I have become extremely annoyed whenever I have read, in response to my criticisms of John Kerry for voting for the Iraqi War Resolution, that Kerry's actions with respect to the Iraq war represented some sort of "nuanced" position because he was giving Bush the authority to go to war a) only for the purpose of putting pressure on Saddam to open up his country to inspections, and b) only under the condition of the promise from Bush that he would first seek help and consensus from the international community before mounting any attack against Iraq.
My main criticism with this "nuanced" position is that it strikes me as a bunch of bullshit. My main frustration with the people who parrot it is that it shows them to be uninformed, not that intelligent, and/or extremely gullible. I also think that they possess a great need to indulge in hero worship, or continue to nurture the illusion that establishment Democrats really have their best interests at heart.
Here is why I say these things.
By the time the Iraqi War Resolution was voted upon by Congress in October of 2002, it was obvious to anyone who was following unfolding events closely and who was getting their news from alternative and progressive sites on the Internet, that Bush was not being truthful in his allegations about Saddam Hussein and the need for military action against him.
I base this statement, in part, upon several items that had, by that time, come to my attention:
1. In either late August or early September, Andrew Card made the statement on the record that the Administration's attempts to push the country's attention toward taking out Saddam were purposely coordinated to begin in late summer/early fall and that they had consciously waited until then to do so. Card said that in terms of a marketing campaign, it was a good idea to introduce a "new product" around this time. What this clearly implied was that they had been sitting on their war plans for some time, and were cynically and calculatingly trying to find the best way of selling them. But, if Saddam was such an imminent threat, why would there be any room for any premeditated delay? Instead, if there really was a threat involved with Saddam, there should have been plans and announcements immediately after information about it first came to the Administration.
2. As early as September of 2002, Senator Grassley or Senator Hagel (I can't remember which one) was quoted in one of our major newspapers (I think it may have been the "Washington Post") as saying that he had seen the Administration's latest "intelligence" that supposedly supported the assertion that Saddam had to be dealt with militarily. He stated that in his opinion it wasn't anything new or different from the intelligence concerning Iraq that he had been monitoring since United Nations weapons inspectors left the country in 1998. He indicated that he had not seen any new developments that warranted military action against Iraq.
3. By September of 2002, Scott Ritter, a Republican and supporter of Bush during the 2000 election cycle, and more importantly, the former chief American weapons inspector for the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq up until the time that those inspectors left the country in 1998, was publicly stating to any one who would listen that as of the time that he left Iraq, Saddam no longer had WMD because the UN weapons inspectors had succeeded in destroying them all. He also said that the Administration was not telling the truth that Saddam had or was manufacturing them. (After Kerry knocked out Howard Dean during the primary season, Scott Ritter wrote on op-ed piece in Long Island's "Newsday" in which he stated that he had specifically contacted Kerry's office during the run up to the vote on the War Resolution to share with him his own information on the whole issue, only to be completely ignored by Kerry's office.)
4. In September of 1998, Bush made a public speech in which he claimed that an IAEA report stated that Iraq was six months away from building a nuclear bomb. The right wing "Washington Times" (of all places) carried a story about how one of its reporters contacted the IAEA to obtain a copy of this alleged report, only to be told that no such report existed. The reporter than stated that when he contacted the White House about this discrepancy, the White House told him that there had been a mistake in that the report was confused with another IAEA report. The reporter then went to the IAEA and asked for a copy of this other report, only to be told that the only report that the IAEA had ever issued along these lines was a report that was issued BEFORE the first Gulf War, and that this report stated that Saddam was six months away from attaining the nuclear capacity to begin building a nuclear weapon, but not that he was six months away from actually building one.
5. In August or September of 2002, an unnamed Administration official was quoted in the "Washington Post" as saying that the Administration's hope in invading Iraq was that the United States would be able to set up a controlling military presence in that country such that it would no longer be as dependent upon Saudi Arabia's oil, and could therefore apply pressure on Saudi Arabia to make various changes in its political policies.
6. By late September of 2002, by way of various resources and articles available in on the Internet, it was clear that the neocons in the Bush Administration had wanted to make war on Iraq since the early `90s and that they had set forth a blueprint for doing so in numerous statements and documents that they had put forth since the early 1990s. Many of these statements had been issued in connection with the neocon "Project for a New American Century."
7. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world and previous policy statements connected with Cheney (who was also a member of the Project for a New American Century) had indicated an awareness that America's oil needs during the next several decades, and in the face of a finite supply of oil, a decreasing supply of new oil discoveries, and an increase in world demand for oil, made it imperative that the United States take strategic steps to secure its future energy needs.
8. The devastation wrought upon Iraq by the first Gulf War, had reduced whatever military capabilities that Iraq had to threaten any country to a virtual nothing.
9. Iraq's Arab neighbors, the very ones that reason dictated should have been the MOST threatened by the prospect of Saddam possessing WMD and therefore would have had the most interest in taking him out, all opposed any military action against Iraq by the United States.
10. The CIA had debunked any alleged connections between Saddam and Al Queda in spite of the Administration publicly linking Hussein with post-9/11 "war on terror."
Now, all of these pieces of the "jigsaw puzzle" (as well as others) were available on the Internet BEFORE the Congress voted to give Bush the authority to go to war. I remember that I obtained them by visiting progressive and alternative news and information sites on the Internet, most namely Buzzflash, American Politics Journal, Information Clearing House, and Atrios.
Given just these items, the following conclusions should have been made by the beginning of October of 2002 by anyone who was truly paying attention:
1. Bush Administration statements about Iraq and WMD and about Saddam-Al Queda ties were untrustworthy at the least, and intentionally deceptive at the very worst.
2. Talking about the subject of the war as a kind of a marketing strategy that was to be unveiled on a certain predetermined date implied that there had been an intentional and orchestrated PR campaign in the works for some time to spring upon the public a plan the Administration had long wanted to pursue. It also implied that there was a certain degree of premeditated calculation and cynicism on the Administration's part about the need to persuade Americans to go to war, rather than an urgent agenda to inform Americans of a genuine and emerging threat that had to be dealt with immediately.
3. The people in the current Administration had wanted to take out Saddam for years, and, being oil men who had imperialistic plans, were salivating over the prospect of getting control over Saddam's oil and/or establishing a military presence in Iraq.
4. In view of substantial evidence of misleading statements on the part of the Administration about Iraq, and direct and circumstantial evidence of ulterior motives and long standing plans to take Saddam out, there was more than substantial reason to disbelieve what the Administraiton was saying about Saddam and to conclude that such claims were no more than deceitful propaganda that, in the wake of 9/11, was being used by the Administration to stir up public fears and opinion toward supporting military action against Iraq..
In the face of all of these realities, what did John Kerry and the rest of the DLC-influenced Dems do? Did they question the Administration on any of the fundamental assumptions and justifications that it was using in trying to convince the public that a war with Iraq was necessary (i.e., on Saddam's alleged WMD and his alleged Al Queda ties)? No, they most certainly did not. Instead, they voted to authorize Bush to go to war.
Now, with respect to the text of the version of the War Resolution that was eventually voted upon and passed by Congress, here are the parts of it that grant authority to Bush to take certain specific actions:
SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) AUTHORIZATION. The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.
(b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.
In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall . . . make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, and
(2) acting pursuant to this resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
Now, read that language carefully and in its entirety. It essentially gave Bush the unilateral and sole authority and discretion to decide to take the country into war whenever HE DECIDED that certain conditions had been met--namely that diplomatic or peaceful means were inadequate to see to it that the security of the United States was protected or that UN resolutions would be enforced. It was essentially a BLANK CHECK for Bush to go to war whenever he saw fit and it was subject to no further review.
(In fact, Senator Robert Byrd, in a brilliant and eloquent speech, publicaly decried it for precisely these reasons at about the time that Congress voted for it.)
Now, in view of this long explanation, any talk that Kerry was giving authority for Bush to go to war based upon first seeking an international consensus is a lie. The text of the War Resolution put no such restrictions upon Bush's war making powers.
