This was his stance on Iraq back in 1997. I suggest everyone read it.

http://realclearpolitics.com/Commen...1997_speech.pdf (http://realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/kerry_11_9_1997_speech.pdf)

why don't you ask him, instead of wasting your time trolling here.

Oh, but we already know what you think...

It seems subtiles (in the real world) are lost on you.

Gee what "subtleties"? (check your spelling) I didn't think 911 was very subtle. I also don't think the Oil for Food scam is very subtle. I not aware of the nuances he expressed as reasons for regime change in Iraq. It was good then but bad now? What changed for the better?

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there...I summed up your post and saved everyone from reading your link.

. . .and got 1000+ young Americans killed turning Iraq from a hypothetical threat into a genuine danger.

Get it into your skull: <i>Bush f**ked up and that is why people have changed their minds about the invasion and occupation of Iraq</i>.

Oh so it's 20/20 hindsight? I thought he changed his mind before the war. Oh, I guess no one really knows. Not even he knows.

Did no one think anyone would die? Is that reality to think that way about a war? Let's look at it this way, we went into the war believing that Iraq had WMD and would have used them in the war. That certainly would have claimed many more casualties, yet we still went. So I can assume from that there was an assumption of risk many were prepared to take when the support for the war was almost 70%. Now we find that he wasn't prepared to use them and create 10 times the amount of casualties we suffered, yet now the war is bad because of it. I don't see the logic.

John Kerry speech on senate floor during deliberations on giving president authority to as Bush said himself..."preserve the peace."

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.

If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent--and I emphasize "imminent"--threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.

Let there be no doubt or confusion about where we stand on this. I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances.


Seems straight forward and CONSISTENT with what he has been saying. I will give you authority. DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WOULD DO. DO NOT SCREW IT UP.

Simple. I am surpised you couldn't follow the well thought out cogent argument STEAM.

Oh so it's 20/20 hindsight? I thought he changed his mind before the war. Oh, I guess no one really knows. Not even he knows.

Did no one think anyone would die? Is that reality to think that way about a war? Let's look at it this way, we went into the war believing that Iraq had WMD and would have used them in the war. That certainly would have claimed many more casualties, yet we still went. So I can assume from that there was an assumption of risk many were prepared to take when the support for the war was almost 70%. Now we find that he wasn't prepared to use them and create 10 times the amount of casualties we suffered, yet now the war is bad because of it. I don't see the logic.


support for the war was almost 70% because of lies.

Seems straight forward and CONSISTENT with what he has been saying. I will give you authority. DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WOULD DO. DO NOT SCREW IT UP.

W's got the anti-Midas touch: Everything he touches turns to crap.

W's got the anti-Midas touch: Everything he touches turns to crap.
Reminds me of the CSNY song Midas in Reverse.

If you could only see me
And know exactly who I am
You wouldn't want to be me
Oh I can assure you of that
I'm not the guy to run with
'Cos I'll throw you off the line
I'll break you and destroy you
Given time
He's King Midas with a curse
He's King Midas in reverse...

. . .learning from your mistake. So you don't <i>prolong the damage</i>, or as immature adults refer to it "stay the course".

10, 000 may be a reasonable number to lose fighting WMDs. But that does not make 1000 a reasonable number to lose taking down a near universally unpopular leader with no defenses to speak of.

Bush made a fallacious case for war. Then he got a lot of Americans and Iraqis killed and turned the world against us fighting a man that everyone hated. Big time f**k up. Poor leadership.

How many dead Americans and Iraqis is your tax cut worth?

This was his stance on Iraq back in 1997. I suggest everyone read it.

http://realclearpolitics.com/Commen...1997_speech.pdf (http://realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/kerry_11_9_1997_speech.pdf)


This is in full accordance with what Kerry has been saying all through the campaign. He says we should always use diplomatic and multilateral means whereever possible. Only in the final analysis if it is a grave threat that cannot be removed peacefully we should not be afraid to use force. We never got the chance to make a final analysis.

Kerry's complaint has always been Bush's competence. Kerry knew a president needed the authority to conduct this war to get the right conditions (leverage) for inspectorrs and bringing multilateral pressure back on Iraq. And this is exactly what happened. His argument has always been that Bush incompetently rendered these powerful tools meaningless and got us into a war with a country we later found out was not a grave threat at all. We would have found this out if Bush didn't pull the inspectors out early.

Bush basically had everything lined up for him to get the threat assayed and dealt with in an effective manner, yet he blew it.

