Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Sen. Kerry, a man of every position!


John Kerry is interviewed by Time and the AP and is given ample opportunity to explain his position on the Iraq war. The words "might," "I can't say," and "that’s not a fair question" figure prominently:

TIME: Would you say your position on Iraq is a) it was a mistaken war; b) it was a necessary war fought in a bad way; or c) fill in the blank?
KERRY: I think George Bush rushed to war without exhausting the remedies available to him, without exhausting the diplomacy necessary to put the U.S. in the strongest position possible, without pulling together the logistics and the plan to shore up Iraq immediately and effectively.

TIME: And you as Commander in Chief would not have made these mistakes but would have gone to war?

KERRY: I didn't say that.

TIME: I'm asking.

KERRY: I can't tell you.

TIME: Might the war have been avoided?

KERRY: Yes.


Time's correspondents tackle their difficult assignment from another angle. Once again, no luck:

TIME: So, if we don't find WMD, the war wasn't worth the costs? That's a yes?
KERRY: No, I think you can still—wait, no. You can't—that's not a fair question, and I'll tell you why. You can wind up successful in transforming Iraq and changing the dynamics, and that may make it worth it, but that doesn't mean [transforming Iraq] was the cause [that provided the] legitimacy to go. You have to have that distinction.


This Mike Glover AP piece at least gets Kerry to admit that there's a good chance that Saddam Hussein would still be in power if he were president:

In discussing foreign policy, the Massachusetts senator said he couldn't guarantee that Saddam Hussein would now be out of power in Iraq if he had been president over the past year.
"I can't tell you that," said Kerry, who faults Bush for not allowing continued U.N. inspections in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction Saddam was said to be hiding.