Kerry's position on troop strength in Iraq

[paineinthearse]

Towards the end of the October 04, I remember Kerry saying that US troop levels in Iraq should be increased (to 300,000?) and the borders secured.

Does this remain his position?

No speculation, please - links to positions appreciated.

[sandnsea]

1. Your link first

No speculation please, links appreciated.

[paineinthearse]

2. Thought this was a repository of information

I googled but can't find what I am looking for.

My "source" is Rep. Jim McGovern (Ma - 3), in a speech given tonight at Clark University.

You can contact his office to verify.

edited CD.

[sandnsea]

3. "I remember Kerry saying"

That's what you said, not that somebody else was your source. Doesn't matter. You're both wrong. I can't hardly google up a wrong now, can I? That's the beauty of lies, unintentional or otherwise, you can't refute them.

I remember paineinthearse saying grass was purple. Find that quote for me, would you? :eyes:

[Noisy Democrat]

5. Kerry never said it

I'm confident about that because I have a bit of an obsession with tracking what Kerry says about Iraq -- I run the site http://www.kerryoniraqwar.com -- and if he'd called for sending almost 200,000 more American troops to Iraq, I certainly would've noticed. I can't prove he never said it, but I'm confident. :)

This congressman who apparently makes things up out of whole cloth -- unless you just misheard or misremembered him --, is he a Democrat or a Republican?

[WildEyedLiberal]

8. You run that site?

Awesome! It's a great and informative site.

[Noisy Democrat]

10. Thanks! :)

Yeah, that's my site. I'm afraid I haven't updated since the election -- always have too many irons in the fire, it seems -- but I have excellent *intentions* of updating. :) I want to add a blog where I can just easily post Kerry's latest statements on DSM, Iraq, etc. along with things like news articles that prove him right.

[MH1]

4. He said recently that borders should be secured:

The Speech the President Should Give 6/28/2005 Op-Ed in NYT

The administration must work with the Iraqi government to establish a multinational force to help protect its borders. Such a force, if sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, could attract participation by Iraq's neighbors and countries like India.

I thought he had called at one time for increasing forces in Iraq, but not to 300,000 (that was Shinseki, wasn't it?) and in any case I don't have a link. However note in the same op-ed given above, he also said:

Our mission in Iraq is harder because the administration ignored the advice of others, went in largely alone, underestimated the likelihood and power of the insurgency, sent in too few troops to secure the country, destroyed the Iraqi army through de-Baathification, failed to secure ammunition dumps, refused to recognize the urgency of training Iraqi security forces and did no postwar planning. A little humility would go a long way -- coupled with a strategy to succeed.

By implication then at one time he supported more troops, but note that in this op-ed piece he calls for certain actions to accelerate build-up of Iraqi troop strength, and no mention one way or the other about sending more U.S. troops. (To be fair - which no one in political discourse ever wants to be - there is no position on troop strength, whether "send more", "withdraw", or "stay the same" that makes any sense except in the context of other actions and the success or failure of those actions. I'm a little frustrated by people calling for a detailed "plan" on Iraq - let's just tell the insurgents everything, huh? Bush has failed miserably. Kerry has a military and legislative record which shows intelligence and capability to do a far better job. That's all I need to know, as far as his position on Iraq. When it comes to comparing him to other Dem candidates, Iraq can only disqualify others; anyone who is competent on Iraq and military in general, would have to beat Kerry on other issues to win me away.)

On a related note - I can't look for the link now but I am absolutely certain of it - he has called for increasing U.S. full-time military strength (not Iraq troop strength) by 40,000. The reason for this is that our military is currently overdeployed and commitments made by * have put unfair demands on National Guard and Reserve forces. Especially National Guard - remember that the states rely on National Guard troops for various local needs such as fighting forest fires and helping in natural disasters. So whether you like the situation we're in or not, it is a fact, and we need to augment the regular force until we can extricate from some of *'s commitments.

[paineinthearse]

6. Thank you

Two members of my Congressional delegation, Kerry and McGovern, have opposing views of the US role in Iraq. Thank you for the assitance.

[sandnsea]

7. So

Are you planning to lie about Kerry's view in order to promote McGovern's? Or are you planning to remind McGovern that the plan Kerry proposed last year included withdrawing troops this summer?

[TayTay]

9. McGovern and Kerry are close allies

They differ on how to accelerate the process in Iraq. Cong. McGovern is part of the Withdrawal Coalition in the House. (As are 60 or so other Cong.) They believe that a pullout date would be advantageous to getting US troops out of Iraq and bringing this ar to an end.