Bush used the same intelligence everyone else had, including the Russians and the British (that is why they went with us). There was no falsifying of anything. That is not proven. It is only conjecture on the part of the libs. If it were proven otherwise I would be among the first to fry Bush. It will be proven that the WMD left Iraq just prior to the invasion. There is plenty of indirect evidence to show that. Satelite photos showing caravans travelling across the border into Syria, etc.

Bush used the same intelligence everyone else had, including the Russians and the British (that is why they went with us). There was no falsifying of anything. That is not proven. It is only conjecture on the part of the libs. If it were proven otherwise I would be among the first to fry Bush. It will be proven that the WMD left Iraq just prior to the invasion. There is plenty of indirect evidence to show that. Satelite photos showing caravans travelling across the border into Syria, etc.
Hey Steam...you still holding out that Santa Claus is real too?

Satelite photos showing caravans travelling across the border into Syria, etc.

You mean to tell me we had surveillance photos of WMDs leaving Iraq and W did nothing to stop it?

Letting WMDs slip into Syria is a far, far worse failure on Bush's part. I would forgive him for playing up WMDs that didn't materialize sooner than forgiving him for letting real ones slip through his fingers into the hands of who-knows-who.

You mean to tell me we had surveillance photos of WMDs leaving Iraq and W did nothing to stop it?
And OBL left a forwarding address so that GW could locate him prior to the election.

And OBL left a forwarding address so that GW could locate him prior to the election.

Aren't they spending Christmas together? :p

Let me ask one question - would you expect Notre Dame to reveal their game plan to Michigan?

This is not a game, and we are not spectators.

BFD, I have spotted you doing the same(see below: '...I not aware...' ). The(my) content is, never the less correct. Uh yea, me mo perfick dan U, Ugh!--Bud.

Note the replies to your original & subsequent posts. Kerry is consistant as shown compairing the senate speech & current statements. His subtleties (thanx for the correction) (& sub-titles, love those french films) are not that subtle. But then analysis is not our strong suit.

Gee what "subtleties"? (check your spelling) I didn't think 911 was very subtle. I also don't think the Oil for Food scam is very subtle. I not aware of the nuances he expressed as reasons for regime change in Iraq. It was good then but bad now? What changed for the better?




BTW Steam, you make me smile :-)

Bush used the same intelligence everyone else had, including the Russians and the British (that is why they went with us). There was no falsifying of anything. That is not proven. It is only conjecture on the part of the libs. If it were proven otherwise I would be among the first to fry Bush. It will be proven that the WMD left Iraq just prior to the invasion. There is plenty of indirect evidence to show that. Satelite photos showing caravans travelling across the border into Syria, etc.


oh, please. you have the experts in the department of energy, the one department that would be most skilled to make this assessment, saying that the aluminum tubes could not be used in centrifuges, and yet the final report totally ignores their opinion and says that they were intended for use in a centrifuge.

you have Powell telling the UN that satellite pictures showed new construction at suspected WMD research sites, and yet once we get there all we find are cobwebs. pictures also show mobile weapons labs that turn out to be firetrucks. we're told that cannonball or whatever his name was says that there's an underground facility located in a certain area, and turns out that there's nothing there.

they may not have made up evidence out of whole cloth. but they did take any evidence, any conflicting opinion, that said the intelligence did not show what they wanted it to show, and just ignored it, consigned it to the trash can. they chose only the information that they wanted to hear, that pointed for going to war.

we saw this with the pentagon's trashing of state's plan for postwar iraq, which some of the best experts on the region had been working on for years. instead, they went with rummy's plan, ie, no plan. we see it today with the news that the same group that wrote the recent NIE of iraq's future, had also written two reports before the war that outlined the obstacles that we faced in postwar iraq, reports that presciently noted almost every problem we have encountered to date

they had a goal, war with iraq. anything that prevented them from achieving this goal was ignored or brushed aside. they chose an action, and then made the intelligence fit that action, not analyze what the intelligence showed, and then choose a course of action.

As you have cataloged, they can't even lie competently.

That's what I'm here for :O)

No we are talking about human lives at risk. Much more important than a college football game where it would be absurd to give the game plan away!

Smile.

No we are talking about human lives at risk. Much more important than a college football game where it would be absurd to give the game plan away!

i don't get it. how do you give a plan away? what are you talking about?

furthermore, you talk of plans like they evennhad one.

And you know there isn't one?

That is a heck of a way to behave when human lives are at risk. But then, <i>your</i> life isn't at risk.

Grasping at straws? I think you're grasping at straws! First many of you claim that this was some master plan hatched years ago and then yu claim it is something done on a whim. Which is it?

