Following up on an earlier post, I heard at least part of the actual statement Kerry made that the Bush campaign seized upon to ridicule Kerry's position on the Iraq War. The PBS Newshour was doing good enough journalism in their week's summary of the presidential campaign that they actually told us what Kerry said. Part of it anyway.
I couldn't tell when I heard the broadcast if it was the complete statement. But here's what they ran. When a reporter challenged him with the Bush campaign trick question - rather like the Pharisees used to challenge Jesus in the Gospels, you might say, since the president is on such intimate terms with the Deity - about whether, knowing what he knows today, if he would have voted in 2002 to give the president authority to act militarily against Iraq.
The segment didn't show the question as the reporter asked it directly to Kerry. Kwame Holman summarized it in his commentary as Kerry being asked "whether he would have voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq given the information available today."
Kerry's response (from Monday, 08/09/04):
Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority, as I've said throughout this campaign, effectively.
Now, I'm not going to get into the game conservatives enjoy so much of dancing on commas. But it's pretty clear that to any ordinary listener, even in this truncated quotation, that Kerry was saying he would have voted for the authority but as president he would have used the authority differently than Bush did.
I say "truncated," because looking back at the Daily Howler item I quoted in the previous post, I see that he was quoting the same statement. And that there was more to it:
KERRY (8/9/04): Yes, I would have voted for the authority [to go to war]. I believe it's the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently from the way President Bushhas.
And my question to President Bush is, Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace? Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth? Why did he mislead America about how he would go to war? Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way that we deserve and relieve a pressure from the American people?
Yes, for the dancing-on-commas crowd, it transcribed "it was the right authority" a tiny bit differently than the Howler did. (And I inserted an extra comma!)
Check out the PBS audio for 08/13/04: Pres. Bush, Kerry Campaign on West Coast. And this is the supposedly highbrow PBS. They at least gave part of Kerry's actual words. But why are they reporting on Bush's Pharisaical trick question and his phony taunt of Kerry's response, and not reporting on the questions Kerry tossed back to Bush? Very good questions, I might add.
Why? Because, as the Howler says on a regular basis, our American political press corps is deeply dysfunctional. Deeply, seriously dysfunctional. And how did the liberal pundit Mark Shields deal with this on the Friday Political Wrap segment?
MARK SHIELDS: ... I think the one mistake... I agree with you when John Kerry was asked would you have voted for it, still voted for it, and went to the president's bait and said yes I would. Even J. Rockefeller, vice chairman -- co-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said, look, if I had the information, I wouldn't have voted to give the president that authority.
JIM LEHRER: On weapons of mass destruction.
MARK SHIELDS: On weapons of mass destruction, and John Kerry has a very nuanced answer. I'm giving him the authority to put together a coalition and so forth. But he was -- he was very much on the defensive, but I really think - I mean, the irony is, as my friend John Carr puts it, is that Bush and Kerry seem to be in total agreement on Iraq and total disagreement about Vietnam.
Kerry was "nuanced," said the liberal pundit Shields, echoing the Bush campaign's talking point. Even Senator Rockefeller gave a better answer, he said. Barely bothering to mention what the core of Kerry's answer actually was. (Kerry's question to Bush: Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way that we deserve and relieve a pressure from the American people? Shields' dismissive version: I'm giving him the authority to put together a coalition and so forth.)
And Mark Shields is one of the best of the lot among the Big Pundits. His reporting and commentary is several cuts above most of his colleagues in Big Punditry. Yet he and Jim Lehrer played along with the press script of the week that, not coincidentally, was pretty much the same as the GOP spin.
Kerry can't be blamed for the fact that the press corps is increasingly incompetent - at best. But he and his campaign do need to come to grips with that reality now, and respond more effectively to this kind of deliberate distortion from the Bush campaign, happily abetted by our lazy press corps. Atrios has a suggestion:
I don't know how they organize who is on deck for media appearances, but they just have to be better prepared. It doesn't even matter if they have a fancy title, or are recognizable, or whatever -- they just have to be good. Train them. Drill them. Look, there are some various dem bigwigs who I like very much, and who in some contexts are very effective, but that doesn't mean they're effective media spokespeople in all contexts.
Quality comprehensive media training exists. Have a stable of professional coaches around to help people.
Sure, the media deck is stacked, but there's no use whining about it now. Every single issue needs to be distilled down to one sentence. Every single right wing charge needs to have a bullet-point rebuttal and countercharge, at everyone's fingertips - at least everyone who's going to go in front of the cameras.
