Superb Lead Editorial in the Boston Globe (& a Vennochi, sigh)

[TayTay]

The lead Editorial in the Boston Globe today on responsibility and the Iraq War is just excellent. It clearly lays the blame for the Iraq War at Bush's feet. It is a fantastic piece of writing and I highly recommend it.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2005/11/17/second_thoughts_on_iraq?mode=PF

Also, in the same paper, frequent Kerry critic Joan Vennochi proclaims that maybe not everything my Jr. Senator ever did sucks and that he was not the worst of the worst when it came to Iraq. (Though he's not Tip O'Neill. :eyes: Hey, for Vennochi, that's a friggin rave.)

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/17/poll_watching_pols_now_say_no_on_iraq?mode=PF

[Mass]

1. Vennochi, Vennochi. ( I read that earlier).

She even makes Capuano sound like he blasted Kerry, Markey, Meehan, and others. When you read closer, he said nothing else, just said what he thought at the time. (Who is Capuano, btw?).

[rox63]

2. Mike Capuano is the Congressman from the MA 8th district

He was Somerville mayor for a few years before he ran for Congress.

His bio is here: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/?id=307

[Dr Ron]

3. Still not happy with her

Besides it sounding like a blast on Kerry, the title cast acts to cast doubt on those opposing the war: Poll-watching pols now say no on Iraq.

[whometense]

4. I read it the same way.

Same old same old from her. Kennedy is great, Kerry bases his decisions on polls. :eyes:

[TayTay]

5. Vennochi knows this; she just refuses to accept it.

John Kerry obviously told her to her face in 2002:

KERRY WALKS A FINE LINE
Boston Globe, THIRD, Sec. Op-Ed, p A23 11-19-2002
By BY JOAN VENNOCHI

SENATOR MAX CLELAND OF GEORGIA LOST BOTH LEGS AND HIS RIGHT ARM IN A GRENADE EXPLOSION IN VIETNAM IN 1968. THAT DID NOT STOP C. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, A REPUBLICAN WITH NO MILITARY SERVICE, FROM QUESTIONING HIS PATRIOTISM IN 2002, ON ELECTION DAY, CHAMBLISS BEAT CLELAND, 53 TO 46 PERCENT.

That barebones, admittedly simplistic storyline inspires a basic question for would-be challengers to President Bush in 2004: After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, can a Democrat vote against the president on war and still remain a viable national candidate?

Responds Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a Vietnam veteran and likely Democratic presidential candidate: "Absolutely. Without any question."

So, did Kerry vote "safe" when he supported Bush on the Iraq resolution? To that, Kerry says heatedly, "You don't vote safe or nonsafe when you're talking about sending people to war. . . . You had a national security issue. You may hate the timing, the cynicism of it, the raw political exploitation of it. But you still have a fundamental national security issue."

Kerry says that what he voted for was "for the president to have the ability to maximize leverage with the United Nations . . . I think it worked. We have the UN involved. We got the president to go to the UN. Where we have the president is in the position we put him. He may not stay here; if he moves from there unilaterally, I made it very clear, absent any showing of imminent threat, which does not now exist, I do not think we should proceed unilaterally. If he decides to do it, I will oppose him forcefully and vociferously."

In Georgia, Chambliss - another Republican candidate drafted directly by Bush - accused Cleland of being soft on national defense because he did not back the Bush position on creating a homeland security department.

Cleland did not oppose the concept; like Kerry, he voted against amendments that would have replaced the Democrats' version with the path favored by Republicans. To highlight Cleland's votes, Chambliss ran an ad campaign which flashed the faces of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

In Washington, the conventional wisdom is that the patriotism issue alone did not end Cleland's Senate career; he was out of sync with Georgia or at least allowed his opponent to cast him that way. But Kerry says Chambliss - and, through him, Bush - "displayed the Republican, craven, utterly shameless, ruthless, cruel willingness to say or do anything, no matter what."

Cleland's election-day loss points to another post-Sept. 11 political reality: Real battle scars on Democrats offer precious little protection from saber-rattling Republicans who never spent a day in combat.

Says Kerry: "If Dick Cheney . . . and a bunch of people who didn't serve want to make that the fight, I'm ready for that. I'd welcome that. How do you really best defend the security interests of the United States - that's a debate we should have."

