Election 04 > The Presidency > The Issues > The Confusion

Normally, I try to avoid polemical politics. Therefore, I hope my left-leaning readers will not reject this blog out of hand; but John Kerry deserves to be fisked on this one.

BBC has the most straightforward version of this story, and they boil it down:

But on Monday, Mr Kerry - who voted to give President Bush the authority to go to war - said he would not have invaded. He criticised the president for saying he would still have gone to war knowing that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction. "President Bush tells us he would do it everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying to America that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer, resoundingly: no -- because a commander-in-chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe."

How can Kerry possibly be serious? Is this the same candidate who voted for the empowering resolution, and who said he would have voted for it 'knowing what we know now'? It's OK to change your mind, John, but would you please acknowledge that you've changed it? Or that you was just playin' wid us the first time?

If elected, what would you do? How can your plan for the war on terror be "smarter, more effective" and worth voting for if you can't consistently articulate it? Unlike Bush, you speak decent English - that's a tool you should use to communicate with voters!

Kerry promises to use four-point plan in Iraq, all of which are already centerpieces (and rather obvious ones at that) of the U.S. plan there. And the result, Kerry promises, of voting him in as Commander-in-Chief will be that "we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring all our troops home within the next four years." We "could"? Not "we will"? In four years? We could in one year - we had better in four years! Mr. Kerry, if you think that America can endure another four years of serious occupation, you are sorely out of touch. Even Bush would get us out of there by then!

In other news, as Dick Cheney tries to dress down and pretend he has something in common with the American people, he ends up looking more and more like George Costanza.