an excellent article which points out John Kerry's pre-war position on Iraq, as expressed in an Op Ed in the New York Times. Bush seems to have uncannily followed Kerry's proposed steps for dealing with Iraq.

Yet Kerry attacks Bush for doing the wrong thing.
Thanks to Cyan for the Link to Kerry's Op Ed:
We Still Have a Choice on Iraq

Here is the relevant passage (action steps to be taken, according to John Kerry):


Question for Debate: How close did the path George W Bush took in regards to Iraq come to Kerry's plan? Is it disingenuous for Kerry to criticize Bush for following a plan which seems to come so close to his own?

Very similar outline, and it seems like Kerry's main criticism of how Bush dealt with Iraq is the lack of popular international support, but it looks like Kerry was willing to go in with or without support if the process prior to war didn't lead to the desired result. In that sense it is disingenous for Kerry to criticize Bush for unilateralism (which is not accurate anyhow & somewhat disingenious) when in 2002 he understood a potential need for it.

Having a similar outline doesn't mean that the two men agreed on the fine details though. Kerry's position on Iraq was and is nuanced, and hindsight may have shifted some of Kerry's views. There's nothing wrong with learning from experience.

Kerry disagrees that his stance on Iraq was, or is, nuanced.

He told Time magazine:


Yet Kerry continues to call Bush's Iraq policy a "failure". This despite the fact that Bush seems to have followed Kerry's template for approaching Iraq almost verbatim.

I believe this area is where Bush and Kerry part company.

Kerry did not believe in going to Iraq unless we had no other choice. In other words, as a last resort.

Bush had already implied just after 9/11 he was ready to take out Saddam. This is a lot different than invading Iraq when we have no other choice. Bush mind was already made up.

Also Kerry says "we are not yet at the moment...in going to war against Iraq.

So Kerry had not made a decision on invading Iraq.

So Bush had made a decision on invading Iraq.

That is the difference. Plain and simple.

Interesting. I would have to disagree with Kerry, but maybe my understanding of the word nuance is incorrect. I think that something can be simultaneously clear and nuanced. It's not a negative thing. It merely indicates that Kerry hasn't always been a part of the "No War" crowd nor has he always been a part of the "Yes War" crowd. He's been more in the gray area of things.



I believe that Popeye is correct in his assessment that timing is the main distinction. The plan outlined by Bush and Kerry are similar, but that doesn't mean that Kerry agrees with Bush's execution of the plan.

Kerry is backpedalling, attempting to create some difference between himself and President Bush over an issue on which Bush followed Kerry's plan very closely.

In the first Democratic debate, Kerry said:


He agreed with the President's decision when it was politically expedient to differentiate himself from his Democrat opponents.

Later, when it became apparent that the war in Iraq was galvanizing support for Howard Dean, Kerry softened his stance. He changed from "...the President made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him." to the following:


Now, he needs to differentiate himself from Bush (his current opponent). He does so by taking the polar opposite position. Bush was wrong completely. Bush did it wrong. Kerry is now the anti-war candidate.

Where Do You Stand, Senator Kerry?

Others may disagree, but I feel it is clear that Kerry has morphed his stance on Iraq to fit what is currently politically expedient. His drift from pro-removing Saddam to his current stance that we went when we did not need to is quite telling.

I agree amlord and not only has Kerry tried to “morph” his position ( I call his new position a flat out lie), but others like Teddy K have done the same and more. Kerry has now convinced his supporters he was never in favor of the attack – his own words put the lie to his current stance.

How close did the path George W Bush took in regards to Iraq come to Kerry's plan? Is it disingenuous for Kerry to criticize Bush for following a plan which seems to come so close to his own?

I'd say pretty close, one of the few differences being how well the case was laid out. I've said before that Bush should not have made WMDs his primary focus, but hindsight yadda yadda. I think it also comes down to how many nations make up a coalition, lol. I suppose Kerry wanted way more than what we went in with.

But yeah, it's a pretty stupid thing to go after Bush after he followed most of his advice. But wait, maybe he was 'misled' into giving it.

I don't think there is a morph, and I don't think Bush followed Kerry's prescription.

Kerry's position is that we reserve the right to act if we have to, but that we need to exhaust every single possibility first. Kerry's goal was inspections, Bush's was war.

Before it became clear that we were going to war, I thought the administration had a somewhat clever foreign policy stance. Turn up the rhetoric a ton, and rely on the other guy's uncertainty about what you plan to do. This backfired with North Korea, but it was working pretty well with Iraq.

