Kerry Gives a Direct Answer

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Kerry Gives a Direct Answer
37
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 12:06am

and it's not one the anti-war left will like:


'Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.


Taking up a challenge from President Bush, whom he will face in the Nov. 2 election, the Massachusetts senator said: "I'll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority.' http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/381249|top|08-09-2004::17:46|reuters.html

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 2:59pm
Here are some of the shrieking liberals you must be talking about:

Press Secretary Ari Fleischer: “Well, the reconstruction costs remain a very -- an issue for the future. And Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.”

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: “This is not Afghanistan…When we approach the question of Iraq, we realize here is a country which has a resource. And it’s obvious, it’s oil. And it can bring in and does bring in a certain amount of revenue each year…$10, $15, even $18 billion…this is not a broke country.”

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz: “There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people…and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “If you the cost, the money, Iraq is a very different situation from Afghanistan…Iraq has oil. They have financial resources.”

State Department Official Alan Larson: “On the resource side, Iraq itself will rightly shoulder much of the responsibilities. Among the sources of revenue available are $1.7 billion in invested Iraqi assets, the found assetsin Iraq…and unallocated oil-for-food money that will be deposited in the development fund.”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “I don't believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense… funds can come from those various sources I mentioned: frozen assets, oil revenues and a variety of other things, including the Oil for Food, which has a very substantial number of billions of dollars in it.

http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/iraqquotes_web.htm

Richard Perle: Well, first of all, Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will. The Iraqis are enormously talented.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/saddam/transcript3.html

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 3:03pm
"I don't believe it's our job to reconstruct the country," said Mr. Rumsfeld, apparently not taking into account the $13 billion in Mr. Bush's budget request to help restore Iraq's electricity and running water. "The Iraqi people will have to reconstruct that country over a period of time."

He observed that Iraq could not rely on its oil revenues alone to rebuild its decrepit infrastructure but must plan to develop industries like tourism that would benefit from national and historic treasures like the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon.

"Tourism is going to be something important in that country as soon as the security situation is resolved, and I think that will be resolved as the Iraqis take over more and more responsibility for their own government," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "In the last analysis, they have to create an environment that's hospitable to investment and to enterprise."

Sec. Donald Rumsfeld, Sept. 9, 2003 (not before the war, I'll grant you...but pretty flagrently violating Powell's Pottery Barn rule, huh.) http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/international/middleeast/11MILI.html?ex=1092283200&en=b08b651505ba67b0&ei=5070&pagewanted=all

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 3:04pm
How soon people forget.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz: “There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people…and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”




Renee ~~~>

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 3:25pm
He didn't say in Iraq, he said he would increase the troupes to fight the war on terror.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 4:12pm
Kerry said he would add 40,000 soldiers to the active army, not necessarily to send them all to Iraq. He's also spelled out to the press exaclty the conditions which would need to be attained in Iraq before he would consider pulling troops out, but he's talking about a three or four year timeframe, during which more troops may be necessary, or a troop rotation could occur to bring soldiers on their second or third tour of duty back home. Nothing here is contradictory, unless you only read the headlines.

Kerry Says He would add 40,000 to Army

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11971-2004Jun3.html

Kerry proposes terms for troop withdrawal

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/07-04/07-16-04/a01wn835.htm

In July, the Senate voted to increase the standing army by 20,000, a move which the Bush administration was against. Why is Bush against increasing the size of the army? A Whitehouse spokesman says "A mandatory increase would lack flexibility and could leave troop levels higher than needed." Huh? Why do we have tens of thousands of our National Guard's people deployed indefinately in Iraq if we're in danger of having too many people in the Army?

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_army_061804,00.html

Here's an interesting read about the size of the army:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june04/army_1-13.html



Avatar for tmcgoughy
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 4:23pm

Here is an interesting article that may shed some light on a lot of these issues.

The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.  -
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2003
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 4:41pm
Thanks for that information. I had heard these issues discussed on the radio, actually by more liberal hosts, I couldn't remember the specifics at all on the 40,000 troops, but they definetly were saying that Kerry planned to have most troops out of Iraq within a year. I have not been able to find such a quote anywhere, so I don't know if it was an off the cuff comment made somewhere that is not making the news, or, if it was simply overstated.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 5:24pm

<>


I was being facecious. Bush did exactly what he said he'd do, and most of the reconstruction isn't damage from the war, but 15 years of Saddam's neglect & destruction.


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That's not the conclusion of many including the 911 Commission.


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For the 4, 576 time. It was one of the reasons. Saddam's link to international terrorism was the primary concern, and based on the intelligence that was available, Bush was right to assume the worst about WMDs.


<>


Sorry, that's just not the case. Many reasons were enumerated both before & after the war. The WMD issue was important to help Tony Blair with his domestic support, but in the US, debate, it was never the sole or primary reason.


<>


Actually the number of

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Tue, 08-10-2004 - 7:17pm


And here's what most Democrats don't seem to get about Kerry (or choose to pretend they don't get)-that version of the story is nothing more than revisionist history. All of Congress were just as anxious to jump into Iraq and declare themselves military conquerers as the President was-until things didn't go quite as well as planned, and so the rationalizing and backpedaling began. Kerry himself has been quoted as saying that even if we did not get the UN's approval we still needed to go in alone. That statement seems to have conveniently slipped his mind. It's not that we Republicans don't "get" it-it's that we don't take every stump speech we hear as the gospel truth.

Avatar for tmcgoughy
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Wed, 08-11-2004 - 8:05am

Alicia,


"So he used his vote as propaganda against a tax cut he didn't want to see."


I'm not sure that I would

The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.  -