L!ve From > DC

Kerry: Conflicted As Usual

The most immaculately constructed rationale for removing Saddam came from none other than John Kerry, the Democratic Presidential candidate.

"I would disagree with John McCain that it's the actual weapons of mass destruction he may use against us. It's what he may do in another invasion of Kuwait or in a miscalculation about the Kurds, or a miscalculation about Iran or particularly Israel. ... He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups.," Kerry said in September 2002.

The short (10 min) Kerry on Iraq documentary, a devastating compilation of Kerry's hawkish and dovish statements on Iraq, reveals a man with a unique capacity to debate, often brilliantly, both sides of an issue.

It is unlikely that Kerry is bipolar--an innocent flip-flopper. He is genuinely conflicted whether America is a force of good. In the late sixties, when he saw America as a force of good, he sent himself to Vietnam for four months where he decided America was worse than the Communists it was fighting. Upon his discharge from service, Kerry faced a choice--criticize the Communists, the Soviet Union and China for arming and supporting the mass murderers in Vietnam, or lambast Americans who went to Indochina to fight Communism (or remain silent and go on with life, as many did).

Kerry chose to call his own comrades "war criminals."

This year, Kerry had a similar choice--denounce the terrorists in Iraq for attempting to derail the march to democracy, or praise American troops for overthrowing a brutal dictatorship and supporting the democratic process. Kerry chose to call the mission a failure and declared he would not have removed Saddam.

But only a few months ago, Kerry was offering a strategy for Iraq. I noted then that most of it he hadplagiarized from the Bush team (a must read!)...all the stuff about getting the UN involved was already codified six months earlier in UN resolutions authored by the US and Britain.

Today, Kerry delivered yet another shameful, disingenious tirade against the Iraq mission that will only embolden Islamist terrorists and dishearten troops.

By describing Iraq as a failure, Kerry will undoubtedly alienate military families--who wants to hear their sons and daughters are messing it up in Iraq?

Missing, of course, is Kerry's alternative to the removal of Saddam--continue the genocidal sanctions that had already killed a million Iraqis between 1991-2003, the so-called period of peace? Most Iraqis agree--the draconian embargo was more devastating than the Iran-Iraq war.

The impact of sanctions (which were imposed on Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait) was harsher than the pain caused by the war with Iran, during which we lost the flower of our youth and the best of our men.

The thing about sanctions was that they penetrated every aspect of our lives.

The middle classes and those with limited incomes were hardest hit.

The share of pain endured by women (because of sanctions) was not less than that suffered by men.

Whatever the mistakes committed by the Bush administration in Iraq over the last year, elections, the first of its kind in an Arab country, will be held in January. Thanks to Kerry's authorization, Saddam and his sons no longer have the capacity to build WMD or launch oil-driven wars.

The Arab world can no longer claim that America, which has sacrificed a thousand of its own, is not interested in democracy in the Middle East.

Muslims can no longer complain about the aid to Israel--Americans have spent over $200 billion to liberate and rehabilitate Afghanistan and Iraq.

But for those 4 months in Vietnam, little Kerry has done before or hence demands a vote of confidence.

Nowhere to flop

Krauthammer gets it right.

With Howard Dean rocketing toward the Democratic nomination, Kerry played to his deeply antiwar party by voting against the $87 billion to fund the occupation.

Two months later, with Saddam Hussein caught and the war looking better, Kerry maneuvered again, slamming Dean with: "Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president."

Kerry is now back to the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," a line lifted from Dean himself. So we are not better off with Hussein deposed after all.

These dizzying contradictions -- so glaring, so public, so frequent -- have gone beyond undermining anything Kerry can now say on Iraq. They have been transmuted into a character issue. When Kerry went off windsurfing during the Republican convention, Jay Leno noted that even Kerry's hobbies depend on wind direction. Kerry on the war has become an object not only of derision but of irreconcilable suspicion. What kind of man, aspiring to the presidency, does not know his own mind about the most serious issue of our time?

As Iraq suffers another horrific week of bloodshed, even the most stout-hearted supporter of the Iraq mission must be wondering whether we were mistaken in our belief--Iraqis, perhaps, are incapable of accepting Americans as liberators and friends.

And Democrats must be kicking themselves that Howard Dean isn't on the ticket.

Kerry Campaign: Lying again about the Saddam-9-11 link

This marks a retreat to a tactic that has worked well for the Democrats: Distort the oppposition's statement and then charge them with misleading the American public.

Both Bush and Cheney never said Saddam was behind the 9-11 attacks...despite the fact that no evidence has emerged that absolves Saddam of an involvement in that operation...despite the fact that the September 11 commission described contacts between Saddam's regime and Al Qaida.

Last September Bush said: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties," adding "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th."

Cheney displayed the right level of caution in an NBC interview that same month when he said "I don't know" when asked whether Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

So where is the "implication" that the Kerry campaign has seized upon in their latest, desperate assault?

Edwards took issue with Cheney's comments at a townhall in Cincinnati yesterday where the Vice President noted, rightly, that Saddam had "provided safe harbor and sanctuary for terrorists for years," including al-Qaida.

