I don't see any flailing in that article; he's objecting to the deliberate misrepresentations of what he said. More on the global test here for those who think it involves permission or approval.

"But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Lonewacko, Kerry is plainly saying that any action he took would have to pass a test, the test being that the world would agree that we did what we did for legitimate reasons.

Those are his words. You can spin them any way you want. I see liberal commentators flopping all over them, trying to parse them to say that Kerry did not say what he plainly, unambiguously said.

Sit in a cardboard box all day and pretend it is a real fort, if that's what floats your boat. But don't blame the rest of us for rolling our eyes at the wacko in the cardboard box.
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Just give me one instance where you could foresee the 'WORLD' ever agreeing that our foreign policy is legitimate. Remember, it is now a proven fact that France, Russia and China were in bed with Iraq. And why would any country object to UN intervention in Darfar? China just did...because of their deals with the government.

No disrespect intended, but that does seem an odd spin to put on it. As I posted here Kerry clearly states the exact opposite - that is that no other country gets a veto. The "global test" comment indicated that, in a global community, you need to be ready to demonstrate to your allies that you had a valid reason for doing what you did, whether they agree or help you or not. That's just showing respect for other world leaders and taking the time to show that you understand *their* position, even if you feel differently. That's the kind of international respect needed for good foreign policy, and something Kerry understands and Bush/Cheney clearly don't.

For France and Germany to disagree with our position is one thing, but they went out of their way to try and undermine us. Is that showing any respect to us? If the world had stood up to Saddam and actually enforced the resolutions that they themselves passed, it may not have had to come to war. That's why you cannot rest the fate of our country on whether or not they will join us in any endeavour.

The "global test" comment indicated that, in a global community, you need to be ready to demonstrate to your allies that you had a valid reason for doing what you did, whether they agree or help you or not.
You're assuming a level of intellectual honesty on the part of "our allies" that they don't possess. France and Germany are never going to approve of an Iraq invasion no matter how much evidence we show, because they have their hands in a big pile of dirty money. The mark of a true leader is that he will do what is necessary without worrying about if it's popular, which is something Kerry and his supporters don't understand.

well, jazz:

seems to me that a dozen years of resolutions in a diplomatic arena like the UN and over 15 months of direct US diplomatic efforts after that in which reason after reason was shown to all parties - and please don't cite the WMD meme; A) they've been found all along and B) they weren't the only reason and C) Saddam threatened to use his "non-existent" WMDs on our soldiers right up to the minute he dived in his rathole - negates claims that Bush didn't take the "global test" especially since you explain that taking the "global test" doesn't mean other leaders have to agree.

Since you say, apparently, that the important point is to explain things to other nations "whether they agree or not..." you CANNOT say that the Bush Administration failed to do that. Bush, among others in his admininstration, repeatedly addressed the UN directly, Saddam directly, the Taliban directly, and Bush repeatedly contacted other nations' leaders personally.

It is intellectually dishonest to ignore Bush's diplomatic efforts and transform the fact of certain nations in the pay of Saddam refusing to come on board into "Bush didn't bother to address other nations".

There was nothing more Bush or his administration could do diplomatically. The only thing left for Bush to do was to make the decision to stand down or go ahead.

That after ALL this diplomatic effort, Saddam still refused to obey his own begged-for 1991 cease-fire agreement, still refused to provide evidence he had destroyed his WMDs, even with 150,000 US troops massed at his borders for months! does not mean that Bush ignored diplomacy and pulled the Iraq War "GO!" order out of his cowboy a$$ just because he woke up with a headache that particular day or that he gave the "GO" order in a vacuum is ludicrous.

And it pains me that anti-War/anti-Bush people are just that unsophisticated or deliberately ignorant they cannot or will not comprehend the critical strategic necessity of getting rid of Saddam, in particular - as say, opposed to Assad - in the Global War on Terrorists.

The humanitarian benefits to the Iraqi (and Afghani) people are a wonderful collateral benefit, but I don't, war supporters don't, and Pres Bush doesn't claim superior ideals for that. He acknowledges (even in his address to the UN) that America didn't rescue the Afghans or the Iraqi people until Saddam and the Taliban were deemed an unacceptable threat to the US. To this day, he still calls for international diplomatic pressure on oppressive and tyrannical leaders to change their ways, believing that change must be FORCED (after all 60 yrs of UN 'diplomacy' and international financial incentives haven't done the trick!) upon these cultures so they can finally flourish and give their people hope instead of producing generation after generation of sullen, angry, despairing populations looking for somewhere or someone on which or whom to blame their misfortune. Therein lies the source of terrorist danger for the US and the world. There is a reason the leaders of these poor, ignorant nations don't allow free exchanges of ideas or news or information, especially international news. If they got a steady stream of information from the outside world, the populations would realize that their problems are mostly INTERNAL and that what they do find out would directly contradict what their mullahs are preaching - that the "Western world is out to get you so we must 'get' them first".

