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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (77118)	6/14/2006 2:34:49 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Don't you think that might have sent a different kind of message to Saddam? Maybe the man would even have stepped down. We're talking about a man who has made a very big deal out of being a man of his word. Are you telling me his word should be ignored in this one case? No, I think you should acquaint yourself with the constraints of diplomatic language. Bush was not only talking to the US and Saddam. He was also trying to pry some cooperation out of the UNSC, which was full of Saddam's payees, and trying to avoid giving the Euro-left even more ammo to hit him with. Bush has to operate in the real world of diplomacy. As the old saw goes, a diplomat is a man who is paid to lie for his country. Now, if Bush hadn't listened to Tony Blair, and had not gone the UN route, and had gone to war in 2002, then I expect the language would have been blunter and more to your liking. But as things stand, these charges of Bush lied! not only don't strike me as valid, they come across as rather childish, like a teenager accusing everybody of being a hypocrite for following social conventions.

To: Cogito who wrote (77118)	6/14/2006 3:16:39 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

And why did virtually the entire Senate (and House) roll over like that? Could it have had something to do with the fact that Bush and all his mouthpieces kept confabulating a connection between 9/11 and Iraq? And that anyone who dared question the case for war was branded as dangerous, unpatriotic, crazy, or treasonous? I agree that they were gutless, and should have stood up to him, but I also think that Bush's propaganda machine was way out of bounds, and had created an environment of fear and panic. He bears the responsibility for that. They spoke as they believed, Allen. I know it's become an article of faith among the Dems that the idea is ridiculous, but I don't think so, nor do many, many people who are more knowledgeable than I about the jihadi movement. True, there is no evidence that Saddam's agents were in on the planning for 9/11, and that's certainly a plan that OBL & co would have played close to the vest. But Saddam and Al Qaeda had many contacts, and were searching out ways to help each other (eg Iraqi intelligence listed OBL as an intelligence asset and funneled him aid; the bomber of the 1993 attack was an Iraqi who returned to Baghdad afterwards), but there certainly were control issues on both sides. OBL didn't want to be controlled by Iraq and Saddam didn't want terrorists he couldn't control; that's one reason he was trying to roll his own with Uday's Fedayeen. You could call it a case of 'Iran envy'. Every Mideast dictator wants his own Hizbullah. Prior to 9/11, the Dems were living in a 'New Middle East' Oslo-fed dream, which even Arafat's launching of a new terror war in 2000 could not shake. They turned their eyes away from Al Qaeda and the worldwide jihadi movement, and so had no response ready after 9/11, when it became obvious to all that the threat had to be taken seriously. So they were on the back foot, as the British say. Those who had been watching the rise of world wide Wahhabi/Takfiri inspired jihadism with alarm expected something like a 9/11. They had already observed the rise of the Iranian revolution, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hizbullah, Hamas, and watched formerly secular leaders like Saddam try mightily to co-opt and ride the wave. In his last years in office, Saddam suddenly became very pious for public consumption, built 50 grandiose mosques, and had a Koran written in his own blood. Of course, he continued to portray himself as the New Saladin, the great Arab Leader who had defied the Great Satan and the Little Satan and lived to boast of it, etc. Those who were knowledgeable about the Middle East, who watched the rising tide of Islamism and virulent anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism in the Middle East media (something our MSM simply refused to cover. At all.) did not find the notion of a tie up between Saddam and Al Qaeda any more ridiculous than the tie up between Iran and Hizbullah on the Shia side. My enemies' enemy is my friend. They looked for evidence, and they found quite a bit, if not enough to display as proof positive - Saddam being in the position he was, he had to be surreptitious. But those who were living the Oslo dream, those for whom peace was right around the corner, did not wish to believe the new reality. They listened to the news only in English; what was said in Arabic didn't bother them. They preferred to blame Israel for the continuing Israeli/Pal conflict, figuring that since Israel was the stronger, it had to be to blame. They stuck to their old idea of Saddam as secular ruler, who would never join up with Al Qaeda. Besides, even after 9/11, they deeply, deeply wished to believe that this was just an isolated crime perpetrated by a handful of criminals that could be handled as a police matter. Wishing so much to believe this, they tended to ignore evidence to the contrary, and shoot the messenger of bad news. This to me, is the real reason for the cries of "There is no connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda! Bush lied!" As the old saying goes, Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

To: Cogito who wrote (77118)	6/14/2006 5:22:32 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 81568

James Taranto does a little reprise of Kerry's consistency on the Iraq issue in today's WSJ: Kerry*, meanwhile, declared, "We cannot have it both ways in the war in Iraq." Here is a partial list of the positions Kerry has taken on the war in Iraq: o "The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last four years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for four years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation."--Oct. 9, 2002 o "Yea."--vote on authorizing military force to liberate Iraq, Oct. 12, 2002 o "Even having botched the diplomacy, it is the duty of any president, in the final analysis, to defend this nation and dispel the security threat. . . . Saddam Hussein has brought military action upon himself by refusing for 12 years to comply with the mandates of the United Nations."--March 18, 2003 o "The vote is the vote. I voted to authorize. It was the right vote, and the reason I mentioned the threat is that we gave the--we had to give life to the threat. If there wasn't a legitimate threat, Saddam Hussein was not going to allow inspectors in. Now, let me make two points if I may. Ed [Gordon] questioned my answer. The reason I can't tell you to a certainty whether the president misled us is because I don't have any clue what he really knew about it, or whether he was just reading what was put in front of him. And I have no knowledge whether or not this president was in depth--I just don't know that. And that's an honest answer, and there are serious suspicions about the level to which this president really was involved in asking the questions that he should've. With respect to the question of, you know, the vote--let's remember where we were. If there hadn't been a vote, we would never have had inspectors. And if we hadn't voted the way we voted, we would not have been able to have a chance of going to the United Nations and stopping the president, in effect, who already had the votes, and who was obviously asking serious questions about whether or not the Congress was going to be there to enforce the effort to create a threat. So I think we did the right thing. I'm convinced we did."--Sept. 9, 2003 o "Nay."--vote on $87 billion to fund operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oct. 17, 2003 o "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."--March 16, 2004 o "The president made a mistake in invading Iraq."--Sept. 30, 2004 o "No."--answer to Jim Lehrer's question "Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?," Sept. 30, 2004 o " I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi resolution."--June 13, 2006 No wonder Kerry says you can't have it both ways--as nuanced as he is, he's had it at least half a dozen ways! ______________ The only consistency that is really consistent is Kerry's consistent attempt to associate himself with anything deemed a success and distance himself from anything deemed a failure. IOW, he consistently tries to have it both ways!