Yesterday’s speech by John Kerry was a watershed event. Kerry now has just a few weeks left to make it stick. But the candidate has taken a huge step toward finally putting President Bush on the defensive about Iraq. I urge you to read the whole text of the speech here , and to keep pushing Kerry harder to make this stick. He’s laid down a marker: Bush is the one supporting an endless, hopeless war and defending his choice to attack defenseless (and harmless) Iraq, while Kerry now says clearly that he believes that the war was both unnecessary and bungled, and that it has made America less safe. I’m looking forward to the Sept. 30 debate to see if Kerry can look Bush in the eye and say the same thing, but if he can, and if he does it with conviction, he can turn his campaign around and win.
We’ll see if the pro-war liberals, from the New Republic to the DLC to Joe Lieberman and Hillary, get on board.
The media has, incredibly, missed the boat. As usual, they run only a few quotes from the actual speech, mixed with pundits galore. So here are a few salient points, in case you missed them.
First, that Iraq is not part of the war on terrorism, whatever the heck that is:
We must have a great honest national debate on Iraq. The President claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.
Second, that Bush is lying about how bad things are in Iraq:
In June, the President declared, “The Iraqi people have their country back.” Just last week, he told us: “This country is headed toward democracy… Freedom is on the march.” But the administration’s own official intelligence estimate, given to the President last July, tells a very different story. According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the President is saying to the American people. So do the facts on the ground. Security is deteriorating, for us and for the Iraqis. … We are fighting a growing insurgency in an ever widening war-zone. In March, insurgents attacked our forces 700 times. In August, they attacked 2,700 times – a 400% increase. Falluja…Ramadi… Samarra … even parts of Baghdad – are now “no go zones”… breeding grounds for terrorists who are free to plot and launch attacks against our soldiers. The radical Shi’a cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who’s accused of complicity in the murder of Americans, holds more sway in the suburbs of Baghdad.
Third, that Bush lied about the reason for the war:
The first and most fundamental mistake was the President’s failure to tell the truth to the American people. He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens. By one count, the President offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded. His two main rationales – weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda/September 11 connection – have been proved false… by the President’s own weapons inspectors… and by the 9/11 Commission. Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat.
Fourth, that Bush believed the lies he was told by the neocons:
He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military. The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible consequences. The administration told us we’d be greeted as liberators. They were wrong. They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq’s infrastructure. They were wrong. They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots. They were wrong. They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy. They were wrong. They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it. They were wrong.
There’s more in the speech, of course. Kerry’s plan for “fixing” what’s wrong in Iraq isn’t exactly inspiring, but his attack on Bush for his stubbornness in insisting that he’d attack Iraq even though Saddam had no WMD hits the mark. Let’s see, now, if he follows up.