Furthermore, when Kerry says that he voted for the war resolution in order to give Bush a "big stick" with which to put pressure upon Saddam to open up his country to inspections, he begs the question. Why do you need inspections of Saddam if the claims being made about his danger to the United States and the rest of the world are not trustworthy. In essence, Kerry is pretending that he actually believed that such inspections were necessary to "disarm" Saddam from having WMD. But, based upon Bush's false statements, Ritter's claims, and the other items I mentioned that called Bush Administration claims into question, serious questions should have been raised about the whole assumption that Saddam presented any kind of threat to us. These questions should have been raised BEFORE any determination was made that Saddam merited Bush having a "big stick" with which to deal with him. Yet Kerry, and the other Dems, never publicly raised these questions or challenged the Administration on its fundamental justifications.
Moreover, the text of the War Resolution did not contain any specific proviso specifying that the reason for granting Bush war making authority was so that Saddam would open up the country to inspectors. Indeed, the language of the resolution was so broadly worded that it really gave Bush the authority to decide that EVEN IF Saddam did give complete access to inspectors (something Saddam eventually did agree to do, by the way) Bush still had the authority to decid that such measures were not adequate to protect American interests or enforce UN resolutions and therefore the country needed to go to war anyway (and this is, in fact, precisely what Bush did).
In addition, why would the United States have needed an international concensus to invade a country that really presented NO THREAT to it . . . unless, it basically wanted to steal that country's oil and wanted the rest of the world community to say it was "okay" to do so . . . or even join in a multilateral cooperative pillage?
To put it more directly, what difference does an international consensus make when the reasons one is using to justify going to war are suspect? Furthermore, in reading the text of the War Resolution, no such conditions were placed upon Bush's authority to decide when to take the country into war.
Finally, recall that mid-term elections were coming up during the fall of 2002 and Bush was still perceived as a "popular wartime president" in the wake of 9-11. The DLC-inspired "conventional wisdom" was that it would be political suicide to stand up to Bush under these circumstances.
Given all these factors, it should not take a rocket scientist to figure out that:
1. Kerry and the other DLC-influenced Dems were voting for the Iraqi War Resolution NOT because they really believed that Saddam was a threat to us, but because they did not have the political courage to stand up to Bush and publicly challenge him during the run up to mid-term elections or during the beginning of a year in which they would be mounting their own presidential campaigns,
and/or
2. They privately agreed with the unstated agenda of establishing American control over Iraq and Saddam's oil and they agreed that the only way to do it was through military action.
Kerry had to have known that military action against Saddam, at least on the basis of the rationales the Bush Administration was putting forth, was not necessary . . . or he at least had sufficient reason to raise serious questions. (And for those of you who doubt the truth of this statement, let me put it like this: With only the Internet at our disposal, I and countless others were able to figure out Bush wasn't telling the truth. Are you willing to tell me that Kerry and the other Dems inside-the-beltway didn't know this as well?)
Once again, not once did Kerry stand up to the Administration, question it publicly, or voice any concern that war with Iraq might not be necessary.
In fact, three of the most prominent Democrats to publicly question the need for war, were Al Gore in either September or early October of 2002, Dennis Kucinich, and eventually Howard Dean.
Most of the rest of the leading Dems--Clinton, Daschle, Cleland, Gephardt, Edwards, Kerry--all played along with the Administration.
It was on that day that the leading Congressional Democrats voted for the Iraqi War Resolution that they revealed to me that in spite of their identification as Democrats, these people did not serve the truth nor the best interests of the American people, but were really just amoral and/or craven political opportunists.
Given what I have just set forth above, all this talk about Kerry's "nuanced" position with respect to Saddam and war with Iraq is just so much "nuanced" bullshit. "Nuance" is just a fancy way of dressing up rationalizations that are flung in the face of truth and common sense. Kerry's "nuanced" position is really no more than the sum total of the lies that he has used to cover up a stance that has proven politically problematic for him.
So, puuuhhleeease . . . .
The next time I criticize Kerry for being a spineless and amoral weasel as a result of his Iraq War resolution vote, don't come back and defend him with idiotic rationalizations about a "nuanced" position. This is an argument that anyone who was following events closely on the Internet during the fall of 2002 knows is complete bullshit. And in doing so, you insult not only my intelligence, but you also insult the intelligence of the hundreds of thousands of American activists that took to the streets in September of 2002 to demonstrate against the war.
Full disclosure: I DID vote for Kerry and against Bush, but not because I had any illusions about his virtues. It was strictly a "lesser of two evils" kind of decision.