Kerry's Vote for the WAR
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| Mon, 09-06-2004 - 3:41am |
This from the book Plan of Attack, by Bob Woodward regarding Kerry's (and Kennedy's) stance on the vote to give Bush authority to go to war:
That afternoon, after two days of debate, the House passed a resolution authorizing the president to use the U.S. armed forces in Iraq "as he deems to be necessary and appropriate." The vote was a comfortable 296-133 - 46 more than the president's father had in 1991.
In the Senate, Edward M. Kennedy the Massachusetts Democrat made an impassioned plea to reject the resolution.
"The administration has not made a convincing case that we face such an imminent threat to our national security that a unilatera, preeimptive American strike and an immediate war are necessary. Nor has the adminitration laid out the cost in blood and treasure for this operaton," Kennedy said. He later added that Bush's preemptive doctrine announded to "a call for 21st Centry American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept."
Senator John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who would soon be running for president, said in a speech on the Senate floor he would vote for the resolution to use force in disarming Saddam because "a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat to our security." In announcing his support, Kerry stated that he expected the President "to fullfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution.....and to act with allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force."
But no Democrat or other critic had been able to gain much traction in the face of the president's repeated declarations about the threat posed by Saddam and the CIA's estimates that Saddam posessed WMD and might be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power.
In light of what we know now it is understandable why Kerry voted to give the authority with the caveats he did. Bush had no intention of working with the UNSC to adopt a resolution. Bush was not against it so much as Cheney was. He said it would take too long and wanted to do it right away and do it without UN approval.

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<<"In light of what we know now it is understandable why Kerry voted to give the authority with the caveats he did.
In light of what we already knew thén, France had vowed to veto ANY new resolution the Coalition would come up with, if it would contain military action.
They did not want to go to war without proof that there were WMDs and wanted inspections first. There had to be two caveats,
It was promised and not done in this case. If, as all of us believed, it was an immediate necessity to go depose SH and neutralize those WMDs even I was all for it. I believed the president too, at that point. But the intelligence they were getting was that there was no proof of WMSs there any longer. Even the claim about the nukes from Africa were knocked down when Joseph Wilson went there to verify it and found that claim to be false.
His appoligists will try to spin facts.
Bush and his administaration mislead the country and in fact the entire world in an effort to garner approval for invading Irag.
Bush and his appoligists are trying to suggest this is all academic now.
The mounting body count in Iraq says otherwise.
Bush has to be held accountable for his lies.
Who Looks Like A Liar Now?
By Stuart W. Mirsky
So it turns out that former ambassador Joe Wilson told a few fibs about President Bush and his administration. That`s the obvious conclusion from the recent investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee and Lord Butler`s report to the British Parliament issued in the third week of July.
Last year, Mr. Wilson claimed his foray into Niger for the CIA had debunked the claim, made by President Bush, that the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium in Africa. Wilson claimed to have learned otherwise on his trip, insisting there was no basis for the Bush claim other than a forged document, and that he had enlightened the CIA on these very points well before the president`s speech.
Wilson also asserted at the time that his role in the whole matter had nothing whatever to do with his wife`s position inside the CIA. Well, it looks like he misstated across the board.
According to the reports released last month, Wilson actually told the CIA that
his contact in Niger did believe Iraq was after "yellowcake" (weaponizable uranium), the primary export of that African nation, and that Saddam had sent his emissaries to Niger. This confirmed other information the CIA had from British and European intelligence agencies and is what the CIA told the president.
And Wilson`s wife, it seems, wrote a memo of her own, taking credit for her husband’s appointment as special CIA envoy to Niger concerning the Saddam-yellowcake question. So
Wilson told us a fib about what he found in Niger, about what he told the CIA when he got back, and about his wife`s role in his getting the Niger gig in the first place. Whoops.
Wilson`s attacks on the president`s case for a Saddam-yellowcake connection was one of the opening salvos in what has become a relentless and ongoing assault by establishment types against Bush’s credibility. So much has been said, so loudly by so many for so long — and all of it amplified by a sympathetic media — that it`s become an accepted truth that Saddam really wasn`t a threat to anyone.
