Comments on: Terror War swallowing Kerry

By: Deep Blade

Deep Blade — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 08:47:50 +0000

Well, cs, if Kerry based his Iraq war vote in 2002 on what he said at the time, it was because Saddam was “developing unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs, capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents, which could threaten Iraq’s neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf…” (etc, etc, discredited claim after discredited claim).

Kerry went on, “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 didn’t plow through this whole thing, I almost fell asleep trying. So I might have missed some “nuance” that probably does make Kerry disinguishable from Bush or, say, Olympia Snowe. Oh yeah, sure, then as now he hoped to drag more other countries into the mess. But bottom line Kerry’s vote was stated by Kerry to be based on the notion that Saddam was a “threat” and we needed to “take away [his] arsenal.”

So now if the non-exsistence of this arsenal is no reason for him to reconsider the war vote, he should just apply for a job at the Lie Factory.

Look, hardly anyone in the electorate now cares about the finer points here. It’s pure, raw emotion now. Kerry had a chance to stare down Karl Rove and plant a visceral blow against Bush’s pre-war lying. Does that constitute “caving” ?? Oh, hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just holding a consistent waffled position.

By: Distant Observer

Distant Observer — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 03:32:52 +0000

I wholly concur. Any party that shamelessly milks and exploits 9/11 for one las hurrah in NYC, in effect wearing the worst mass-murder on U.S. soil that they did nothing to prevent as a badge of honor is just mildly perverse - or put another way, you’d have to be pretty sick in the fuckin’ head, not to mention so insolent and power-mad to even contemplate such egregious effrontry to the peoples of NYC. This is a twisted sadism on par with the S & M homoerotic “love-ins” at Abu Ghraib. Some might call it necrophilia, but I believe it’s more akin to pissing on the grave of an unknown compatriot and charging admission for spectators. If 9/11 is 90% of the GOPs platform, does logic not inform us that we have nothing but more of these national traumas to look forward to in a second Bush term? No, these people are not Republicans (name me one thing that’s conservative about them? surely not a $7 trillion debt, a half trillion dollar deficit, bloated government spending and increased personnel, the “Preemption Doctrine,” the trampling of fundamental civl, Constitutional rights) they’re theocratic fascists. Fuck the deserter-in-chief and the chickenhawks - Kerry’s the man! Keep fightin’ the Good Fight and remember to vote by absantee ballot!
-DO

By: cs

cs — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 01:56:24 +0000

Wow, DB, you and I usually on the same page but I must disagree with you here. First of all, Kerry did not “cave” by saying he’d support the war even knowing what we know now. He said he would have voted for the resolution, the direct quote is “I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for the president to have.” If you read Wm. Saletan’s article in Slate (http://slate.msn.com/id/2105096/), which isn’t flattering to Kerry, you still see that his position on Iraq has stayed consistent over time.

Now, about Bush’s advantage in the “war on terror”. I think the Kerry campaign needs to hit hard the fact that 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch, that he did not “defend America every time” — a statement that in the history of Big Lies must surely win a prize for biggest one of all.

Personally, I grow more convinced each day that people in this administration allowed the events of 9/11 to occur. But as my daughters say, that’s just me.

The evidence of gross negligence and incompetence is enough with out adding deliberate treason to the mix: ignoring insights about terrorism inherited from the previous administration; cut-backs in counter-terrorism funding in the DoJ budget; disregard for intelligence summaries and warnings; massive FAA failures the day of the attacks.

If, for the sake of argument we allow that this administration was merely negligent and incompetent before 9/11, the same cannot be said for how it has behaved in the aftermath: promoting faulty intelligence; blocking and censoring investigations; gagging witnesses; outing Ambassador Wilson’s wife; misappropriating vast amounts of money; permitting torture and abuse of detainees; pillaging Iraq’s resources and infrastructure. Well, the list is endless, including now investigations into whether central figures in formulating DoD policy may be working hand-in-hand with Israel.

Kerry and Edwards may be forced to rely on tabloid stories about BushCo. to help win the election. But simultaneously they must lay the groundwork for helping Americans come to terms with what has been done in their name, not just under GW, but stretching back in time to the early days of the Birchers and Minutemen.