Kerry favors war even with NO WMDs

All of you sweet, caring anti-war children have tried so hard to justify how you can vote for John Kerry even though - LIKE GEORGE BUSH - he favored invading Iraq and dropping big bombs on poor Iraqi women and children in order to rid them of Saddam Hussein.

And the lie you invented in order to justify your vote was that Kerry only voted for the war because he was "lied to" by Bush about whether there were WMDs in Iraq.

Leaving aside the rank stupidity of claiming that a U.S. Senator with access to the same intelligence as the President could have been "misled" this way, John Kerry has now made it clear just how wrong you are, since he has said he would have voted for the Iraq War Resolution even if he KNEW there were no WMDs in Iraq.:

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Kerry reaffirms war vote

Jack Kurtz/The Arizona Republic

Mark Shaffer

Republic Flagstaff Bureau

Aug. 10, 2004 12:00 AM

GRAND CANYON - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said Monday that he would have voted to give the president authorization to go to war in Iraq even knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0810kerry10.html

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What kind of warmonger is John Kerry - favoring the MILITARY INVASION of a sovereign country even though it has no weapons of mass destruction and hasn't attacked us? First he goes to Vietnam and slaughters Vietnamese. Now he supports a war on a peaceful, non-threatening country. How can you pacifists possibly support such a militaristic monster?

Doug;

Technically you are wrong. Kerry did not favor the unilateral invasion of Iraq, however he did vote to authorize giving the President that authority. There really was never a vote in the Senate on the war, only a vote to give the President the power to do as he wanted. The two things are very different. But Bush and Cheney like to blur things for the less intelligent voters out there. (Just like the blurred the link between Bin Laden and Saddam, who were actually rivals and bitter enemies.)

I am unhappy that the U.S. Senate gave up it's Constituional responsibilty to declare war. This makes no sense to me. I think some well-intentioned Senators were willing the give the President the tools he needed for negotiating Saddam out of Iraq. I don't think many were in favor of the Bush Doctrine of Pre-emption (sp?).

I am not happy with Kerry's dancing around his war position. But for me there are are plenty of other reasons to replace Bush with Kerry that I don't worry about it that much. Bush and Cheney are school yard bullies on a global scale, and I don't believe that Kerry would approach foreing policy and war that way.

Bush likes to say at his campaign rallies that the attack on Iraq was in defense to real threats to the United States. He has yet to show that is true.

>Technically you are wrong. Kerry did not favor the unilateral

>invasion of Iraq, however he did vote to authorize giving the

>President that authority. There really was never a vote in

>the Senate on the war, only a vote to give the President the

>power to do as he wanted. The two things are very different.

>But Bush and Cheney like to blur things for the less

>intelligent voters out there.

That is very well put.

The truth is that Bush went to the Senate and asked for a vote of support so that he could enlist the help of the UN to force Saddam out in one way or another. During the Clinton years Kerry voted for resolutions endorsing regime change in Iraq, and his vote in response to Bush's request is fully consistent with his record on that issue.

If Kerry had voted against Bush's resolution the Repubs would be calling him "wishy-washy" because he voted one way under Clinton and another under Bush.

>I am not happy with Kerry's dancing around his war position.

Kerry hasn't "danced around" anything. He voted for regime change under Clinton. He voted the same way under Bush. He voted for a bill to provide our troops with all the funding they needed and for a LOAN to rebuild Iraq -- a bill that Bush threatened to veto even though it contained the funding for our troops. Only a liar could claim Kerry's record on this issue is inconsistent.

>All of you sweet, caring anti-war children

>How can you pacifists

>possibly support such a militaristic monster?

Being against the war in Iraq and against war in general are two different things. How rank stupid (is that the adjectival version of "rank stupidity"?).

Why Doug69, I'm fairly sure that your statement is dripping with sarcasm, like honey from the comb...and as far as I know, John Kerry has made no indication that, were he to take office, anything at all would change about the war in Iraq. I'm sure he'll have to spend some time seeing which way the wind is blowing before he makes any decisions about that.