The obvious conclusion we have been asked to draw from this is that Bush wrongly took us to war. And the most vituperative of his critics tell us Bush and his people did all this knowingly, i.e., they lied. Joe Wilson said so himself, when he called Bush and Cheney liars at a campaign rally for John Kerry.
The media gobbled it all up, of course, and made Wilson a household name in interview after interview. Democratic political leaders, from Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi to Howard Dean and, finally, John Kerry, made political hay of the Wilson allegations, using them to hammer the president and drive home the mantra to the American people that Bush is a liar. Pseudo-documentarian Michael Moore is only the latest, if perhaps one of the most vicious and
disingenuous, to jump on this crowded “Bush lied” bandwagon.
Only now it turns out that Wilson himself wasn`t telling us the truth. Was he lying? Since we can presume that, back when he was making his claims, he knew the facts we know now, what else are we to conclude?
Bush may have received incorrect information in some cases from his intelligence briefers (though it doesn`t look like they were wrong about Saddam`s search for yellowcake). Still, unless he knew more than his briefers knew at the time, unless he knew they were wrong on this or that issue, he cannot be said to have been lying when he relied on their information to make his decisions.
But to knowingly make untrue statements? By any definition, that amounts to lying. And Joe Wilson`s oft-repeated claims clearly fit that bill.
What`s behind this mad rush to accuse the president of lying? What`s going on in the media and with the political opposition that they seem to have lost their moral compass like this? It`s one thing to criticize someone on the facts. But it`s quite another to create or misrepresent facts in order to make your case. Yet we`ve seen this repeatedly in an unprecedented outpouring of hostility and vituperation against this administration from the academy, the media and from the Democratic Party itself.
In fact, we’ve witnessed a virtual tidal wave of charges and allegations against this president since the removal of Saddam last year — even as the national media, typified by The New York Times and CNN, remain reticent in correcting the record when claims like Wilson`s start to collapse in the face of the facts.
In the past there always was a certain unanimity among the majority of Americans on international matters. Whatever differences divided us on the domestic front, we left our partisan baggage at the door and went out to face the world with common purpose. But no more. The battle for political power has become so ferocious that there no longer seems to be any regard, on the part of those seeking that power, about possible damage to U.S. interests abroad.
If flagrant and unsupportable allegations of lies are what it takes to bring down an administration, then that, these partisans seem to be saying, is what they will do. So determined are they to reclaim the levers of power in Washington, they have completely lost their bearings.
The facts are in on the Wilson matter, but the question remains whether anyone will pay attention at this point — and if those who alleged the worst about this president will step forward and retract the lies they themselves helped promulgate.
Another, more troubling, question is whether the truth will even matter in the electoral calculations of the American people, now that the damage has been done.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=4025
Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Flame was outed as a CIA operative after he told the administration they had lied in not telling the world that what he found in Africa, or "What I Didn't Find in
This is what happened and it doesn't surprise me that there are those trying to discredit him. He has no reason to lie:
This is the probe that is going on today regarding the outing of Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson's wife, in an act of revenge for Wilson's truth:
Leak Probe: In the 'Mop-Up' Phase
by Michael Isikoff | Jun 14 '04
With last week's disclosures that President Bush had consulted with a criminal-defense lawyer and Vice President Dick Cheney had been questioned by federal prosecutors, the Justice probe into the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity is reaching a critical stage. Decisions on indictments could come within weeks, according to lawyers and others close to the case. Bush's decision to seek out the counsel of lawyer James Sharp was prompted by signals that prosecutors may want to talk to him shortly--a clear sign the investigation is reaching its climax, says one lawyer. Another source says prosecutors have been returning to key witnesses to ask what were described as "mop-up" questions. There are no suggestions that either the president or veep are in any legal trouble. But one key figure in the probe, sources say, is Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, who took "prodigious" notes of White House conversations in which CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame, wife of former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, may have been mentioned. The notes have served as a basis for questioning Libby and other White House aides. The White House has denied Libby leaked any "classified" information to columnist Robert Novak, who first revealed Plame's identity. One high-placed official says that if special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald ultimately chooses not to bring indictments, Justice officials may arrange to disclose his findings in response to an inquiry from Capitol Hill.
Newsweek U.S. Edition
(Edited because I made a mistake about which report.)
Edited 9/6/2004 10:56 am ET ET by iminnie833
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