Saddam Hussein was willing to allow inspectors back in, after being threatened by Bush. He agreed to many things that he hadn't in 1991. The situation wasn't perfect, but inspectors were happy with the progress being made. Inspectors were in place for about four months, but Bush wasn't satisfied with inspections, and he told the inspectors to leave in mid-March, shortly before the war began.

Kerry has said that he voted for the congressional resolution because he didn't want to undermine the President's threat. To me this says that Kerry hoped that inspections were the ultimate goal, and that the threat of force was a tool to achieve them.



The first Democratic debate quote is not inconsistent with this. Kerry supported disarming Saddam, supported the President trying to disarm him, but would have preferred inspections rather than military force.

The threaten quote supports this position as well. Kerry wanted to threaten Saddam so that he would be more likely to allow inspectors.

The Chris Matthews quote is also consistent. Kerry didn't think that Bush had exhausted all the non-war possibilities (inspections).

I'm not terribly sure that Kerry was really focused on getting Iraq to open up to inspections. During the vote, there were three things to vote on:

War resolution, the Levin Amendment (requiring UNSC authorization or a further vote by congress to attack) and the Byrd Amendment.

Kerry Voted:

War Resolution: Yes
Levin Amendment: No
Byrd Amendment: No

If he cared so much about restricting the response to Iraq, he could have voted no for the resolution itself, until amended for his stance, or voted yes for either of the two amendments. He chose to allow invasion without restriction.

To say now that he didn't know what he was voting for is a tad disingenuous.

I didn't say anything like that. I said he wanted to give President Bush the power to credibly threaten the use of force. That is also what Kerry says in the quote I used. He knew exactly what he was voting for: the decision to go to war was now entirely in Bush's hands. Therefore, Saddam had to ask himself if he thought Bush meant it when he said Iraq needed to disarm or face war. He couldn't say to himself "Oh the UN will never let him do it, the US Congress will never let him do it."

Where Kerry was mistaken is that he thought he could rely on the private assurances from the administration that they wouldn't actually go to war unless there was no other option. He didn't just assume he knew what the administration would do, he spent a lot of time deliberating and talking to people before deciding how to vote. From the same article I quoted above:

I don't know how Kerry could even try to say that. I think the Bush administration gave WAY too much time for this to happen. Shall we consider the previous 12 YEARS of non-compliance. The UN is so corrupt that I can't wait till they sift through the evidence in Iraq on the oil for food program. How long did you want to have a buildup on the border with Iraq before acting? How long was it going to be? I think that Iraq had PLENTY of time to act in it's own interests.

Please note: here is where we see the difference between Kerry and Bush. Bush gave an ultimatum and Saddam didn't believe it. Kerry doing the same thing would have never acted and showed weakness...and that can be even WORSE.

cusbilla

So, Kerry wants us to believe that he transferred the power that Congress has over going to war to the President simply so that weapons inspectors could return to Iraq?

That is was all a bluff?

But then, AFTER Bush committed troops to Iraq, Kerry said:

(I am, by the way, gonna keep using that singular quote as a sledgehammer against Kerry's waffling...)

How does Kerry's morph in December '03 jive with this statement from May (two months after troops went into Iraq)?

It doesn't. Kerry is pulling a Slick Willy on us (or trying to).

Strategically, he made the correct decision to vote for war against Iraq. But that won't win him the Presidency. He needs to distance himself from the support he showed to GWB at the crucial decision making period before the US went to the UN. Politically, he needed to change his reasoning for supporting the war. He needed an out.

He thinks he has found one. Indeed, he did find one that convinced the Democrat Primary voters. Too bad Howard Dean ran out of money before being able to expose John Kerry...

How is this a waffle? It is exactly the same position he's had all along.

Did John Kerry want Saddam Hussein disarmed? Yes, absolutely. With inspections, and with force as a last resort, and without the UN as an ultimate last resort of imminent emergency. He supports Bush in disarming Saddam, but wishes there had been more diplomacy. I think it is a stretch to try to fit this into the "John Kerry is a flip-flopper" pattern.

Now, is it less blunt than a non-politician might say it? Has he said it better other places? Does he commit the campaign crime of trying to appeal to people with fuzzy language? Yes, I think it looks like that. But I disagree with the waffle theme when in fact Kerry has a consistent position.