On the national stage, Kerry is definitely trying to walk a fine line between critic and patriot. He has been highly critical of Bush policy in the Middle East. He was the only Democrat to speak out on Bush administration tactics in Afghanistan, while defending the Democrats' "right to ask questions on war." He continued his high-profile questioning of the Bush administration's talk of war with Iraq, winning praise from national pundits like The Wall Street Journal's Albert Hunt, who wrote recently that "no Democrat has offered a more coherent criticism of the Bush national security policies, ranging from military operations in Afghanistan to diplomatic fumbles in the Mideast."

Yet despite all the cautionary talk, and despite heavy lobbying from antiwar constituents, Kerry voted for the Iraqi war resolution. On election day, at least 20,000 Massachusetts residents voted for a write-in Senate candidate, Randall Forsberg, to protest Kerry's support of war.

Cynically speaking, that is good news for Kerry. He can use it to show he is not the stereotypical Massachusetts liberal the Bush clan loves to run against.

George Bush the elder accused Massachusetts Democrat Michael Dukakis of being weak on defense in 1988. Fourteen years later, Republican candidates are still using the infamous photo of a helmeted Dukakis riding in a tank as ammunition against Democrats. But the first President Bush had a real World War II combat record; the current President Bush has time in the Texas National Guard - and his still unresolved war against the evil-doers.

For now, Kerry is talking left, but voting centrist. After 9/11, it may be the only way to run for president. But is it the way to beat one?

Vennochi has Boston Globe disease. No explanation will suffice. No explanation is about what Kerry says it's about, there is always a hidden meaning to her. Nothing is ever taken at face value. This is cynicism on her part that she transfers to him. It's always been this way.

Now I ask you, are those quotes from KErry consistent three years later or what? (Especially the Cheney remarks.)

[karynnj]

6. Wow! This is a great article, in spite of the author

I hadn't read anything Kerry said in the early period after the IWR when the inspectors were first in. I knew his September 6 NYT op-ed, his floor speech before the vote, an op-ed in (I think March) and the Georgetown speech were all consistent. But the first two of them were before the vote and the latter two when it was pretty clear Bush was going to throw the inspectors (who Bush said were ineffective - as they got Saddam to destroy weapons), this is great because it expresses a very cautious wary optimism that we were adressing the national security problem and things might work.

It's also great that Kerry has all this on the record, it's telling that the Republicans haven't found anything to quote from Kerry that full disclosure of the comments doesn't back Kerry. The other thing in his case is that people who in polls said Kerry was negative in the campaign, likely remember 6 months of "Mislead us into war", because Kerry said it millions of times. The Bush voters among them rejected it as picking on the President, but now that many of them believe the President mislead us into war - at least some must remember hearing that phrase a time or two.

[TayTay]

7. Now look at what The Dark Lord Cheney said yesterday

Let me thank the good people of Frontiers of Freedom—George Landrith, Kerri Houston, Al Lee—for bringing us all together this evening. I see many good friends in the room, including current and former office holders. It’s a pleasure to see all of you. I’m sorry that we couldn’t be joined by Senators Harry Reid, John Kerry, or Jay Rockefeller. They were unable to attend due to a prior lack of commitment.

As most of you know, I have spent a lot of years in public service, and first came to work in Washington, D.C. back in the late 1960s. I know what it’s like to operate in a highly charged political environment, in which the players on all sides of an issue feel passionately and speak forcefully. In such an environment people sometimes lose their cool, and yet in Washington you can ordinarily rely on some basic measure of truthfulness and good faith in the conduct of political debate. But in the last several weeks we have seen a wild departure from that tradition. And the suggestion that’s been made by some U. S. senators that the President of the United States or any member of this Administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.

Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing force against Saddam Hussein. These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence, and were free to draw their own conclusions. They arrived at the same judgment about Iraq’s capabilities and intentions that was made by this Administration and by the previous Administration. There was broad-based, bipartisan agreement that Saddam Hussein was a threat ... that he had violated U.N. Security Council Resolutions ... and that, in a post-9/11 world, we couldn’t afford to take the word of a dictator who had a history of WMD programs, who had excluded weapons inspectors, who had defied the demands of the international community, who had been designated an official state sponsor of terror, and who had committed mass murder. Those are facts. What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war. The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out. American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures—conducting raids, training Iraqi forces, countering attacks, seizing weapons, and capturing killers—and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie. The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone—but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history. We’re going to continue throwing their own words back at them. And far more important, we’re going to continue sending a consistent message to the men and women who are fighting the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other fronts. We can never say enough how much we appreciate them, and how proud they make us. They and their families can be certain: That this cause is right ... and the performance of our military has been brave and honorable ... and this nation will stand behind our fighting forces with pride and without wavering until the day of victory.