Just for the heck of it, how would Bush answer Kerry's questions that the so-called "liberal press" cheerfully ignored? I'll suggest my own answers here.
Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace?
Arrogance and incompetence would pretty much cover it.
Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?
Because he knew the intelligence was hyped and didn't care. He was determined to go to war against Iraq. I'm honestly not sure exactly why, though. A big part of it is that the "neoconservatives" sold him a load of hooey about how easy it would be.
Why did he mislead America about how he would go to war?
I would guess, because he's a liar with no respect for the American people.
Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way that we deserve and relieve a pressure from the American people?
Because most of them weren't stupid or self-destructive enough to get involved in a godawful mess like this. And the governments that did have mostly taken heavy political hits for it.
Don't hold your breath waiting for our sad substitute for a real press corps to press Bush to answer Kerry's questions.
9 comments:
I like your questions, and I think you've given the correct answers here. But I have to admit that I do not agree with Senator Kerry about giving that authority to Bushie specifically (because I don't believe even Congress is that stupid not to have known what Bush intended), or with his assertion that "it was the right authority for a president to have." The Constitution is clear about who has the responsibility for declaring war, and I don't believe that the Congress was right to shirk that duty.
That being said, I do believe Senator Kerry when he says "I would have used that authority, as I've said throughout this campaign, effectively."
We have gotten so used to serious information being dumbed down that many of us have forgotten how to interpret an intelligent sentence. We rush to label something black or white and ignore the gray where the real answers lie.
"Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?
Because he knew the intelligence was hyped and didn't care. He was determined to go to war against Iraq."
Bruce, you don't have any evidence to back up this answer, and it contains a major flaw - that Bush was somehow smarter than the US (and UK etc.) intelligence communities. Equally plausible is that Bush believed the intelligence, and was very frightened that if a real link did develop between al-Qaida and Saddam's remaining WMDs that a catastrophic terrorist attack would take place on the US. In such an event, with information leaking out that Bush had ignored intelligence warnings of al-Qaida/Saddam links and Saddam's continued possession of weapons of mass destruction, Bush's presidency would have been finished. You are over-rating Bush's brainpower and knowledge, and underestimating his level of fear. David
Cherie, you're right of course on the substance of the vote. Congress was just plain irresponsible in giving that authority to Bush under those circumstances. The president has all the authority he needs under the War Powers Act to respond militarily to genuine emergencies. There was no good reason Congress shouldn't have told him, "Come back to us next February if you think we still need to go to war, and we'll give you quick action one way or the other."
One thing that occurred during the period following the vote was a rapid build-up of US forces in the area, which in practice made a decision *not* to go to war much more unlikely. Of course, we now know - and it looked evident to a lot of us at the time - that Bush and Rummy had no intention of doing anything but going to war.
Wrong as I think Kerry was in that vote, that doesn't excuse our lazy political press from parroting Republican spin points that a simple look at what Kerry says will show are factually wrong. But that's not how our mainstream press handled this one. - Bruce
David, let me see if I understand your point. Bush didn't take us to war based on any dishonesty or irresponsibility. He was just stupid and gullible. So that's all right, then! As the British say. :)
Actually, the books and reporting from Wesley Clark, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill (via Ron Suskind) and others give very good reason to think that Bush and his team intended to go to war with Iraq long before 9/11 and tried very hard to use 9/11 to justify it. One Pentagon official repeated to Clark a joke a few days after 9/11, that "if Saddam didn't do it [i.e. 9/11], too bad, he should have, because we're going to get him anyway." As they did, successfully. Or at least the 9/11 war fever.
The most we can reasonably grant Bush and his war planners is that they probably figured there would be at least enough WMDs there to make them not look like totals liars. But Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address talked about Iraq's nuclear program, their 35,000 liters of anthrax, their 38,000 liters of botulinum toxic, their 500 tons of sarin gas, etc. (Quoting from memory here. Feel free to fact-check me with the speech.)
Where is all that stuff? Where is ANY of that stuff? A drop of anthrax or botulinum toxin, a milligram of sarin, any half-plausible evidence of an active nuclear weapons program?
