Detroit News Headline writer adds unbiased "Kerry would have kept Saddam"

[papau]

To the AP Article on the Kerry Speech!

http://www.detnews.com/2004/politics/0409/21/a06-280072.htm "Kerry would have kept Saddam He says America traded dictator for chaos that has left U.S. less secure." is our friend in Detroit - the headline writer's - contribution to the debate!

http://www.news-leader.com/today/0921-Election20-183719.html

Election 2004: Kerry speech accuses Bush of 'incompetence'
Senator "twisting in the wind," president says; both candidates attack opponents' credibility.

By Ron Fournier'
Associated Press

New York — Staking out new ground on Iraq, Sen. John Kerry suggested Monday that he would not have overthrown Saddam Hussein had he known what he knows now, and accused President Bush of "stubborn incompetence," dishonesty and colossal failures of judgment. Bush said Kerry was flip-flopping.

Less than two years after voting to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, the Democratic candidate said that had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction and had he been president, he would not have followed Bush's path to war. Bush, also speaking hypothetically, says he would have invaded Iraq, even knowing what he knows now.

"Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell," Kerry said. "But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."

Bush hit back from a campaign rally in New Hampshire, interpreting Kerry's comment to mean the Democrat believes U.S. security would be better with Saddam still in power. "He's saying he prefers the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of democracy," the Republican incumbent said.<snip>




Is Bush allowed to make Iraq a character issue and thus avoid the specific criticisms of the war?



http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/opinion/21krugman.html

OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Last Deception
By PAUL KRUGMAN

t's Ayad Allawi week. President Bush, starting with his address at the U.N. today, will try to present Mr. Allawi - a former Baathist who the BBC reports was chosen as prime minister because he was "equally mistrusted by everyone" - as the leader of a sovereign nation on the path to democracy. If the media play along, Mr. Bush may be able to keep the Iraq disaster under wraps for a few more weeks.

It may well work. In June, when the United States formally transferred sovereignty to Mr. Allawi's government, the media acted as if this empty gesture marked the end of the war. Even though American casualties continued to rise, stories about Iraq dropped off the evening news and the front pages. This gave the public the impression that things were improving and helped Mr. Bush recover in the polls.

Now Mr. Bush hopes that by pretending that Mr. Allawi is a real leader of a real government, he can conceal the fact that he has led America into a major strategic defeat.

That's a stark statement, but it's a view shared by almost all independent military and intelligence experts. Put it this way: it's hard to identify any major urban areas outside Kurdistan where the U.S. and its allies exercise effective control. Insurgents operate freely, even in the heart of Baghdad, while coalition forces, however many battles they win, rule only whatever ground they happen to stand on. And efforts to put an Iraqi face on the occupation are self-defeating: as the example of Mr. Allawi shows, any leader who is too closely associated with America becomes tainted in the eyes of the Iraqi public.

Mr. Bush's insistence that he is nonetheless "pleased with the progress" in Iraq - when his own National Intelligence Estimate echoes the grim views of independent experts - would be funny if the reality weren't so grim. Unfortunately, this is no joke: to the delight of Al Qaeda, America's overstretched armed forces are gradually getting chewed up in a losing struggle.<snip>