Will the real flip-flopper please stand up?

[mooseandsquirrel]

another gene lyons home...

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/GeneLyons/GeneLyons.html

snip

"I have been 100 percent consistent," Kerry emphasized to USA Today. "Saddam Hussein was a threat, he needed to be held accountable to the U.N. resolutions. But it needed to be done in the right way. George Bush did it in the wrong way, and broke his promises to Americans."

snip

[DoomFook]

1. On This I don't Agree

It wasn't worth going after Saddam; The Big Dawg had him contained and harmless. All those people, including ours, dead now; not worth it.

[BlueEyedSon]

2. $200 billion and counting

[emulatorloo]

3. So what does this mean then . . .isn't that what Clinton did?

"Saddam Hussein was a threat, he needed to be held accountable to the U.N. resolutions"

there were lots of ways to hold Saddam accountable to UN resolutions. . .inspectors, sanctions, diplomacy, etc. . . .but GWB skipped all that and went for War. . .that I believe is Kerry's point.

ON EDIT add explan

[Brotherjohn]

4. I agree it wasn't worth it. But the issue is that there was uncertainty..

... (particularly after 9-11) as to the level of threat he posed. Based on what I knew then, I thought it was a gamble I would have taken to leave Iraq alone and assume they still could pose no threat. But it would have been a gamble, and I don't make policy.

I didn't even think it was necessary to go back to the U.N.. But the fact was our intelligence (as bad as some of it was) at the very least painted an unsure picture of the possibility of Iraq reconstituting some form of WMDs. Yes, it was hyped, and yes, there was NO chance of collusion with Al Qaeda, and yes, the admin played Congress and the people on all of this.

But I never have a problem with getting U.N. Inspectors back in there to give us a clear picture of what the threat was. That was unlikely without the threat of force. It turns out that there was NO substantial Iraqi threat, and the U.N. was demonstrating that.

As Kerry says, Bush went back on his word at this point by going ahead, despite saying he'd use war as a last resort (the IWR said this as well). Yes, Hussein "needed to be held accountable to the U.N. resolutions". We may NOW know that he was following them based on the return of U.N. Inspectors, and subsequently, our military crawling all over Iraq. But we were ONLY GUESSING before U.N. Inspectors returned.

When Kerry says Hussein "needed to be held accountable to the U.N. resolutions", he's not saying we needed to bomb them. He's saying we needed to let the U.N. back in and do its job, which is what they were doing. Bush short-circuited that process.