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03/07/2004 Archived Entry: "Three days running."
Three days running.
Will Bush be able to withstand this for more than a week before he completely melts down? Kerry declares pre-emptive war.
Had he been sitting in the Oval Office last weekend as rebel forces were threatening to enter Port-au-Prince, Senator John Kerry says, he would have sent an international force to protect Haiti's widely disliked elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide."I would have been prepared to send troops immediately, period," Mr. Kerry said on Friday, expressing astonishment that President Bush, who talks of supporting democratically elected leaders, withheld any aid and then helped spirit Mr. Aristide into exile after saying the United States could not protect him.
"Look, Aristide was no picnic, and did a lot of things wrong," Mr. Kerry said. But Washington "had understandings in the region about the right of a democratic regime to ask for help. And we contravened all of that. I think it's a terrible message to the region, democracies, and it's shortsighted."
[...]
In the interview on his plane, Mr. Kerry said he was reluctant to define how he would act in specific situations — particularly in murky cases like Pakistan — because conditions could change by next year.
Yet, signaling how he plans to use the questionable intelligence about Iraq to chip away Mr. Bush's credibility, he added that if he committed troops to battle, he would do it with "full disclosure and full vetting of the intelligence to the American people."
But the core of Mr. Kerry's argument in the interview was that divisions within Mr. Bush's foreign policy team have frozen the art of preventative diplomacy and kept Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from doing his job.
"I think simply Powell, who I know, like and admire, has been never permitted to be fully a secretary of state in the way that I envision the secretary of state," he said, describing how he believes that Mr. Powell has been regularly undercut by the administration's more hawkish members, led by Vice President Dick Cheney. "I think Powell — I'm not sure they didn't lock the keys to the airplane up sometimes."
[...]
But to talk to Mr. Bush's advisers and then to Mr. Kerry is to hear a very different description of America's influence in the world. For example, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, argued recently that the decision to confront Saddam Hussein sent such a strong message worldwide that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, agreed to surrender his nuclear and chemical weapons. In turn, she contended, that helped unwind the nuclear proliferation network built by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Mr. Kerry waved that argument away: "Everybody who knows anything about Libya and Qaddafi knows that is not what brought him around. They will claim it, they want the linkage, but it is not true, like much of what they say." He added, "that deal was on the table several years ago" as Libya sought to settle the Pan Am Flight 103 terrorism case.
"No matter how much they bluster and futz, they can't fake it," he said.
But in several cases Mr. Kerry declined to say how he would handle some of the stickiest issues: whether to reward Pakistan for its aid against Al Qaeda, for example, or punish it for failing to crack down on what was clearly one of the world's most dangerous nuclear proliferation networks, based in its own laboratories.
He said, however, that he had no confidence in White House assurances that Pakistan's nuclear weapons were safe from terrorists.
[...]
Mr. Kerry charges that a ... lack of constant attention led the administration to avoid dealing with the North Korean crisis for the first 18 months of Mr. Bush's presidency and that even now, Mr. Bush is unwilling to engage in serious negotiations. It was an example, he said, of the president's dealing first with the less threatening problem, Iraq, because it was the easier to solve.
"There's a reason the Bush administration walked that backwards and chose Iraq," he said. "And the reason is in the first eight hours of a conflict with North Korea, you'd have over a million casualties, and they knew that in Iraq you wouldn't."
The more I hear, the more I like. More of this, Senator.
Replies: 10 people speak up
A few items:
I still keep hearing that Aristide was kidnapped.
From Bush's own lips, said he will continue to use 911 in his ads.. What a discrace.
Ashcroft in trouble with the law:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36775-2004Mar6.html
Is that insult to injury?
Posted by Demeur @ 03/07/2004 02:56 AM NY
A few items:
I still keep hearing that Aristide was kidnapped.
From Bush's own lips, said he will continue to use 911 in his ads.. What a disgrace.
Ashcroft in trouble with the law:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36775-2004Mar6.html
Is that insult to injury?
Posted by Demeur @ 03/07/2004 02:57 AM NY
I must say, I'm pleasantly surprised to hear Kerry attackign Bush like this still, now that the nomination is sewn up. Is he just keeping at it through the end of the primaries so as not to make any late states vote against him symbolically, or will he keep it up?
We'll see. He better keep this up, and he better attack on all fronts too (economics, civil liberties, etc)
Posted by Jason @ 03/07/2004 10:32 AM NY
Jason...what's NOT to attack?
Kerry has a long damn list. Bush has done nothing I agree with since he renewed unemployment benefits in December of 2002. Nothing. Not one action or statement by this monkey has been the RIGHT thing to do or say since then.
Kerry may not pick every subject on YOUR list...but he's not shy, and this story proves it.