You can tell the Dark Lord is lying cuz his lips are moving. These cowardly chickenhawks actually use the last refuge of scoundrels to justify their mistakes: It's damaging to the troops to criticize the war. (The false patriotism charge.) This is so beneath contempt it isn't even funny. (Really, even from me, it's not even funny.)

Go get 'em Senator. Smack these bastards where it hurts. I don't friggin care about '08 or anything else. These evil, lying bastards just deserve to go down because they hide behind our troops. (Troops that they seek to short-change at every turn in pay, benefits, medical care and such.) Just keep smacking them and making them try to justify their awful mistakes. Do that and I'm happy.

[whometense]

8. Have you been listening to

Stephanie Miller this morning? A few minutes ago she did this whole bit about the ongoing Kerry-Cheney smackdown. They were somewhat snarky about Kerry, but in a good-natured way, and it was very funny.

Stephanie is a big appreciator of the Kerry snark.

[TayTay]

9. I heard it in the first hour.

That was good. She played the patriotic music for Kerry and read the first two paragraphs of his statement on Cheney.

I salute you sir! :patriot:

I love Stephanie Miller! Her song fits Cheney so well:

You're a lying bag of crap.
You're a lying bag of crap.
You're a lying, scheming, stinking, nasty
bag of liquid crap. (buhm, buhm.)

[MH1]

10. Bob Shrum on Hardblogger is excellent today, too.

I know Shrum isn't the most popular around DU, but credit where credit is due -

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5445086/

Daddy knew best (Bob Shrum)


"Turns out we were wrong," Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said about WMD's in Iraq on one of the Sunday talk shows. Yes, turns out over 2,000 Americans are dead and almost 10,000 wounded, many of them maimed or shattered -- and "turns out we were wrong." Thirty thousand Iraqis or as many as 100,000 killed, most of them civilians -- and "turns out we were wrong." Hundreds of billions of dollars not spent on schools or health care, but on warfare and Halliburton --and "turns out we were wrong."

This wasn't your normal government mistake - misestimating the gross domestic product or misstating the cost of a new federal program. This is a foreign policy disaster that has broken the hearts of families across America, left us with a military stretched to the breaking point, and left this nation and its President more distrusted and isolated in the world than ever before.

(snip)

Bush would probably like to just go back to the Texas ranch and clear some brush -- but in the midst of the Iraq mess and the aftermath of Katrina, that's impossible. Instead the Administration has launched a PR offensive; if they can't beat the Iraq insurgency, maybe they can beat up their critics here at home. So we're now told that the Senate and House saw the same pre-war intelligence the President did. As Stephen Hadley might say, "turns out to be wrong." The Congress and the country didn't know that a principal source for the information was the notorious and self-serving Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, the neo-con mascot who wanted to become a top dog in Baghdad and now is, and he's being welcomed this week in Washington by Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld, despite charges that he leaked U.S. secrets to Iraq. Another example: neither the Congress nor the country knows to this day how the Administration used --or misused -- the intelligence; the commission they appointed under pressure was not permitted to look at that critical question. Something to hide? Before going on the attack, maybe the President ought to level with the American people.

But the deception didn't stop with false claims about nuclear weapons, aluminum tubes, and mobile labs for chemical and biological warfare. The Administration promised to make a genuine effort at the U.N., put together a real coalition, give the inspectors time, and send enough troops if there was an invasion. Instead, they treated the U.N. as window-dressing and humiliated Colin Powell by sending him there to mouth a dishonest speech. They assembled a faux coalition, short-circuited the inspectors and all but fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for reporting that they weren't sending enough troops.
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(go read the whole thing!)

I really think this is an excellent summation. Maybe Shrum has found his niche.

I wonder if anyone has the fortitude to post this in GD (or already has)? Wish I wasn't supposed to be working...