Sen. Kerry (and many others) believe that a withdrawal date is not in sight at this time. Kerry called for adding 40,000 more troops to Iraq. This is to provide more security and keep US troops in harms way from getting injured or killed. This theory holds that we do not have enough troops in Iraq to protect the Americans there. It is a safety issue.

There are dozens of reasons on both sides, but Kerry and McGovern are not very far off in their asessments of the Iraq War situation.

[Noisy Democrat]

11. Are you positive

that Kerry called for adding 40,000 more troops *to Iraq*? Do you happen to recall when you saw this? I remember him wanting to increase the size of the army, but not specifically sending 40,000 more to Iraq. If I missed a statement of his on this, I'd like to find it.

[ginnyinWI]

12. that's what I remember too, ND

He said it during the debates I believe, and emphasized that they were not for Iraq. Maybe he said something else after that, but that's what I remember.

[karynnj]

13. I remember it as you do ND

that he wanted to expand the overall millitary but not the troops in Iraq. (From the op-ed and the TV response to Bush's speech.)

During the election I think he did want to raise the number in Iraq, to facilitate their mission and getting everyone out. The difference may be he doesn't trust Bush to do what he would do - in light of all his lying.

[TayTay]

16. I believe this references the need to add additional

divisions to the Army so that troop rotations would not be so onerous to the troops and the families they are leaving behind.

My memory might be off here, but I believe this argument was not necessarily about sending additional troops to Iraq. I think it was about trying to get some of the pressure off a military deployment system that is rapidly approaching the breaking point. (And may have passed it already.) We have National Guard troops who are spending months and months in Iraq and the Guard was never designed to endure this kind of a deployment. The additional divisions would be a permanent addition to the structure of the military (at least for now.)

It is an open question what will happen to military planning and intelligence post-Iraq. The prior strategy was to keep enough troops and armaments to fight two major wars at once. The world has changed a lot and the Iraq War may have just pointed out how the greatest threat to the world's security might not be standing armies, but small bands of committed cells of terrorists who are not fighting in the way our military structure has been designed to oppose. Post-Iraq, we have a lot of thinking to do as to how to best prepare an adequate defense and deal with actual small threats to this nation that might include a cell of ten or twenty people who manage to get ahold of nuclear or biological weapons. Large troop deployments won't help in that scenario.

[FreedomAngel82]

18. Earlier this year Kerry made a mid east trip back in January

I remember him coming back and telling how all the leaders he met with were ready and willing to send troops to help secure the boarders. Guess what? Bush hasn't called upon them to do so. All these leaders Kerry spoke with were very surprised that Bush hasn't called them because they had the offer anytime he was ready to say the word "go".

[MH1]

21. Thank you!

I'd forgotten about that, but now I remember it clearly.

I'm trying to start organizing links to sources around this stuff, so if you or anyone else can provide a link to an article on this, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Mass]

14. This is not what kerry said

As far as I remember, Kerry said that the military had recommended 300,000 troops to go in Iraq, which is true if you remember.

He never said that now, we should send 300,000 thousand troops (except if you have a quote). If anything, he has been speaking about what steps would be necessary to secure Iraq so that we can have the troops back.

[TayTay]

15. I know this is a bit dated now, but

Russert specifically asked Kerry about this on the Jan. 30th Meet the Press show:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Edward Kennedy, the senior senator from Massachusetts, a prime sponsor of your presidential candidacy...

SEN. KERRY: I've heard of him.

MR. RUSSERT: ...gave a speech on Thursday. Let me show you what he said and come back and talk about it.

(Videotape, Thursday):

SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY, (D-MA): Once Sunday's elections are behind us and the democratic transition is under way, President Bush should immediately announce his intention to negotiate a timetable for a drawdown of American combat forces with the Iraqi government. At least 12,000 American troops, probably more, should leave at once to send a strong signal about our intentions and to ease the pervasive sense of occupation.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Specifically, do you agree with Senator Kennedy that 12,000 American troops should leave at once?

SEN. KERRY: No.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe there should be a specific timetable of withdrawal of American troops?

SEN. KERRY: No.

MR. RUSSERT: What would you do?

SEN. KERRY: I understand exactly what Senator Kennedy is saying, and I agree with Senator Kennedy's perceptions of the problem and of how you deal with it. I would--in fact, last summer, if you'll recall, I said specifically that if we did the things that I laid out--the training, the international community, the services and reconstruction, and the elections and protection--we could draw down troops and begin to withdraw them. I think what Senator Kennedy is saying--and here I do agree with him--is that it is vital for the United States to make it clear that we are not there with long-term goals and intentions of our presence in the region. I agree with Senator Kennedy that we have become the target and part of the problem today, if not the problem. Now, obviously, you've got to provide security and stability in order to be able to turn this over to the Iraqis and to be able to withdraw our troops, so I wouldn't do a specific timetable, but I certainly agree with him in principle that the goal must be to withdraw American troops.

