So, does Cockburn have a valid argument for misgivings about Kerry?

[MrScorpio]

>>08/11/04 "Counterpunch" --Kerry goes from bad to worse. Last week he dropped Saddam's non-existent WMDs as a campaign issue. He did this huge favor to Bush via his (Kerry's) foreign affairs spokesman, the insufferable Jamie Rubin, formerly the top State Department flack in the Clinton years. Rubin told the Washington Post last weekend that knowing then what he knows today about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Kerry still would have voted to authorize the war and "in all probability" would have launched a military attack to oust Hussein by now if he were president. Up until the previous day Mr flip-flop O'Kerry had said he only "might" have still gone to war. <<

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6708.htm

Cockburn has more credit with me than some wingnut, Bush-sucking knuckledragger.

I think that this is serious.

[Misunderestimator]

1. Hogwash.

[LondonAmerican]

2. this is very bad

kerry has effectively adopted bush's foreign policy.

sad.

[LisaM]

3. He lost me when he said Bush was, "ludicrously overdemonized."

By whom?

The Iraq war is not the only issue. I think there's a heck of a lot more than a dime's worth of difference between * and Kerry on women's issues, for example.

Not to mention - the environment. I don't think the parks are empty because "Americans are too fat to hike." Why doesn't he look at the systematic stripping away of funding for national parks? I cannot even go to our STATE parks without paying $5 to park - even if I'm only going to be there for an hour.

I also don't follow in the least his reasoning on lowering the debt killing new jobs funding. He doesn't even mention taxes! And why he thinks Kerry is in thrall to Wall Street is beyond me.

[pmbryant]

4. Cockburn has less than zero credibility with me, so I highly doubt it.

I discovered back in 1995, based on some op-eds on environmental issues he wrote in major newspapers, that this fellow didn't know what he was talking about and should be ignored.

I certainly have no reason to change that judgement now.

Peter

[LisaM]

5. Why, what did he say?

Just curious.

I simply cannot believe how women's issues seem to matter so little to him. It's as if they don't exist.

[pmbryant]

6. Nonsense defeatist negativism

In mid-1995, the Gingrichites had just taken over full control of Congress and storming on a rampage to try to repeal virtually all the major environmental laws we have.

Cockburn kept writing op-eds about how environmentalists were to blame for what was happening because they had fought against it so miserably, and furthermore that the fight was already over.

This was blatant falsehoods, as even I, a political neophyte at the time, could tell. Nothing had gotten through the Senate yet by that point, and we still had Clinton's veto as our weapon of last resort. The fight was just getting started, and in the end, thanks to environmentalist protests and Clinton getting his resolve back, it was a fight that was largely won (at least as long as Clinton held office).

I didn't know how it would end up at the time, but I deeply resented this fellow for spreading such defeatist nonsense at a time when the fight was just beginning, and we desperately needed every ounce of political will we could muster. I resolved to quit reading anything he wrote.

Alas, I have violated that resolve on a few occasions over the years, but have regretted it every time. His entire reason for existence appears to be to de-motivate progressive activists, in an attempt to set up easy victories for the GOP.

--Peter

[paulk]

7. Cockburn shouldn't have more credit than some wingnut

He's cut from the same cloth. He may call himself a leftist, but the method is the same. He adopts a narrow, ideologically driven world view and then bends reality to fit.

He uses the same rhetoric as the right, ie: calling Kerry "Mr. flip-flop", that's just one example. I'm sure there's plenty more spin in the article if I bothered to read the whole thing - but I stopped paying attention to Mr. Cockburn years ago - he's not to be taken seriously, IMHO.

[gratuitous]

8. I have misgivings about Kerry, too

But I'm putting them on hold because I know that whatever problems I might have with Kerry in the White House, they won't amount to diddly-squat of what we have with that lying, corrupt bastard currently running the joint.

I'm also of the opinion that Kerry will be far more responsive to citizen concerns than the Bush Bubble Boy.

[WI_DEM]

9. If Dennis Kucinich were the nominee for president on the dem ticket

Alexander Cockburn would find some fault with him too.

[LisaM]

10. He did criticize Kucinich - and Dean too --

I found columns of his (sorry, it was yesterday and I don't have a link) but he was all over Dean during the primaries, and was critical of Kucinich because he didn't like his evolving stance on choice.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

11. An outright lie.

"in all probability" would have launched a military attack to oust Hussein by now if he were president.

That is an outright lie, a fabrication.

[Happy Eddie]

12. Cockburn doesn't like anybody

Dupe, sorry

[Happy Eddie]

13. Cockburn doesn't like anybody

I used to read his stuff in the Village Voice. He wore me out after a while because in his world, everybody in the world is an amoral double-dealer in hock to a massive transglobal pharmaceutical. He doesn't like anybody because nobody's good enough. Sort of like Ralph Nader on a really bad hemorrhoid day.

[eridani]

14. Unfortunately, he's another one of these--

'Things have to get worse before they get better' types. I think I first heard that 40 years ago, and I haven't seen any 'better' yet. I've concluded that it's a bunch of crap.

[The Magistrate]

15. Cockburn Has No Valid Arguement

For anything but a stick across his snout, and a bill to his family for the time and trouble of clubbing and skinning him.

This wretch is the worst sort of "useful idiot" for the reactionaries, a fitting hand-maiden for Wrecker Nader himself. He desires nothing but the victory of the most reactionary figures available, in the delusional hope that this will lead to radicals of his own rare stripe magically inheriting leadership of the left and center. This foolish delusion is the most reliable article in stock on the splinterist left, and of tremendous use to the reactionaries Cockburn seeks to aid in this election year.

"Kill one, warn one hundred."

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[cushla_machree]

16. i agree with him

In other words, absolutely nothing separates Kerry from Bush's positions on Iraq except he claims he would have lied more efficiently and somehow wheedled the UN and NATO into giving suppor

what does separate kerry from bush on forign policy?

Even if kerry had gotten our allies to support us, how would that make the war in iraq any more legitimate?

I don't see any WMD, but i see a lot of dead iraqi civilians. and now we must win at any cost. We can't have another vietnam failure, the USA can't lose twice!