Kerry Waking Up

September 20, 2004

If only he’d said this six months ago:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Sen. John Kerry said Monday that mistakes by President Bush in invading Iraq could lead to unending war and that no responsible commander in chief would have begun the war knowing Saddam Hussein didn't possess weapons of mass destruction and wasn't an imminent threat to the United States.

``Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious?'' the Democratic presidential candidate said at New York University.

Kerry, a fourth-term Massachusetts senator, voted to give Bush authority to wage the war and he said in August he still would have voted that way had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The Democrat makes a distinction between his voting to grant a president war-making authority as a member of the Senate and Bush, as commander in chief, actually taking that fateful step. Republicans have accused Kerry of waffling on the war.

Kerry said Monday, ``Is he really saying to Americans that if we had known there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is resoundingly no because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.''

``Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell,'' Kerry said. ``But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.''