Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Tag

Bush goes after Kerry for recklessly embracing the missing weapons cache story:

from Drudge

"After repeatedly calling Iraq the wrong war, and a diversion, Senator Kerry this week seemed shocked to learn that Iraq is a dangerous place, full of dangerous weapons..."

"If Senator Kerry had his way... Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would control those all of those weapons and explosives and could share them with his terrorist friends. Now the senator is making wild charges about missing explosives, when his top foreign policy adviser admits, quote, 'We do not know the facts.' Think about that: The senator is denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts..."

"Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site. This investigation is important and it's ongoing. And a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief."
Posted by at

2 comments:

Dude said...

If Kerry waits for all the facts come in on this issue, the election will be over.

What we do know is that Shinseki pushed for a much larger force in Iraq and got canned for it. We also know there was a great deal of looting in postwar Iraq. It's not inconceivable that looters would have gone after the ammo dumps. We also know that there is an April 18th, 2003 video of troops opening up some of the stores of explosives at this dump. So, with that, it's not a huge leap to arrive at Kerry's stand.

Given that the al Qaeda links to Iraq are not concrete, according to the 9/11 Commission, Powell, and Rumsfeld, and given the complete lack of WMD (well, ok, 1 mustard gas shell), I would agree with Drudge that "a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief." That's one of the reasons I'm voting against Bush Tuesday.

Interestingly, the Missouri Republican candidate for governor,who happens to be the current secretary of state, is for early voting in theory, but not in practice. That's why I have to wait till Tuesday.

But you can bet that I'll be carrying my driver's license, my voter registration card, and my ACLU voting rights card in case any Republican tries to challenge my registration as they have done to Ohio voters.


http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/state/ohio/2004-10-27-voter-registration_x.htm

7:21 AM
Jeffrey Hill said...

The quote was for Bush & it looks like Kerry's already seized on it in his stump speeches to make the point you did. You're definitely right that if Kerry didn't immediately use the weapons cache story before validating it, it would be too late. As it stands, this story didn't blow up in Kerry's face like I thought it was going to, but it didn't do him any good either.

On the flip side, a 18 month march to war based on the available intelligence estimates at the time is not a rash or even rushed decision. Bush had the facts and evidence - some more accurate than others - but it wasn't a matter of just waiting for an investigation to make conclusions before basing a national security decision. The inspectors were not going to get any closer to knowing about Saddam's programs with more time. There is plenty to suggest just there were forces within the UN and the security council that preferred the inspections find nothing. I think Bush knew that.

To me there's a difference between that scenario and Kerry's rush to exploit a NYTimes piece that was curiously timed for the week before the election. His campaign had an ad ready almost instantaneously. The ABC footage (which doesn't do much to validate the NYTimes story) wasn't released until Thursday or Friday, so it could not have factored into Kerry's decision. I'm not sure that was necessarily a coordinated effort, but it revealed a lack of prudence with Kerry.

4:46 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)