1) Before the war, he gave a speech calling on Bush to keep his promise and try diplomacy that was not exhausted, let the inspectors continue their work and NOT rush to war. (Jan 23, Georgetown University.) (Do not rush to war - was the last sentence and it was well reported.)
“
the United States should never go to war because it wants to, the United States should go to war because we have to. And we don’t have to until we have exhausted the remedies available, built legitimacy and earned the consent of the American people…We need to make certain that we have not unnecessarily twisted so many arms, created so many reluctant partners, abused the trust of Congress, or strained so many relations, that the longer term and more immediate vital war on terror is made more difficult…I say to the President, show respect for the process of international diplomacy because it is not only right, it can make America stronger - and show the world some appropriate patience in building a genuine coalition. Mr. President, do not rush to war.
http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1145”
(bolded phrases were repeated hundreds of times in 2004.)
2) Kerry called for regime change at home when Bush invaded (when about 70% of the population backed the invasion in April 2003) He said that he would have continued the inspections and diplomacy.
3) In his major Iraq speech in September 2004 at NYU, he said:
"Instead, the president rushed to war, without letting the weapons inspectors finish their work. He went purposefully, by choice, without a broad and deep coalition of allies. He acted by choice, without making sure that our troops even had enough body armor. And he plunged ahead by choice, without understanding or preparing for the consequences of postwar. None of which I would have done.
Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again the same way.
How can he possibly be serious?
Is he really saying to America that if we know there was no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq? "The entire speech is worth reading to remember what he really said - not what the Republicans said he said. (After this speech - they said it was nothing new and it was the Bush plan.)
He answered the same thing less formally later that day on Letterman saying he would not have gone to war.
4) Through the entire campaign Kerry spoke of how "Bush misled us into war, without exhausting the diplomacy, without letting the inspectors finish their work, without preparing for the peace" (quote from memory of hearing it EVERY day when watching the campaign on CSPAN. (These were also the conditions that Bush had said he would follow and which were listed in Kerry's IWR resolution.)
5) The phrases in 4 - that Kerry repeated constantly are in this Pepperdine College speech(2006), he gave on faith. This is what he had to say about a just war. I bolded things that were in both the IWR speech and which you should remember from 2004.
"Augustine felt that wars of choice are generally unjust wars, that war -- the organized killing of human beings, of fathers, brothers, friends -- should always be a
last resort, that war must always have a just cause, that those waging war need the right authority to do so, that a military response must be proportionate to the provocation, that a war must have a reasonable chance of achieving its goal and that war must discriminate between civilians and combatants
In developing the doctrine of Just War, Augustine and his many successors viewed self-restraint in warfare as a religious obligation, not as a pious hope contingent on convincing one's adversaries to behave likewise.Throughout the centuries there have been Christian political leaders who argued otherwise; who contended that observing Just War principles was weak, naïve, or even cowardly.
It's in Americas' interests to maintain our unquestionable moral authority -- and we risk losing it when leaders make excuses for the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo or when an Administration lobbies for torture.
For me, the just war criteria with respect to Iraq are very clear: sometimes a President has to use force to fight an enemy bent on using weapons of mass destruction to slaughter innocents.
But no President should ever go to war because they want to -- you go to war only because you have to.The words "last resort" have to mean something .
In Iraq, those words were rendered hollow.
It was wrong to prosecute the war without careful diplomacy that assembled a real coalition. Wrong to prosecute war without a plan to win the peace and avoid the chaos of looting in Baghdad and streets full of raw sewage. Wrong to prosecute a war without considering the violence it would unleash and what it would do to the lives of innocent people who would be in danger."http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091801046.htmlThe confusion may be that the Republicans conflated the IWR (oct 2002) with going to war (March 2003) and many on the left agreed. Kerry also spent more time trying to say what he would do differently in Iraq. We were there that wasn't going to change even if everyone agreed we shouldn't have invaded. Kerry needed the anti-war people plus people who thought we had to succeed in the war and thought he could do a better job. (The first group was too small to win.
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