He is a bit of a weather-vain, after all.

But, if this is a truly important issue to you, Doug, i trust you will consider a write-in candidate for president:

The one senator who voted AGAINST allowing Bush to unilateraly declare war, MY senator, Barbara Boxer.

Trix

Only a liar could claim Kerry's record on this

>issue is inconsistent.

The issue - at least for me - isn't that Kerry's position on the Iraq war has been inconsistent. I agree that it's been EXTREMELY consistent - he's been in favor of waging on and invading that soverign country, and this week made clear that this would have been true EVEN IF he knew that Iraq had no WMD's.

That's pretty remarkable considering that the vast majority of the Party that just nominated him is now strongly opposed to that war, and talks about the war - the one Kerry supported and supports - as though it's some sort of "War crime."

It's also remarkable that the same people who talk about the war in Iraq as the "murder" of innocent Iraqi people and who claim that the U.S. is akin to Nazi Germany because it invaded a soveriegn country that didn't threaten us, are now supporting for President a person who - CONSISTENTLY, as you point out- was an advocate of that very war - and who has now gone so far to say that he would STILL be an advocate even if he KNEW that a primary justification for the war - that Iraq had WMD's - was not true.

>The truth is that Bush went to the Senate and asked for a vote

>of support so that he could enlist the help of the UN to force

>Saddam out in one way or another.

The resolution giving Bush authority to wage war on Iraq was not conditioned on obtaining UN approval. It left it to the discretion of the Presdient to decide when, if and how the war would be fought - and Kerry voted to give Bush that UNCONDITIONAL authority. Last week, he said he would STILL have voted that way even if he knew there were no WMDs' in Iraq.

It's true that the Bush Administration promised that they would TRY to get UN approval before invading. And there's no question that they tried and tried. They stopped trying only once it became clear that France would never approve of a war there no matter what, which rendered further efforts futile.

In any event, there is no way to reconcile vigorous anti-war rhetoric with support for Kerry's position on Iraq, which for quite some time has been rather aggressively pro-war.

>It's also remarkable that the same people who talk about the

>war in Iraq as the "murder" of innocent Iraqi people and who

>claim that the U.S. is akin to Nazi Germany because it invaded

>a soveriegn country that didn't threaten us, are now

>supporting for President a person who - CONSISTENTLY, as you

>point out- was an advocate of that very war -

Is it any more remarkable than the fact that most registered Republican voters do NOT favor banning abortion, and yet for the past 20 years every single presidential nominee of the party, including Bush, HAS favored banning abortion? Really, Doug, you seem not to understand that each party is a coalition of different interest groups, and that in a coalition it isn't possible to give every group everything it wants on every issue. There are Republicans -- like Bob Barr -- who think the USA Patriot Act is a danger to our liberties. But they are still supporting Bush, even though he called for the renewal of the Act in his last State of the Union speech. Are they crazy?

>>The truth is that Bush went to the Senate and asked for a

>vote

>>of support so that he could enlist the help of the UN to

>force

>>Saddam out in one way or another.

>The resolution giving Bush authority to wage war on Iraq was

>not conditioned on obtaining UN approval.

Right. Bush merely told the Senate that he needed such a sweeping resolution IN ORDER TO GET UN APPROVAL.

>It's true that the Bush Administration promised that they

>would TRY to get UN approval before invading. And there's no

>question that they tried and tried. They stopped trying only

>once it became clear that France would never approve of a war

>there no matter what, which rendered further efforts futile.

That is untrue. France never made any such statement. The fact is that Bush had a deadline for invading Iraq -- he had already told King Abdullah of Jordan about it in a meeting during the previous August, at the same time as he was telling the American people he "hadn't decided" about using force against Iraq -- and when it became clear he might miss the deadline if he continued negotiations, he gave up the negotiations.