Don’t you have anything better to do, Senator Kerry, like telling us what you really stand for? From the New York Times (registration required):
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. [SNIP]Would that be two minutes before the president did so or two minutes afterward? I suppose that the point is that you would have sent the troops in at any moment in time, so long as it was different from the point in which the president did so.
Mr. Kerry's critique on Haiti, which Bush campaign aides dismissed as political, was emblematic of how he is already using foreign policy and national security issues in his contest with the president.[Bold mine]You bet it was.
"People will know I'm tough and I'm prepared to do what is necessary to defend the United States of America, and that includes the unilateral deployment of troops if necessary," [Bold mine]*snicker* So “unilateral” action is okay now, eh? Are you using the definition of “unilateral” that involves acting alone or the new definition that involves acting with the assistance of more than
"But my standard is very different from George Bush's."Oh.
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."Oh suuure. Riiight. Broadcast all of our intelligence before acting, for the entire world to see. That’s a fine strategic maneuver, not to mention a good way to get intelligence sources to dry up and to get troops killed.
This man is dangerous! Of course, maybe, he’ll change his mind about this too.
(Thanks to Roger L. Simon)
MORE: I hate it when I don't notice that there are two pages to an article.
"It's hard to imagine John banging his fist and declaring that countries are `either with us or against us,' said one adviser who speaks frequently with the Massachusetts senator. "Is that good or bad in the general election? We don't know."You'll find out.
On the campaign trail he regularly indicts the administration's "arrogant, inept, reckless, ideological" foreign policy and warns that "even the United States of America needs a few friends on this planet."Countries like the UK, Singapore and the Dominican Republic will be distressed to learn that Senator Kerry either doesn't consider them friends to the US or doesn't acknowledge their existence.
In a radio address broadcast Saturday morning, a response to Mr. Bush's weekly radio commentary, Mr. Kerry dwelled at length on the stories of American military units scrounging for private donations of steel plates for their Humvees and body armor before they deploy to Iraq. "This administration has given billions to Halliburton and requested $82 million to protect Iraq's 36 miles of coastline," he said. "But they call this basic body armor a `nonpriority' item."So tell us again why you voted against the $87 billion.
....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."I suppose that’s why Qaddafi (40th alternate spelling) admitted that he finally came around to seeing thing’s our way because he didn’t want to end up like Saddam.
In his conversations on foreign policy, sooner or later Mr. Kerry returns to the touchstone of his early adult life, Vietnam.Of course he does. Too bad his sojourn as a military officer didn’t teach him that one plus one equals two.
