September 27, 2004

Kerry: I Was For The First Gulf War After I Voted Against It

John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" story is a lie about something that happened did not happen nearly 36 years ago. But more recently Kerry claimed, falsely, to have been at the signing of the truce at Safwan, Iraq, at the end of Gulf War I. Ed Morrissey has the details as the blogosphere smokes out the proof that Kerry lied. [Hat tip: Michael Williams].

Short version: Kerry, in a televised interview in 2001, said, "I was in Safwan. I went there when the signing of the armistice took place at the end of the war." But the armistice was signed in a tent at Safwan on March 3. Because Iraq is several hours ahead, it was still March 2 in Boston. Where, various news articles show, Kerry was.

But, to me, that's not the most interesting part of the transcript of the 2001 interview. To me, there are at least two shockers in this excerpt of the interview:

KERRY: Bill, let me tell you, I was all for our following through at the end of the Gulf War with the Kurd uprising. And I thought it was a great betrayal, in a sense, that we encouraged them verbally. We gave them forces. We gave them weapons. We encouraged them and said we were with them. And then we pulled out at the last minute because the Kuwaitis and the Saudis and others were unsure of what might follow.

O'REILLY: Yes, that was a classic mistake. But if you arm the Kurds in the north of Iraq, you're going to alienate one of our most valuable --

KERRY: I didn't say necessarily the Kurds. There are other members of the opposition. There are people who are outside the country prepared to go in. There are others inside the country. And I believe - I mean, I was in Safwan. I went there when the signing of the armistice took place at the end of the war.

And I remember seeing that land, which lent itself in my judgment, considerably to the creation of almost an enclave, which I thought we should have done then. And I think is one way to begin to approach things now, but there are other possibilities. The important thing is that Saddam Hussein and the world knows that we think Saddam Hussein is essentially out of sync with the times. He is and has acted like a terrorist. And he is engaged in activities that are unacceptable.

Forgive me for saying so, but I'm confused. There is no consistency to Kerry's views on Iraq and Saddam. In 2001, he said "[Saddam] is and has acted like a terrorist." But today he says Iraq is not part of the War on Terror.

In 1991, he opposed war with Iraq when war with Iraq was both a real possibility and an urgent national security necessity, but a decade later he looked back and decided he was "all for" extending a war that he opposed starting in the first place.

One of two things is true: Either John Kerry was lying in 2001 about favoring the U.S. backing the Iraqi rebels in a proxy war in 1991, or in 1991 John Kerry watched the U.S. military win a smashing victory in a war he opposed, so he jumped on the bandwagon and became in favor of the U.S. waging a proxy war against Saddam via Iraqi rebels.

But such a proxy war would have violated the narrow U.N. mandate - to oust Saddam's forces from Kuwait - under which the U.S. had gone to war against Saddam in the first place. And we know how Kerry feels about U.N. mandates: They're like American Express traveler's cheques for the U.S. military - don't leave home without them.

My guess is that, had the first President Bush tried to fight a proxy war against Saddam via the Iraqi rebels back in 1991, Sen. Kerry would have loudly opposed it. His whole history argues so. We know Kerry's views on the Vietnam War. And we know that in the 1980s he met with the Communist dictator of Nicaragua and declared himself opposed to the United States backing of the contras, though later events proved the contras represented the true aspirations of the majority of the Nicaraguan people.

Sen. Kerry, I think you were going for easy points in that interview three years ago. It sure is easy to be "for" a hypothetical war to oust a terrorist dictator 10 years earlier - you get to score political points for being anti-Saddam without having to actually do anything to get rid of Saddam. Maybe that's called "nuance."

UPDATE: Cross-posted at RedState.org.