11 August 2004 Blog Home : August 2004 : Permalink
The VodkaPundit wants a fisking, and what the VodkaPundit wants the VodkaPundit gets, what with him being Pope Incorrigible I and so on.
Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, responding to criticism from President George W. Bush that Kerry has changed position on Iraq, told supporters he's been ``consistent'' and suggested Bush lacks ``maturity.''
Calling Kerry consistent reminds me of the statement by (I think) Alvin Toffler that "The only constant is change itself". In that sense Kerry is indeed consistent. He is consistently INCONSISTENT. As for maturity, it is possible that the senator is confusing World Championship Boring Capability and Pompous Arrogance with Maturity. The chain of logic is fairly simple: senators are mature, senators are Pompous, Arrogant Bores hence maturity means being a Pompous Arrogant Bore. Of course outside of Washington and the Senate maturity is a bit more nuanced but Kery may not realise that, seeing as he's not had any other job since being an immature sailor.
``The Bush folks are trying to say that we've changed positions, this and that,'' Kerry told a rally at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. ``I have been consistent all along, ladies and gentlemen. I thought the United States needed to stand up to Saddam Hussein. I voted to stand up to Saddam Hussein.''
Curiously this soundbite omits the information about precisely what Kerry thought we should do once we had stood up for Saddam Hussein. Politely open the door for him, give him a sloppy kiss? Oh sorry it says TO not FOR, well in Latin of course one uses the dative for both, one does apologise. Let me restart. Standing up to Hussein is a very nuanced statement. Standing up to someone could be anything from telling him he's been a naughty boy and not to do it again to dropping a nuclear bomb on him. If Kerry wants to be the strong man then standing up isn't enough, we need statements like "I voted to overthrow that scumbag Hussein by any means necessary", but one fears that such a direct statement lacks nuance.
``I know what we need to do now to get the troops home,'' Kerry said. ``I know what we need to do to deal with Iraq. We need to do what we should have done in the beginning. We need the statesmanship. We need the patience. We need the maturity. We need the leadership.''
Somehow this line reminds me of Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder series and just as in the series I'm wondering when someone is going to play Edmund Blackadder and ask "Ok good so what precisely is your cunning plan Baldrick?" and then pick holes in it. And its not just me, USA Today is wondering about the details too.
At a political rally of Republicans in Pensacola, Florida, earlier today, President Bush, 58, said John Kerry had introduced a ``new nuance'' in explaining his vote for the war even though Kerry now criticizes Bush's handling of Iraq.
Actually to be fair that is a weak argument. It is possible to be in favour of war without agreeing on methods.
Kerry, 60, sounding a new theme in the speeches he has been giving to Democratic rallies, said he wants to bring the troops home through diplomacy. About 140,000 U.S. troops are serving in Iraq. Kerry said the U.S. needs help from allies in Iraq, to ``get the target off our troops, get the hand out of the pocket of the American taxpayer and get our troops home.''
At the time I was busy being born and anyway I was in England so I could be wrong here but to me this sounds remarkably Nixonian. And I don't mean that in a good way. More to the point Kerry seems not to have liked Nixon, so why is he apparently echoing Nixon's policies? Even further to the point, precisely which allies is the US going to get help from that is hasn't already got help from? There seems to be a distinct unwillingness to take up the white man's burden in Paris and Berlin these days.
Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 after telling Americans that intelligence showed Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to U.S. security.
``After months of questioning my motives and even my credibility, Senator Kerry now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpile of weapons we all believed were there, knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power,'' Bush said. ``I want to thank Senator Kerry for clearing that up -- although there are still 84 days left in the campaign.''
Bush is showing maturity by not at this point picking on some minor nuances of the Kerry position here.
Kerry has said Bush rushed into the conflict and didn't win adequate international support or plan for keeping Iraq secure after Hussein was driven from power.
``I thought we ought to do it right. We ought to reach out to other countries. We ought to build an international coalition,'' Kerry said in Las Vegas. ``We ought to exhaust the remedies that were available to us.''
As noted above - precisely which other countries are we talking about here? Unless we're all dreaming, there are 35 or so countries with troops in Iraq and as has been made fairly clear other countries such as France, Germany, Russia and Pakistan aren't willing to pony up. However just possibly this is a hint of Kerry's secret plan. You see Kerry has a time machine. How else can one explain the mangling of tenses, the intention to exhaust remedies that were available and no longer are?
Bush said the U.S. and its coalition partners are committed to supporting Iraq's interim government until democracy takes hold.
Two years after voting for the war in Congress, ``and almost 220 days after switching positions to declare himself the anti- war candidate, my opponent has found a new nuance,'' Bush said of Kerry's position.
Kerry said yesterday in an appearance at the Grand Canyon in Arizona that he wants to reduce U.S. troops in Iraq over time by building a coalition of forces from other nations and training Iraqi security forces as Iraq develops a stable civilian government.
Article repeats. Response repeasts. This is getting almost as tedious as a Kerry speech.