John Kerry Iraq War Resolution

[GreenArrow]

I'm trying to find Kerry's statement on the Senate Floor regarding the Iraq resolution. I can't find anything on Google other than little snippets, so I know he said something, and I remember reading a play by play here on DU, but I can't find the full thing anywhere. It's not on his website either.

Any suggestions? I'd like to know just what he said on October 10, 2002 on the Senate Floor as he cast his yea vote. I'd appreciate any help with this.

[ProfessorPlum]

1. try here

there is a link to JK's original speech, and a summary

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=913&mesg_id=913&page=

[GreenArrow]

2. Thanks Professor!

I didn't think about checking his presidential site after I couldn't find the info on his Senate site. Sometimes it's too easy to miss the obvious.

[blm]

3. Here are some key excerpts....

>>>>>>
The Bush Administration began talking about Iraq by suggesting that congressional consultation and authorization for the use of force were not needed. Now they are consulting with Congress and seeking our authorization. The Administration began this process walking down a path of unilateralism - today they acknowledge that while we reserve the right to act alone, it is better to act with allies.
The Administration which once seemed entirely disengaged from the United Nations ultimately went to the United Nations and began building international consensus to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. The Administration began this process suggesting that the United States might well go to war over Saddam Hussein's failure to return Kuwaiti property - last week the Secretary of State and on Monday night the President made clear we would go to war only to disarm Iraq.
The Administration began discussion of Iraq by almost belittling the importance of arms inspections. Today the Administration has refocused their aim and made clear we are not in an arbitrary conflict with one of the world's many dictators, but a conflict with a dictator whom the international community left in power only because he agreed not to pursue weapons of mass destruction.
That's why arms inspections -- and I believe ultimately Saddam's unwillingness to submit to fail-safe inspections -- is absolutely critical in building international support for our case to the world. That's how you make clear to the world we are contemplating war not for war's sake, but because it may be the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism.
I am pleased that the Bush Administration has recognized the wisdom of shifting its approach on Iraq. That shift has made it possible, in my judgment, for the United States Senate to move forward with greater unity, having asked and begun to answer the questions that best defend our troops and protect our national security.
The United States Senate can now make a determination about this resolution -- -- and in this historic vote, help put our country and the world on a course to begin to answer one fundamental question - not whether to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, but how.

>>>>

Regime change has been American policy under the Clinton administration and the current U.S. administration. It is a policy that I support. But regime change in and of itself is not sufficient justification for going to war unless regime change is the only way to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. As bad as he is, Saddam Hussein, the dictator, is not the cause of war. Saddam Hussein sitting in Baghdad with an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is a different matter.

>>>>>

I want to underscore, this Administration began with a resolution that granted exceedingly broad authority to the President to use force. I regret that some Democrats supported it. I would have opposed it. It gave the President the authority to use force, not only to enforce all U.N. resolutions related to Iraq but also to produce regime change in Iraq and to restore international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region.
It made no mention of the President's efforts at the United Nations or the need to build multilateral support for whatever course of action we ultimately would take. I am pleased that our pressure and questions pushed the Administration to adopt some important changes in language.
The revised White House text, which we will vote on, limits the grant of authority to the President to the use of force against Iraq. It does not empower him to use force throughout the Persian Gulf region.
It authorizes the President to use U.S. Armed Forces to defend the "national security" of the United States - a power he already has under the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief - and to enforce all "relevant" Security Council relations related to Iraq. None of these resolutions, or for that matter any of the other Security Council resolutions demanding Iraqi compliance with its international obligations, call for regime change.

>>>>>

Let me be clear: I am voting to give this authority to the President for one reason and one reason only: to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction if we cannot accomplish that objective through new tough weapons inspections.
In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days - to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out "tough, immediate" inspections requirements and to "act with our allies at our side" if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force.
And in voting to grant the President the authority to use force, I am not giving him carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that poses - or may pose - a potential threat to the United States. Every nation has the right to act preemptively if it faces an imminent and grave threat. But the threat we face, today, with Iraq fails the test.
Yes, it is grave because of the deadliness of Saddam Hussein's arsenal and the very high probability that he will use these weapons one day if he is not disarmed. But it is not imminent. None of our intelligence reports suggest that Saddam Hussein is about to launch any kind of attack against us or countries in the region.
The argument for going to war against Iraq is rooted in enforcement of the international community's demand that Iraq disarm. It is not rooted in the doctrine of preemption.
Nor is the grant of authority in this resolution an acknowledgment that Congress accepts or agrees with the President's new strategic doctrine of preemption. Just the opposite.
This resolution clearly limits the authority given to the President to use force in Iraq, and only Iraq, and for the specific purpose of defending the United States against the threat posed by Iraq "and" enforcing relevant Security Council resolutions.
>>>>>>

[ProfessorPlum]

4. Yep, all very admirable

. . . if only he'd follow up.

"I am not giving him carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that poses - or may pose - a potential threat to the United States."

Bush took it that way, though. What will Kerry do about it?

[CWebster]

5. letter

"He very often used Bush's own phrases when describing the threat he claimed Iraq posed to the U.S. and Iraqi neighbors. He recited the litany of how many times Saddam Hussein had 'miscalculated the U.S.' (where have you heard that before?). He said we were going to 'drain the swamp where the terrorists are hiding'. Sound familiar? He said several times that the UNSCOM weapons inspectors were 'summarily kicked out of Iraq'.

He said the war powers act gives the president the power to wage war and not tell congress for 60 days, so the Iraq resolution vote was meaningless anyway. He argued that it was not unconstitutional of the Senate to relinquish responsibility to declare war because they had voted. He said it was unnecessary to give the president authority anyway, since war with Iraq has never stopped since in began in 1991. (Did congress declare it then? hmmm...and where have you heard that argument before?) ...

