Bush Says Kerry Has Many Iraq Positions, But How Many Rationales For War?

[DrFunkenstein]

Actually, Kerry has been remarkably consistent - it is just a position that requires more than two words. Kerry authorized force to make Saddam compliant with international law, with the understanding that any major military campaign would be performed competently.

Of course, how do you explain that when Bush (and the media and left wing activists) only want to know if you are pro-war or anti-war. Kerry gets into a great deal of problems because he refuses to point out the logical fallacy of this "false dilemma." Americans are smart enough to know that there are more options in the world beyond A and B.

Now let's turn our sights to Bush and his Pentagon cabal, who changed rationales for the war everytime the last one was shot down.

1. Disarming the WMDs.
2. Severing an al-Qaeda supporter.
3. Regime change for past genocide.
4. Promoting democracy in the Middle East.
5. Forwarding Mid-East peace talks (remember that one?).

There are probably two or three that aren't coming immediately to mind. But let's check out one of my favorite quotes (courtesy of Paul Wolfowitz):

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people.

The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it.



http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

Here is a bonus passage from the same interview:

As I recall, one of the pieces of hysteria was the idea that this is a blueprint for a massive increase in U.S. defense spending, when in fact it was a blueprint for a 40 percent reduction in U.S. defense spending. It goes on from there.

When we did a revised draft that in fact I had reviewed carefully, the State Department initially didn't want us to put it out, I think because it was a little too much. Well, I don't know why. They didn't want us to put it out. I don't want to speculate on motives. But in January of 1993 as we were about to leave, I said to Cheney don't you think we should publish it? And he said yes, we should. So it's available in the full text as the Regional Defense Strategy of January, 1993.

[Guaranteed]

1. EXCELLENT point. nt

[Xipe Totec]

2. Bush Has Only One Position On Iraq; The Missionary Position

You still get screwed, but you don't get to enjoy it.