Reply #10: Thanks for your report. Teresa Heinz Kerry will make a great first lady! [View All]

[flpoljunkie]

Teresa has boiled the Iraq question down to its essense: War should always be the last resort. John Kerry has led on this question and been consistent from the start. Note that he wrote this in September, 2002!

From John Kerry's op-ed in the New York Times on September 6, 2002

http://www.cfr.org/campaign2004/pub5596/kerry/we_still_have_a_choice_on_iraq.php

We Still Have a Choice on Iraq

Senator John Kerry, D-Mass.
New York Times
September 6, 2002

WASHINGTON -- It may well be that the United States will go to war with Iraq. But if so, it should be because we have to -- not because we want to. For the American people to accept the legitimacy of this conflict and give their consent to it, the Bush administration must first present detailed evidence of the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and then prove that all other avenues of protecting our nation's security interests have been exhausted. Exhaustion of remedies is critical to winning the consent of a civilized people in the decision to go to war. And consent, as we have learned before, is essential to carrying out the mission. President Bush's overdue statement this week that he would consult Congress is a beginning, but the administration's strategy remains adrift.

Regime change in Iraq is a worthy goal. But regime change by itself is not a justification for going to war.Absent a Qaeda connection, overthrowing Saddam Hussein -- the ultimate weapons-inspection enforcement mechanism -- should be the last step, not the first. Those who think that the inspection process is merely a waste of time should be reminded that legitimacy in the conduct of war, among our people and our allies, is not a waste, but an essential foundation of success.

If we are to put American lives at risk in a foreign war, President Bush must be able to say to this nation that we had no choice, that this was the only way we could eliminate a threat we could not afford to tolerate.

<>The question is not whether we should care if Saddam Hussein remains openly scornful of international standards of behavior that he agreed to live up to. The question is how we secure our rights with respect to that agreement and the legitimacy it establishes for the actions we may have to take. We are at a strange moment in history when an American administration has to be persuaded of the virtue of utilizing the procedures of international law and community -- institutions American presidents from across the ideological spectrum have insisted on as essential to global security.

For the sake of our country, the legitimacy of our cause and our ultimate success in Iraq, the administration must seek advice and approval from Congress, laying out the evidence and making the case. Then, in concert with our allies, it must seek full enforcement of the existing cease-fire agreement from the United Nations Security Council. We should at the same time offer a clear ultimatum to Iraq before the world: Accept rigorous inspections without negotiation or compromise. Some in the administration actually seem to fear that such an ultimatum might frighten Saddam Hussein into cooperating. If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act. But until we have properly laid the groundwork and proved to our fellow citizens and our allies that we really have no other choice, we are not yet at the moment of unilateral decision-making in going to war against Iraq.

_____________________________

Bush did none of these things yet he ran around in the runup up to the Iraq War repeating the lie that "War is my last resort." Our feckless media remained virtually silent. We now know from Paul O'Neill that war in Iraq was on Bush's plate from the first National Security Council meeting--just 12 days into his administration!

November 2nd, 2004, cannot come fast enough for me.