Now, I wouldn't be surprised if the new government, as soon as it's possible, begins to negotiate some modality like that. And I wouldn't be surprised if they even asked us to leave in some way over a period of time. I wouldn't be surprised if the administration privately, behind closed doors, asked them to ask us to leave. I think there are plenty of ways to skin this cat. But the most important thing is that you've got to have stability.

What Iraq is after this is important to the world. It cannot be a haven for terrorism. It cannot be a completely failed state. Now, you'll notice the administration has backed off significantly of its own high goals of full democratization and so forth, and I don't think you're going to hear them pushing that. There are a lot of conservatives, neo-cons and others in Washington debating now sort of what the modality of withdrawal ought to be.

Beyond the rather amusing notion of 'how liberal is he' (Ah, Massachusetts) there is about a dime's worth of difference in what Kerry is saying and what the Withdrawal folks are saying. They want a withdrawal announced that has a time table attached to it. (I have heard 12 - 18 months.) Kerry wants some conditions met before he start wo withdraw, including the extremely important announcement that we (the US) have no long-term goal of establishing permanent bases in Iraq. (This is the actual difference between the neo-cons and the sane world, not the relatively smaller issues of when we withdraw and whether or not we have a time table.)

[jillan]

17. this is what Kerry said during the second debate

" Now, I'm going to add 40,000 active duty forces to the military, and I'm going to make people feel good about being safe in our military, and not overextended, because I'm going to run a foreign policy that actually does what President Reagan did, President Eisenhower did, and others.

We're going to build alliances. We're not going to go unilaterally. We're not going to go alone like this president did. "
_____________________________________________________________________

Now I am taking this out of context. The previous discussion was about a coalition, that Bsh never made. So when Kerry said 'additional 40,000 troops, he wasn't talking about American troops. And he ended this part of the discussion talking about alliances.

http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004c.html

and this explains what he wants now

http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/cfm/record.cfm?id=239276

Overall Kerry wants to increase the numbers of troops so the soldiers that are fighting now can come home when their tour is over. He is against the way we are sending the same people back to war several times.

I also came across an interesting quote that Kerry said during the debates that made me think of Cindy Sheehan-
" And that's one of the reasons why I believe I can get this job done, because I am determined for those soldiers and for those families, for those kids who put their lives on the line.

That is noble. That's the most noble thing that anybody can do. And I want to make sure the outcome honors that nobility."

[jillan]

19. and incase anyone's interested - here's Hillary's position on the troops

I just happened to get this in my yahoo alerts. The article had Kerry's
'add 40,000 troops' in it. Sure, after I do the research I get this.

The Democrats' speculative front-runner for '08,
Hillary Clinton, has offered similarly hawkish rhetoric. "If we were to artificially set a deadline of some sort, that would be like a green light to the terrorists, and we can't afford to do that," Clinton told CBS in February. Instead, she recently proposed enlarging the Army by 80,000 troops "to respond to threats wherever danger lies." Clinton, a member of the Armed Services Committee, appears more comfortable accommodating the President's Iraq policy than opposing it, and her early and sustained support for the war (and frequent photo-ops with the troops) supposedly reinforces her national security credentials.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/thenation/20050811/cm_thenation/20050829berman_1

It's actually a pretty sucky story about how the dems find themselves in a predicament because they were all gung-ho to support the war, and now.... We all know the reasons, but I hate articles like this that make the dems explain once more why we changed our minds. Sigh.

[MH1]

20. Kerry never really changed his mind anyway,

from what I understand. (I am specifially writing this about Kerry, but I believe it applies to most Dems. The Yahoo aritcle is bullshit.)

Kerry voted for IWR to get the inspectors back in. He absolutely did NOT want to go to war with Iraq at the time and in the way that Bush did it. He wanted to avoid war but correctly recognized that the existing situation required SOME action (remember children dying because of sanctions, and Saddam building palaces instead of feeding his people?).

However once Bush started the invasion it became an entirely different situation, and an entirely different question.

Now there are troops on the ground, the Iraqi government that we helped install is mostly ineffectual, the infrastructure is devastated and chaos reigns. As bad as things were under Saddam, it could not have been called chaos.

It is totally unreasonable for anyone to say that someone should have the "same position" on these totally different questions. "Supporting the war" is a nonsensical phrase - the war is already there. Being "anti-war" NOW means extricating our troops as quickly as possible - and there are many variations on how that could actually be accomplished, for anyone who has a clue about military operations. Of those variations, the "drop your weapons, turn tail and run" is going to get the most of our troops killed, and therefore create the greatest risk of civilian massacres from the backlash. A measured approach is the only sane option - so the question only becomes what are the measures? And as soon as we telegraph any actual plan to the insurgents (as in a "timetable"), you gotta know they will exploit that knowledge as far as possible to kill as many of our people (and "collaborators") as possible before we are gone.

