Another New York Times Stinker

Today's New York Times editorial manages to come up with some incredibly illogical and ridiculous lines in its suggestion for what Kerry needs to do to clarify his foreign policy.

When he accepts the Democratic presidential nomination tonight, John Kerry needs to give the nation a clearer idea of how his choices would have differed from President Bush's - particularly when it comes to the war in Iraq. The nation deserves to be told whether Mr. Kerry would have voted to authorize the invasion if he had known that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.

This is simply inane. The true issue is what would John Kerry have done if he had the same knowledge regarding Saddam's WMDs that President Bush had. To phrase it the way the Times does is simply disingenuous. Given the available intelligence, President Bush (like the British, French, Russian, Israeli intelligence and UN Weapons inspectors) "knew" that Saddam had WMD. The real question is what would John Kerry have done in that situation, especially after 9/11?

Mr. Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, have said that they voted to give the president the power to go to war to strengthen Mr. Bush's hand with the United Nations.

This is once again Kerry's excuse that he voted for threatening military action, but not actually using it. As any 6 year old learns, a threat is worthless unless it is backed up by something. Threatening and then doing nothing does not help a country's deterrence, to say the least.

They also had been given alarming intelligence reports, which they believed were accurate, showing that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling biological and chemical weapons and at least attempting to develop nuclear bombs.

And given those reports, they voted to use force against Iraq, but now disavow those votes.

Those reports were wrong, and Congress was wrong in presuming that Mr. Bush would go the last mile to get United Nations support.

Apparently for the New York Times, 17 UN Resolutions and an attempt at an 18th is not going far enough. Does the Times really think that if Bush just begged the French a little more, just asked nicer, they would have supported military action against Iraq? This is simply delusional. It is rewriting history with an attempt to deceive.

We can appreciate Mr. Kerry's complaints that he was misled on both counts.

No, he wasn't misled. The intelligence was incorrect. That is very different from misleading, something the Times is trying to do with its editorials.

But he and Mr. Edwards have refused to say whether they would have acted differently if they had known then what they know now.

Again, hindsight is easy, what would they have done knowing what was known then is the key issue.

When it comes to using force abroad, voters deserve a clear idea of how high Mr. Kerry would raise the bar from where Mr. Bush lowered it.

So Mr. Bush "lowered the bar" by using intelligence from all the world's major intelligence services and enforcing the policy of the previous administration as well as the UN?

Saddam Hussein was a vicious dictator, certainly, who was continuing to disdain United Nations resolutions on weapons of mass destruction and refusing to give full access to weapons inspectors. But we know now that because of the resolutions and the inspections, Mr. Hussein no longer had the forbidden weapons, even if he still harbored ambitions of getting them someday.

We also know that the UN resolutions were falling apart, in large part because of the French desire to resume trade with Saddam. So even if Saddam was not a direct threat to the US now, he would undoubtedly have been a threat to US interests later. Would the Times rather have dealt with a well-armed Saddam later?

Voters need to know whether Mr. Kerry agrees. Or would he have held back on invading Iraq and chosen instead to pursue the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the destruction of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and to focus diplomatic resources on places like North Korea and Iran?

North Korea and Iran have both been dealt with using "diplomatic resources" by the Bush Administration. Its not clear what the result will be with North Korea, but these "diplomatic resources" have been an utter failure in dealing with Iran; in large part because Iran knows that with all the disagreement in the US, they are safe from US military action. Showing once again that soft power not backed up by hard power is worthless.

But while voters are certainly prepared to accept a candidate with a complex worldview, they also value the courage that comes with occasionally taking a leap and giving an answer that's straight and simple.

The odds of getting a straight answer from Kerry tonight are pretty much nil.