John Kerry surrendered the election to George W. Bush this month when he finally came out and said exactly what he would do in Iraq. After months of equivocating over how the president misled the American people with all those phony WMDs and teasing us that he had a secret plan for Iraq, the Democratic candidate for president said he still would have given the president the authority to go into Iraq even without any evidence of WMDs. Wow, what an admission!
That's a position slightly to the right of Bush, who never went quite that far. The president removed Saddam, in large part, due to faulty intelligence; Kerry would have voted to give the president the authority anyway, regardless of whether Iraq had WMDs. What does this admission do to his campaign?
It sinks it. Kerry has been under pressure to straighten out his views on the war: Bush demanded that Kerry tell the American people whether he would have supported the war "knowing what we know now" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, and, in response, Kerry said, "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have."
That comment probably sealed the coffin for his presidential hopes, and the Lefties are squealing in contortions with this latest declaration. because so much of the leftist wing of the Democrat Party is made up of Deanie-weenies, who are both Saddam appeasers and unabashed peaceniks. This latest and startling revelation, that Kerry would also have pushed for a war of liberation in Iraq whether or not any WMDs were there, now means he should lose a good 10 percent of the vote -- those of the peace-at-any-price voters who have been turned off now that they realize there isn't a great deal of difference between the two major candidates. These people won't cross over and vote for Bush; they just won't go to the polls at all. Why bother? Kerry is now more gung-ho than Bush. He must have taken that Vietnam thing at the convention just a bit too seriously.
Here's how the president reacted: "Now, almost two years after he voted for the war in Iraq, and almost 220 days after switching positions to declare himself the antiwar candidate, my opponent has found a new nuance. He now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq."
Bush added, "After months of questioning my motives, and even my credibility, Senator Kerry now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpiles of weapons we all believed were there, knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power. I want to thank Senator Kerry for clearing that up."
Veteran Kerry watchers should not be surprised. As a member of the U.S. Select Senate Committee on Intelligence during the Clinton years, he repeatedly warned Americans about Saddam's WMDs before Bush was elected -- a minor detail left unmentioned during the Kerry campaign. I guess that makes him the original WMD liar.
Soon after Bush was elected, Kerry's prevarications and flip-flopping began; Don't blame Kerry for spouting bad intelligence, though; it's not his fault he missed 38 of the Senate Intelligence Committee's 49 public meetings during his eight years as a committee member.
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THE NRA, WHERE WOULD YOU AS A GUN-OWNER BE WITHOUT THEM.
GUN-OWNERS, UNITED WE STAND DIVIDED WE FALL.
Kerry's jig is up.
