August 11, 2004
John Kerry's latest statement on Iraq should startle those anti-war Kucinich supporters and Dean supporters who acted as good little boys and girls at the Democratic Party convention.
He said that he would have still voted to give Bush the authority to go to war even if he knew Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
Why, that's George Bush's view, too, as Bush was only too eager to point out on the campaign trail.
And what's the basis for Kerry's position?
The only reason the American public went along with Bush on the Iraq War was because he scared people to death that Saddam had all of these nasty weapons and that he was working with Al Qaeda to help Osama get his hands on his own. Kerry himself expressed concern about these weapons in the lead up to the vote on this resolution.
But the American people never would have gone for this war otherwise, so why would John Kerry, even to this day?
He's got a lot of explaining to do on that one.
And he's got a lot of explaining to do for saying the blank check that Congress gave Bush back in October of 2002 wasn't a bad one.
Remember, Congress abdicated its Constitutional duty to declare war. It gave Bush an open-ended invitation to go to war whenever he determined that diplomatic means had been exhausted, which was essentially whenever he saw fit.
Said Kerry: "I believe it's the right authority for a President to have."
It's precisely the wrong authority to give.
As Lincoln himself said, if you let a President make this momentous decision by himself, that's too much temptation for one man.
But it seems that Kerry wants to have that power for himself if he becomes President.