...After parroting President Bush for 45 minutes, at long last he allowed questions from the audience. There were about 100 people. The hall was half empty. (No wonder, as the talk was totally unpublicized. I heard about it by email at 11 PM last night.)

I was the second or third to speak, and stood up and said:

Mr. Kerry, Sir:

You said you would hold the Bush Administration accountable and would strongly object if he tried to interfere or 'Dis' the UN and the weapons inspectors in their efforts to find a peaceful way to disarm Saddam Hussein. But how can we be confident that you will do that when you said just a few moments before that the former UNSCOM inspectors were kicked out by Iraq. I know that is not true and I feel that I am being lied to.

It is my understanding that the U.S. withdrew the weapons inspectors in advance of Operation Desert Fox, before they bombed Baghdad in hopes of killing Saddam Hussein. According to Scott Ritter, they chose their targets based on information obtained from spies among the weapons inspectors, in direct violation of the UN resolution that authorized the inspections. The U.S. corrupted the weapons inspectors' mission when it was 90-95% complete.

You are continuing to cover up the truth. How can we trust you to hold Bush accountable this time?

Kerry did not answer my question. Instead he said mine were 'strong words,' and 'inappropriate.' He said that he did not take Scott Ritter at face value because he has changed his story, and he was sorry I believed Scott instead of him."

http://www.rforsberg.com/kerry/sshaw.htm

[blm]

6. Ritter testified in front of Kerry in 98

and Kerry believed him then. So did Clinton. That's why "regime change" became part of Iraq policy.

I believe that CIA agents loyal to Poppy Bush fed bad info to Clinton back then hoping to push an invasion. Clinton shared that info with trusted confidantes, Kerry among them. Even so, their main concern was to get the UN to enforce its word so the Republicans couldn't have an excuse to dismiss the UN as an international institution.

[CWebster]

12. And if the un refused?

It isn't the UN that is irrelevant or ineffective--it is the US government. The UN was operating just as it is supposed to, it was the US that refused to play by the rules.

[GreenArrow]

7. I read that letter earlier today

while looking for Kerry's statement.

Interesting that Kerry repeats the lie that the UN inspectors were "kicked out", and then refuses to be improved when corrected. Lieberman throws that lie out in his statement on the iraq resolution as well. That lie just won't go away, but it's more than discomfiting to hear it repeated by high ranking Democrats who should know better.

[CWebster]

9. exactly

Even if Clinton got bad..."intelligence", the true appraisal of this situation was on the record by the time Kerry made this statement.

[ProfessorPlum]

11. I forgot

to point that out in my summary of his vote address when I was summarizing it yesterday. That is odd. But then if FAIR hadn't done such a good job of documenting this, I'd have forgotten about it.

[blm]

8. This was posted earlier, PP...

on another thread, by newsguyatl....This was Kerry speaking earlier today, telling W it's "Time to tell the truth."

>>>>>

here's a good summation:
Kerry: Time for Bush 'to tell the truth' on Iraq
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Democratic presidential contender Sen. John Kerry Thursday urged President Bush "to tell the truth to the American people" about the war in Iraq, saying the administration has bungled the resulting U.S. occupation.
Kerry, D-Mass., said Bush's May 1 declaration that major combat had ended in Iraq, delivered from the deck of an aircraft carrier, was premature "no matter how well staged."
"It's time for the president to step forward and tell the truth -- that the war is continuing, and so are the casualties," Kerry said. He said the administration "assured us they had a plan" to rebuild Iraq after the war, but "it is now evident they didn't have a plan."
"It's time for the president to tell the truth -- that we lack sufficient forces to do the job of reconstruction in Iraq and withdraw in a reasonable period," he added.
Kerry offered a four-point plan of his own Thursday: Bolstering the 145,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq with peacekeepers from NATO allies and Muslim nations; getting U.N. agencies involved in humanitarian relief work and establishing a democratic government; outline "immediately and publicly" how and when the United States will transfer power to an Iraqi government; and move more quickly to restore basic services such as power and transportation.
"Just because a mistake was made does not mean we should compound it by making further mistakes," he said. Continuing instability in Iraq could undermine U.S. efforts to battle al Qaeda as well, he added.
"Not winning the peace in Iraq will have more impact on the war on terror than any single thing we're doing," he said.
Most of the leading Democratic presidential contenders, including Kerry, supported giving Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. Kerry said Thursday that decision was "100 percent right" because it gave the United States additional leverage in the United Nations.
But, "in order to re-establish the credibility of our own government," he said, an investigation is needed into allegations the Bush administration overstated the threat posed by Iraq's weapons programs during the debate over war.
"This is not a matter of politics. This is a matter of national security," he said. "When we go to other countries and say we have evidence of X or Y or Z, it is important that they believe us. And when we go to the American people and ask them to support some effort in the future, it is more than important that they believe us."
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who became an anti-war leader, said Bush appears to be going down "a prideful road" by failing to get international help for peacekeeping in Iraq.
"I learned a long time ago in Vietnam what happens when pride gets in the way of making honest decisions," he said.

[ProfessorPlum]

13. still seems so bland

at least he's calling him out for not having a plan for rebuilding. But "bungling the occupation" is just a small part of the massive crime which has occured.

Also, "a prideful road" WTF? How about evil, lying, treaty-breaking hubristic cowards?

Come on, Kerry, you know what's going on here - stand up and say it, with guts!

[phillybri]

10. He'll take his job next year.....

:-)