Grasping at straws? I think you're grasping at straws! First many of you claim that this was some master plan hatched years ago and then yu claim it is something done on a whim. Which is it?


are you dense, or just being willfully obtuse?

there was a plan for taking out saddam and going into iraq. that was the extent of the plan. they made a decent battle plan. but they were so impressed with their own brilliance, so certain that their political theorems would apply in the real world, they didn't bother planning for the aftermath of combat operations, cause they believed it would play out just as they envisioned on paper: grateful iraqis showering ther troops with flowers and chocolates, and ahmed chalabi stepping imediately into his position as leader of the new iraq. after all, that's what chalabi and the rest of the iraqi exiles were telling them. these guys were so self-absorbed that anyone who gave affirmation to their fantasies was welcomed uncritically, and anyone who said things wouldn't work out that way were dismissed outright.

reality has a funny way of screwing up pipe dreams. saddam had, and still has, more personal popularity than chalabui, or any of the iraqi exiles. why they thought the iraqi people would accept someone who had lived the past 30 years in some other country as their leader is beyond me.

I hope you are not lying again. :( For the record, I think Bush and his idiot advisers are capable of spending years hatching a perfectly sh***y plan and launching it on the first whimsical pretext they find. Like you, it is no skin of their nose if things go horribly wrong and young Americans start dying needlessly.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. 1000+ Americans <i>dead</i>. Uncounted thousands of Iraqi's <i>dead</i>. <i>No</i> WMDs. <i>No</i> substantive ties to terrorism. Your response? All part of the plan! Just sit tight and all those dead bodies will make sense! Bush is gonna pull this one out and stick it to the Democrats at the perfect moment to propel himself into a second term!

Real Man™ values.

Jeez, man, can't a guy make an informed change in his position?? I mean, maybe things change, the info he was given was wrong, whatever. A good manager knows when his decisions are wrong, and he then tries to make them right. What's the big deal-at least he admits some of his decisions were, in hindsight, not great. That's more than the current dunce-in-chief ever did..

You know, a good analogy of GWB would be a lemming. You have to admit-lemmings choose a course and stick right to it. GWB's lemming-like behavior will lead us over the edge just as surely.

Let me just finish with a quote from Franklin Roosevelt:

"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something"

Jeez, man, can't a guy make an informed change in his position??
that Kerry is a flip-flopper.

oh, please. you have the experts in the department of energy, the one department that would be most skilled to make this assessment, saying that the aluminum tubes could not be used in centrifuges, and yet the final report totally ignores their opinion and says that they were intended for use in a centrifuge.


Could not be used in centrifuges?? Totally ignores??

Here's what the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (I think that's what you're referring to)stated (at least in the declassified part that has since been released) about the aluminum tubes:

Most agencies believe that Saddam's personal interest in and Iraq's aggressive attempts to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors -- as well as Iraq's attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines, and machine tools -- provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program. (DOE agrees that reconstitution of the nuclear program is underway but assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program.

http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/pdf/Iraq/declassifiedintellreport.pdf

So the DOE, while skeptical about the tubes, still believed that Saddam was reconstituting the program.

Why don't you read the entire report? Ask yourself what you would have done if you were the president and had been given this report.

Or, ask yourself what you (and the others on this board) would be saying about Bush if he had read this report but had decided not to go into Iraq because there were some dissenting viewpoints, and it later turned out that Saddam had the weapons and then used them.

I can just hear the calls for a public lynching.

and that's the whitewashing of the intelligence. those who knew best said they could not by any means be used for centrifuges. the pentagon said otherwise, state and cia waffled along with them, and that's the final language that got put in the report.

Or, ask yourself what you (and the others on this board) would be saying about Bush if he had read this report but had decided not to go into Iraq because there were some dissenting viewpoints, and it later turned out that Saddam had the weapons and then used them.

and that's why the inspectors were back in, to ascertain more up to date intelligence on the matter, and to make sure that wouldn't happen. but then bush yanked them so he could get his war on.

and that's the whitewashing of the intelligence. those who knew best said they could not by any means be used for centrifuges. the pentagon said otherwise, state and cia waffled along with them, and that's the final language that got put in the report.

What do you base those statements on?

What do you base those statements on?

based on an interview i read with the foremost expert on atomic energy in our country. it was a while ago, i don't recall his name, and don't feel like searching for it just to prove something to you. it just ain't worth my time. feel free to search for yourself though.

based on an interview i read with the foremost expert on atomic energy in our country. it was a while ago, i don't recall his name, and don't feel like searching for it just to prove something to you. it just ain't worth my time. feel free to search for yourself though.

I see.