"Vice President Cheney should not say the kind of things he said Friday and the president should not mislead the American people by implying there's connection between September the 11th and the attacks of September 11th and Saddam Hussein," Edwards charged.

If Edwards doesn't become VP, he might look into joining Saddam's defense team.

Bush TANG Memo: Fake?

Anti-Bush blogs swear the memos were produced using an IBM Selectric Composer or an IBM Executive; pro-bush blogs insist the memos are not-too-clever forgeries that were likely done with Microsoft Word. Both sides have been maneuvering intensely to support their respective positions.

My take: The Memo may not be the work of Microsoft Word or a PDF conversion. It could indeed be the product of a typewriter. The question we should really be asking: was it written in 1973 by Killian, or later...by someone else?

The fact that these showed up mysteriously--that not even the White House, not even Killian's family- was aware of their existence--should raise serious doubts about their authenticity.

But who would have put these out there and what was their objective? Kerry supporters avenging the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads?

Or Bush supporters attempting to discredit CBS and the DNC?

As one DNC pollster noted, if these memos are forgeries, the Presidential race is "over".

When kerning characteristic of 70s era typewriter becomes a critical issue in a Presidential election...

The Cost of the War on Terror: 60,000 American lives; $2 trillion

A thousand Americans have died in Iraq since the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, giving the mission's opponents the statistic they have impatiently been waiting for.

It is time for the President to level with the American public about the long-term costs of the War on Terror (WOT). Bush has already declared that we will be engaged in it for many decades--some experts believe we may not see its conclusion in our lifetime.

Now Bush needs to redefine the WOT and estimate how many lives we will lose fighting and winning it. Here is how he can approach it:

First, this is not just a war on terror, but a war on extremist Islam. This form of Islam takes many forms: in Iraq, Saddam practiced a form of militant Sunni Islam that sought to unite the Middle East under a Sunni Arab ruler--him. Bin Laden practiced a much more radical--Wahabbi--Islam that sought to unite the Muslim umma under a caliphate--him.

Both forms of Islam were manifestations of a fundamental breakdown in Islamic societies. The WOT seeks to repair and transform these societies.

Second, since September 11, we have lost over 4000 American lives to the WOT. By the time a recognizable victory is achieved in this war, we may lose 60,000 Americans--more than were lost in Korea or Vietnam. This may include civilian American lives lost to acts of terror on American soil and around the world. However, casualty figures could be significantly larger should the enemy resort to WMD or other means of mass murder.

Third, we may end up spending over $2 trillion on this war. This figure includes the costs of military action, maintaining peacekeeping troops, financing moderate Muslim opposition movements in target nations, post-action reconstruction, and funding reform initiatives--schools, universities, media, etc.

By setting these expectations, Bush will have prepared the American public for the worst. The administration must also admit that the spate of Islamist attacks globally over the last few weeks are not the desperate acts of an enemy that senses defeat.

This enemy is not centralized and doesn't get its orders from a single source. Islamism is a self-directed, nihilist cult that has, over the last few decades, always managed to find volunteers. Just such a group fought and wore down the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Moderate Muslims and friendly Muslim regimes are our best and last hope if we are to minimize loss of American treasure to a war with this cult.

How to convince someone that removing Saddam was a good idea

We live in strange times, don't we, that we even have to do this?

Who would have thought that a nation that has always sought to liberate millions from tyranny would one day question its own intentions in Iraq.

How did we get this way? How did we go from selflessly sacrificing American lives to bring freedom to complete strangers to believing that we would launch a war for oil?

The next time someone tells you that Bush misled you into a war, resist the urge to bark an expletive.

Take a deep breath challenge their grasp of history--remind them of America's sacrifices in the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. Confront them with facts: Why would a $11 trillion economy spend $200 billion and a thousand lives on Iraq, which can produce barely $15 billion worth of oil per year?

If they insist that the war to remove Saddam was unnecessary, educate them about the alternative.

Containment? Continue sanctions and inspections? Be prepared to receive glowing approval for this strategy then remind them that containment killed a million Iraqis between 1991 and 2003, left Saddam and his sons firmly in power, while it rewarded Bin Laden with thousands of jihadists.

Inform critics that in his 'Letter to America' a month after 9/11, Bin Laden dedicated the attacks to the suffering of the Iraqi people and to avenge the placement of infidel troops on Saudi soil--troops that were positioned there to enforce the containment of Saddam.

Lift sanctions? Allow Saddam to get out of the box to reconstruct another million-man army, acquire WMDs and invade Kuwait? Tell them that in his last court appearance, Saddam insisted that Kuwait belonged to Iraq.

Finally, explain that Bush inherited an Iraq policy that desperately needed a major overhaul. America's success in the War on Terror necessitated the winning of hearts and minds of Muslims and this was not possible as long as Washington supported the draconian sanctions against innocent Iraqis.

Admit freely that although this administration has made a mess out of marketing the war and blundered quite a bit post-Saddam, they did not mislead the American people about the consequences of not removing the dictator when he was at his weakest.

Remind them that the end goal of sanctions was...regime change--capturing or killing one of world's most evil human beings.