Hi Marcos,
Thanks as always for an interesting and thoughtful post.
W/R/T your question about who I'm supporting for President, the answer would be AABB, or Almost Anybody But Bush. Kerry appears to be the nominee, and I'll surely support him once he's won the nomination.
Someone who apparently is going to get into the race in spite of overwhelming hostility from former supporters is Ralph Nader. So, my ABB is qualified in that I will actively campaign against Nader, as I have been for months.
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Re: Good point in re the Oct '02 vote, Kerry got suckered .... along with many, many others ...
Here, I'll have to disagree with you. Well known to anyone who was paying the least bit of attention was the fact that the commencement of the movement of men and materiel to the Iraqi War theatre began in mid-summer, 2002. Surely someone of John Kerry's stature in the intel and armed services committees in the Senate was privy to the troop and truck/tank/rail car movements out of Ft. Hood, Texas, along the West Coast from depots in Washington State and California, and along the East Coast. There were clear signs that the war preparation was fully engaged by the time that Cheney made his infamous kick-off speech at the VFW National Convention in St. Louis on August 26, 2002. Only a completely out-of-touch Senator wouldn't know the score, and the intentions of the Bushies.
Kerry must have known that Bush's false promises about seeking UN approval and merely leveraging the threat would prove to be a ruse. After all, Kerry spent a lot of time investigating the modus operandi of the same cast of characters in the 1980's with Iran-Contra, etc.
No, I cannot accept the explanation that Kerry was snookered by the Bushies. I think Kerry cynically voted to give Bush war powers in a failed attempt by the Democrats to remove the war vote from the issue list for the mid-term elections. The choice the Democrats made simply backfired on them. They should have opposed the scheme.
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As regards John Kerry's ancient past, he was giving anti-war speeches while still at Yale and before enlisting. Kerry, once again, was cynically playing both sides of the fence, collecting the "war hero" chit, on his way to bigger and better things. I trust Kerry about as far as I can toss him, and I'm not quite as robust as when we were both protesting the Viet Nam War. |
