Challenging Kerry on His Iraq Vote by Scott Ritter

[Classical_Liberal]

Challenging Kerry on His Iraq Vote
by Scott Ritter


WITH THE release last month of the report by the Senate Select Committee on intelligence and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, John Kerry was handed a gift that rarely occurs in a major political race: the chance to underscore a major failing on the part of an opponent. The committee found that there was no intelligence data to sustain President Bush's oft-cited reason for last year's invasion of Iraq -- the presence of WMDs and ongoing projects dedicated to their manufacture. Kerry said that the Bush administration had been "wrong, and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong."

But Kerry failed to address that he was also wrong and that it was his leadership in the Senate that enabled President Bush to oversee the most flagrant abrogation of congressional constitutional responsibilities in modern time, the October 2002 vote to give Bush power to wage war against Iraq without assuring that there was a clear and present threat to the United States. It is Kerry's yes vote that calls into question the character of the man who wants to replace Bush in the White House.

When asked if he would agree with other Democratic senators who said they would not have voted to give Bush war powers authority if they had known about the lack of intelligence on WMD, Kerry let his vice presidential nominee, Senator John Edwards, speak for him: "I'm not going to go back and answer hypothetical questions about what I would have done had I known this." Kerry concurred with Edwards, adding, "The vote is not today, and that's it."

More than 900 American troops in Iraq are dead and more than 5,000 wounded as a result of that vote, numbers that are sure to go higher. Kerry cannot honestly say he was not aware of the paucity of verifiable intelligence concerning the existence of WMD in Iraq on the eve of war. I personally discussed this matter with Kerry in April 2000 and again with his senior staff in June 2002. I asked Kerry to allow me to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during its hearing on Iraq in July-August 2002 but was denied. Kerry knew that there was a viable case to be made to debunk the president's statements regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMD, but he chose not to act on it.........

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0805-06.htm

[BillZBubb]

1. Isn't a classical liberal a conservative?

Just asking.

[Classical_Liberal]

3. Nope

unless you consider John Stuart Mill a conservative. That is right wing libertarian propaganda.

[clydefrand]

2. I will vote for John Kerry, but I too wish he would clarify his

position on this subject. He still stands many heads and shoulders above the jerk in the office now.

[wurzel]

4. He can't. Like most Senators he never read the report he voted on.

That is the trap he is in. When the intelligence information was made available, only actual Members of Congress were allowed to read it. Most of them never bothered. They just voted. Just as they did for the "Patriot Act". Kerry cannot now admit he never read it. So now he is stuck. It is probable that the Members of Congress who actually took the trouble to read the report were the only ones who voted against the war powers given to Bush.

[Hoping4Change]

5. John MacArthur wrote a very interesting article about Kerry's

vote. He slams the vote as cynical political strategy but nevertheless defends him. Its a worthwhile read.


"I think John Kerry is fundamentally anti-war -- he has to be after experiencing the insanity of Vietnam. I think his vote for Mr. Bush's Iraq folly was a cynical political choice, not a genuine commitment. I have to believe that fewer people will die in Iraq during a Kerry administration.


In an earlier life, Mr. Kerry famously asked, apropos of Mr. Nixon's continued ferocity in Vietnam, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" I hope we're not asking the day after the election why more men will have to die for a mistake in political strategy."



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