The opposite, being "pro-war", would mean having the position that the war was and is good, and that we should continue the policy that got us involved (like by invading Iran, which very well may be the real reason * wants to reduce troops in Iraq). Despite what freeptards in certain forums and idiotic columnists in certain normally-intelligent lefty mags want to say, Kerry is NOT pro this war or any other. It's total freeper bullshit to say that he is.

Then there's the gray area of wanting to resolve the current Iraq chaos by continued presence of American troops, along with possibly bringing in more help from other Western nations. This is where the real debate is among the left, IMO (or where it SHOULD be). We should all be anti-war in the sense that this was a bad war and we need to get out; but the problem is in what state are we leaving the Iraqi people, and how are they better served - by us leaving ASAP or by us sticking around to take bullets and bombs while some security infrastructure is rebuilt? I think Colin Powell had it right with the Pottery Barn rule - but the question is what is the best way for us to pay for what we broke?

As for Hillary' statements in that article: there is nothing "hawkish" about wanting to rebuild our decimated military, to take the heat off the National Guard and Reserve forces; nothing "hawkish" about supporting the troops (what, she should pretend they don't exist?), and in that article they incorrectly equate wanting to keep troops in Iraq to provide security for the new government, as being pro-war. (Not that I believe hers is a correct position - fwiw, I believe that I don't have enough information to know what the best policy would be. And I doubt that any DU'er does.)

That article has some possibly worthwhile points, but I think the author exaggerates the "hawkishness" of Hillary's positions.

[TayTay]

22. The truly ironic part of all of this

is that the * Admin is being pulled away from the more hawkish pronouncement of the neocons and back into the light of reality.

In other words, John Kerry was right, you can't really fight an ideology and an internal religious civil war with conventional military tactics. You have to use policing, forensic accounting and other methods of modern tracking to reduce these movements and dry up their sources of funding. (Kerry was harshly mocked by the *ies for this last fall, they reduced his idea that terrorism could be reduced to an ongoing public 'nuisance' into the notion that Kerry didn't take terrorism seriously. The *ies are now coming around to Kerry's point of view. Esp. Rumsfeld. That must gaul them to no end.)

See this article in today's Washington Post. The *ies, after a cost of hundreds of Billions of US dollrs, thousands and thousands of lives and a process that may have 'broken' the US military is finally embracing what they scorned last year: The reality-based community.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300853.html

[kerrygoddess]

23. Kerry's recent position on Iraq...

PITA, how you missed this recent speech and other statements from Kerry on Iraq is beyond me, it was all over DU, BuzzFlash and countless other blogs -

John Kerry on Bush's Fort Bragg Speech
28 June 2005

The following statement from John Kerry on Bush's Fort Bragg Speech was just released:

"Rescuing the mission in Iraq takes more than a new speech, it will take a new policy and a whole series of steps to get it right.

"This Fourth of July weekend, when Americans fly the flag, the best way to honor our troops is with a plan to complete the mission and succeed in Iraq. Completing the mission means getting it right. It means providing the leadership, uniting the country and taking the steps necessary to win.

"Every American wants to see America succeed in Iraq, but it requires leadership the Administration has so far refused to provide. Our men and women in uniform have done a superb job in Iraq, but the civilian leadership has let them down.

"If the Administration takes the clear steps needed, and holds Iraqi feet to the fire, we can succeed in Iraq. If not, we will stumble along, our troops at greater risk, casualties rising, costs rising, and the patience of the American people wearing thin.

"America doesn't lack the resolve to win this war, but we have lacked a clear plan. The Administration owes it to our troops to choose the responsible path. Our brave men and women deserve leadership equal to their sacrifice.

"Every American should take a moment tonight to think about our troops who are serving in Iraq , Afghanistan and around the world."

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1179

Audio Link to Sppech - http://www.senate.gov/cgi-bin/exitmsg?url=http://democrats.gov/actualities/kerry/kerry050628.mp3

Text of Speech -

John Kerry on Iraq: Concrete Steps President Must Take to Rescue the Mission
28 June 2005

LightUpTheDarkness has received this advance copy of John Kerry's floor speech today:

John Kerry Speaks Out on Iraq, Details Concrete Steps President Must Take to Rescue the Mission

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=1174

[kerrygoddess]

24. Here's a few more links ...

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1176

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1175

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1172

This should answer all of PainInTheArse's questions. Of course he could have looked on JK's Senate website and found almost all of this.