I am going to say something incredibly risky, and possibly perfectly naive: I believe Kerry, like most of the Democrats who ran this year, is trying to become President not out of ego and power nearly as much as a sense of real mission to save this country and the world.
I usually stick to the facts; they're safer. But I believe this is true.
Later.
Posted by Daddy-O @ 03/07/2004 12:10 PM NY
calling bush a monkey is offensive to any monkey who might be reading this. by the way, they prefer to be called simian-americans.
i dont believe anything kerry says, and i think he will be a disaster, but i dont think he will be as big a disaster as bush (who i sincerely believe will bring all life on earth to an end if re-elected) so i will vote for kerry, but i wont like it.
maybe im wrong. i hope so, but you have to remember that bush and kerry are fraternity brothers, who both come from the ruling class. i do give kerry credit for doing something positive with his life though, as opposed to bush who has used his daddy's influence to get everything he has in life.
Posted by justin @ 03/07/2004 12:34 PM NY
"There's a reason the Bush administration walked that backwards and chose Iraq," he said. "And the reason is in the first eight hours of a conflict with North Korea, you'd have over a million casualties, and they knew that in Iraq you wouldn't."
You are being fooled!!!
Oil, oil, oil, oil, oil.
Change your system.
Posted by Frederik @ 03/07/2004 04:46 PM NY
Frederick, *you* know that it's about oil, and *I* know it's about oil...but we've been pushing that button over and over and it hasn't worked and isn't going to. People KNOW Bush=Big Oil, they (so far) accept it and are willing to live with it. As, let's be honest here, the Right pushed the "Clinton screws around!" button for just as long and we (enough of us anyway) decided that yeah, that's bad, but he's still Our Guy and we like him better than Your Guy.
(As an aside, I am just waiting for the following argument to emerge from the Fetid Eructations of the right: the astronomical-and-headed-higher price of gas at the pump PROVES that we didn't go into Iraq to steal their oil. Therefore Bush is an honest man and should be reelected. It's one of those things that's so mind-numbingly stupid as to make a perfect Bushite argument. A Chewbacca Defense if you will, that works precisely because it doesn't make sense. :)
Posted by Xan @ 03/07/2004 05:15 PM NY
and they have oil too... i think that is a given. of course they were after oil. everyone has heard the "no blood for oil" slogan so much that it has achieved the same level of cultural boredom as "wear a condom" people already know, and they are sick of hearing about it. thats america, we are the stupidest nation on earth, get used to it.
i think it is important to hit bush with everything possible. the line about korea is a good one, because if kerry starts talking about oil, everyone will just roll their eyes and yawn. people arent interested in the truth, you have to say something new.
and yes. attacking korea would be a complete disaster. i dont know if the death toll would hit a million in the first 8 hours (we would need time to draft enough soldiers first) but certainly south korea would fall in the first day, and it would certainly start WW3. either way, a bad idea. its such a bad idea that im surprised bush isnt sugguesting it... oh yeah, thats right, america is a bully, we only pick fights we think we can win (especially after the viet cong handed our asses to us on a bamboo platter)
Posted by justin @ 03/07/2004 05:23 PM NY
Why is Kerry even bringing up this 'Iraq before Korea because of casualties' argument if it so clearly is a lie? And why do you think it's okay for him to lie? Because he's not bush?
As a presidential candidate and of course 'bonesman' he should be aware that it was policy from day 1. of your current 'administration' to attack Iraq, not Korea or any other country, and he shouldn't have mentioned it like this.
Korea became a crisis to you only because bush told you so with his 'axis of evil' mumbojumbo. To me, for Kerry to say this demonstrates again his involment with the same crowd and his willingness to continue the fake 'war on terrorism' which, if you really think there should be one, you should fight at home by changing your system. For instance by not allowing political parties to be sponsored by arms manufacturers and letting people like dick cheney hold secret meetings about securing for the US of A the world's waning oil supply instead of, just a freak idea, supporting open debate about sensible energy policy and acting thereupon.
In this reasoning Kerry is doing bush a double favor by a. saying, again, that bush was right to attack Iraq and b. telling it was a sensible choice to attack Iraq before *attacking* Korea because of the casualties. That's something quite different form negotiating! Am I to think that if he were in place of bush he would have attacked Korea, thereby causing over a million casualties in the first 8 hours? The Kerry quotes on this pages answer me 'yes'. Is this deliberate or is he just stupid?
Posted by Frederik @ 03/07/2004 06:50 PM NY
"...Powell, who I know, like and admire..."
When are Dems going to wake up and realise that Powell is just as evil as the rest of them? That he enables Bush, that he lied to the UN about WMDs and helped kick off the illegal Iraqi war?
Posted by lazarus @ 03/10/2004 02:25 AM NY
