Kerry Still Dogged by Questions on Vote to Authorize Iraq War
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
AVENPORT, Iowa, Oct. 23 — It dogs him at nearly every step on his presidential campaign: If Senator John Kerry is so critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath, why did he vote to authorize the use of force in the first place?
The question comes at house parties, Q. and A.'s and fund-raisers, and from every kind of voter: retirees and students, housewives and doctors, those already aligned with outspoken antiwar candidates like Howard Dean or Representative Dennis J. Kucinich and those who say they prefer Mr. Kerry but are nervous about what they see as his most glaring soft spot.
Mr. Kerry's vote last week against President Bush's request for $87 billion for military efforts and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan has not necessarily helped. He is having once again to square his vote in favor of last year's Iraq resolution with his opposition to the president's postwar policy.
"I voted against that $87 billion in Washington yesterday," he told an audience in Waterloo, Iowa, on Saturday. "But let me make it clear, I'm for winning the war in Iraq."
That Mr. Kerry is forced to explain himself so frequently, and how he handles the task, says a lot about where he finds himself in the campaign. Less than a year after being widely viewed as a front-runner in the Democratic field largely because of his foreign-relations expertise and his questioning of Mr. Bush on Iraq, Mr. Kerry still has to defend himself in the area that was supposed to be his greatest strength.
"There's no inconsistency in me," Senator Kerry, of Massachusetts, assured one voter at a house party in New Hampshire recently.
"I know what people say," he said on the MSNBC news program "Hardball With Chris Matthews" on Monday night. "My position could not be more clear."
As Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, often points out, Mr. Kerry is one of four presidential candidates who voted to allow the use of force against Iraq. Among the leading contenders who did so, though, it is perhaps only Mr. Kerry who relies so heavily on the support of those liberal primary voters for whom the Iraq war is a lightning rod.
The Iraq problem has plagued Mr. Kerry ever since he surprised many by supporting the use-of-force resolution after having staked out a position as a leading Senate critic of the administration's push for war.
Part of Mr. Kerry's problem is the dynamics of this primary season and the political aftermath of the war. When he cast his vote on Iraq last year, most Democratic strategists were arguing that no Democrat who voted against war could be a viable candidate in the general election in a post-Sept. 11 world.
But in states with early Democratic nominating contests, antiwar sentiment — fueled by rising American casualties and the failure to find unconventional weapons — is running strong, giving Dr. Dean an issue.
In a new advertisement being used in New Hampshire, Dr. Dean says that with 130,000 American troops in Iraq, "the best my opponents can do is ask questions today that they should have asked before they supported the war."
The perception among voters that Mr. Kerry has tried to straddle an explosive issue is prompting him to work to dispel it on the stump lately. Yet even after months of practice, the senator continues to wade through lengthy explanations of his vote on Iraq — a tough sell, his supporters worry, to voters who may be tempted by Dr. Dean's more concise antiwar alternative.
"His biggest problem is Iraq — that he can't explain his position in two sentences," said Dan Caligari, a longtime New Hampshire campaign organizer who is backing Mr. Kerry.
Indeed, Mr. Kerry's explanations can take 10 minutes or more. In Berlin, N.H., recently, Mr. Kerry said his vote was partly a result of being misled by the White House.
"The president made promises to us — that he would build a coalition, that he would respect the U.N. and go through the international inspection process, and that he would only go to war as a last resort," he said.
In Lancaster, N.H., he said he had particularly trusted Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, "a Vietnam veteran, and a man I've known for years," and who, "in answer to my questions, says there's only one rationale for going to war, and that's weapons of mass destruction."
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Kerry took 40 minutes to arrive at a somewhat simple formulation. He said he had consistently supported holding Saddam Hussein accountable but by "doing it right." The administration pretty much did everything wrong, he said, and broke all its promises along the way.
Though his emphasis has shifted, Mr. Kerry's writings, statements and speeches from before the vote on using force through now do show consistent underpinnings. He argued for using the threat of force to support the weapons-inspection program, but only using force when all other options were exhausted. And he often warned that the greatest challenge would be in stabilizing postwar Iraq.
In the interview, Mr. Kerry said that he was frustrated at the way the debate about Iraq was playing out and that he believed that Dr. Dean had escaped scrutiny. He said Dr. Dean had criticized him and others who accepted the administration's assertions that Iraq had unconventional weapons, although Dr. Dean himself had previously said he believed Iraq had such weapons.
And he said Dr. Dean had expressed support for the same alternate Iraq resolution that Mr. Kerry and many other Democrats had preferred. It would have allowed Mr. Bush to go to war without further United Nations or Congressional approval, though it would have given him somewhat less latitude. That proposal never came up for a vote.
"Nobody has paid attention to his duplicity," Mr. Kerry said of Dr. Dean. "We're going to have to point it out more, but he was allowed a complete free ride."
Mr. Kerry, meanwhile, has received anything but. His vote against the $87 billion to pay for military and reconstruction efforts drew a fresh scolding from Dr. Dean.
"The right choice would have been voting no last fall," Dr. Dean said. "Trying to have it both ways demonstrates neither strong leadership nor good judgment."
Mr. Kerry said the difference between his votes on the two matters was the administration's record.
"They're not promising some course, they're on the course," he said. "What they've done is visibly mistaken. What they're doing is visibly wrong."
He added, " Now there's a clear track record and a clearer set of very bad choices, and I'm voting against those choices."
Asked, however, whether he would still have opposed the $87 billion had his vote been the decisive one, Mr. Kerry dismissed the hypothetical as "unrealistic" but added, "I would never desert the troops."
In any case, Mr. Kerry said he took solace from a poll last week finding that many voters in three early primary states said they wanted a presidential nominee who supported the war in Iraq but was critical of Mr. Bush for not assembling an international coalition. And, Mr. Kerry noted, he received an ovation on Saturday in Waterloo when he spoke of his vote against the $87 billion.
"I think over time it's sinking in," Mr. Kerry said. "I think I was prescient. I think I showed leadership."
People might now realize, he said, that "Kerry saw this correctly. Kerry said, Yes, hold him accountable but do it in a responsible way that takes the time so that if and when you have to go in, you're prepared, and you're ready.' " |