Stupid or dishonest or both, going to war and killing people and occupying Iraq indefinitely based on those false claims was wrong, and has damaged the United States badly. - Bruce
Bruce, WMDs or not, a very plausible case can be made on a number of grounds that the Saddam Hussein regime should have been destroyed (preferably in 1991). When his trial begins in a few months time these reasons will be made very clear to all who are willing to listen. Over the long-term the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime will be seen to be a great blessing to the world, starting with the Iraqi people of course. The major problem with US national security today is its bloated, disorganized, ego-ridden, and generally sclerotic intelligence community. This community has let Bush down on at least two major occasions. With regard to Iraq it told him Saddam still possessed many WMDs, and Bush used this conclusion to publicly justify going to war on Iraq. When the WMDs did not appear Bush looked foolish or untruthful. The US intelligence community also underestimated the depth of chaos that would be unleashed in Iraq when Saddam Hussein's gulag-like state was destroyed. Yes, Bush and his advisers should have been more questioning, demanded more rigour from the US intelligence community before acting on Iraq - they knew US intelligence had substantial weaknesses, otherwise 9/11 would not have occurred. Maybe they felt intimidated by it, we don't know at this stage. But I sure hope the US intelligence community undergoes a truly radical reform over the next few years, though I'm certainly not willing to make any bets on it! David
Bruce,
Kerry's supporters like to accuse Bush's camp of "spin," yet they keep "spinning" around Kerry's own hand in this mess.
You suggest that GWB had an obvious agenda to go in. (Many of us were concerned that Bush was looking for a reason to target Iraq.) But doesn't that mean that Congress should have questioned BOTH the intelligence reports AND Bush's motives? HE should have been under a bigger microscope than the information itself. Kerry, who also talked about the threat Iraq represented, seems to have been willing to authorize Bush to use military force, but somehow assume that Bush would set aside his "obvious agenda" and not go into Iraq without good reason. That's quite an unusually trusting position for a political enemy to take, isn't it? And for someone who has rammed his experience-based understanding of the horrors of war down our throats since the campaign began, and who has made it clear that Bush's own lack of military service makes him a poor Commander-in-Chief, it's a totally irresponsible leap of faith for a member of Congress to take, if he felt that Bush's motives were already in question.
Why didn't Kerry, et al, do the "hard work" of demanding confirmation of the reliable information if they were the ones responsible for their own vote? Why did THEY give Bush a green light to "mislead America about how he would go to war?" Why didn't they show Bush the same unwillingness to cooperate that the "other countries" have by voting "no," thereby undermining Bush's credibility in going to war BEFORE he could send the troops in? Why didn't they make their position clear at THAT time if the mood was that Bush did have an ulterior motive from the outset? And why isn't anyone demanding answers to THOSE questions?
Patrick
David, no one has doubted that Saddam was a bad guy. But for most people, including most in Congress, it was the alleged threat of the (non-existent) WMDs, especially the (non-existent) nuclear weapons program, that was persuasive.
Whether we wind up with a more humane regime in Iraq than Saddam's remains to be seen.
Yes, Bush did look foolish and/or untruthful. And, yes, he was getting bad intelligence advice. But let's not forget, a key element in the bad advice came from Rumsfeld's rump intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, which bypassed the normal vetting in the CIA and DIA to take "raw intelligence," largely from con-man and Iranian agent Ahmed Chalabi, and use it to hype the case for war. And Cheney's office was very much involved in pressuring the CIA to come up with advice to justify war. Bush and the Iraq hawks may have been deceived by intelligence. But they wanted very much to be deceived. - Bruce
Patrick, I agree that Congress should have been much more skeptical about the war resolution. I said in an earlier comment that I thought Kerry's vote on the war resolution was wrong, as did Cherie.
As to "why isn't anyone demanding answers to THOSE questions?", I think it would be great if the Bush campaign did ask those questions. But it would be pretty awkward for them to criticize Kerry for supporting Bush at that moment. "kerry should have known I was being irresponsible, so he should have tried harder to stop me" would be quite an interesting argument coming from Bush.
But even though I would agree with that, and apparently so do you, Kerry's position of thinking that Congress should support Bush's pressure on Iraq, which at the time of the vote was officially to work through the UN and demand inspections, is not something that's likely to terribly disturb most critics of the war at this point.
And, although it's not likely to be debated in this campaign, John Dean argues in his book *Worse Than Watergate* that Bush actually violated the terms of the war resolution by his invasion of Iraq. The war resolution specifically required Bush to show that diplomatic means could not have resolved the WMD threat (which we now know didn't exist) and that he show the action against Iraq included dealing with those connected to "the terrorist attacks that occurred on Septembe 11, 2001." So the resolution itself was not a "green light" for Bush to go to war on his own choice, mistaken though you and I may think the resolution to have been. - Bruce
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