At the same time, anti-Bush/anti-war people fail to acknowledge or address that Bush did not ONLY go to a ground war. Initiated by Bush long before "boots were on the ground", and continuing today, is a successful multi-pronged international anti-terror effort that includes identifying & shutting down financial networks, product suppliers and buyers, terrorist-camps hosts, continuing diplomatic arrangements and pressures and on and on.

Why Iraq? Why not Iran or North Korea or Sudan? Not NK because they were being handled by China and Russia et al and we can't go charging in there and dismissing them. Not Iran because Saddam (secular) would help Iran but the Mullahs (theocratic) wouldn't help Iraq. Not Sudan because they aren't strategically advantageous. Because of all the countries in the Middle East swamp, Saddam had the history of using WMDs, a history of invading other countries, a history (now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt) of consorting with & funding known terrorists, a history and current practice of dodging inspectors, he was an arguably insane leader with delusions of grandeur and belief that he could accomplish world domination, he had violated his cease-fire agreement for 12 years (in many more ways than WMD/nuke production) which gave us legal international grounds (regardless of what Kofi, Chief Thief, says) for reviving Gulf War 1; the fact that France, Germany, Russia & China were helping Saddam to circumvent sanctions and diplomatic pressures and avoid inspections (and a push in the UN was almost complete to lift sanctions entirely), that 'containment' of Saddam was about to fail completely, that Saddam had the best educated population in the Middle East (aside from Israel), which meant that rebuilding and bringing Iraq into the international community would be easier, that Iraq was located in such a way as to squeeze Iran between it and Afghanistan, that the rest of the Middle East were unlikely to come to Saddam's rescue, to expose egregious international back-door support for Saddam by countries talking out of the both sides of their mouths and thus bringing light to the international sources supporting terrorism....

The countries that did not come on board with Bush have indicated they would not come on board with Kerry, either. They have their own agendas and that's that.

So that's my explanation of why I think anti-war/anti-Bush complaints on this subject are completely hypocritical, based on ignorance, stubborness, or hatred, and simply not credible.

First off - AWESOME post by "Lark"!

Secondly - True, Kerry did say he'd never give any other country a "veto" when it came to U.S. security (flip); BUT in the same breath he went on to give his "global test" (flop) answer! He can't help it. Which one are we to believe? He's been doing this for months (years actually). And yes it's true, Kerry did "perform" better in the first debate; but if you listened carefully the entire 90 min's. was flip-flop central.

Thirdly - "Jazz" wrote: "The 'global test' comment indicated that, in a global community, you need to be ready to demonstrate to your allies that you had a valid reason for doing what you did, whether they agree or help you or not."

And your point is... that the Bush Administration did NOT do this? Please. The difference between Bush and Kerry is (and we all know this): Bush actually exercised what Kerry only preaches. Bush did the "global test," and when certain, ahem, allies did not support us, Bush, with disregard for world opinion, and total regard for world safety, did it anyway. Kerry, on the other hand, (and I believe we all know this too) would not. Kerry will pull a Clinton - What's popular?

I defer my remaining time to Lark's post.

The term "global" is used everyday in classrooms and boardrooms to mean "the larger picture". I perceived an element of that concept in Mr. Kerry's remark.

If you want to take the use of the word "global" by an avowed internationalist, who speaks day in day out about our need to placate the "international community," and who continually preaches about our need to soothe world opinion, and argue that he meant "big picture," and not "global" in the international sense (an argument that to the best of my knowledge the hapless candidate himself has not made), go ahead.

You'll look like an absolute frickin' idiot, but that's your issue, not mine.
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SemiP - some folks see a pile of horse crap and perceive a pony. But it's still a pile of horse crap.

Re "Semipundit"'s remark, I perceive some severe spinning to buck up a floundering candidate. Jimmy Carter redux. Ugh, just what we need.

One of the main irritations in confronting Kerry is that he is all over the map in what he says about any given subject - and oddly enough, he and his lemmings try to use this to their advantage.

So, if for example, at one point he says that his favorite color is yellow, and then five minutes later says that his favorite color is green, when you criticize him for favoring the color yellow, he and his followers, in their snotty tone, eagerly point to you where he said his favorite color was actually green. Therefore, YOU, are mischaracterizing his position.

And then, when you justifiably point out where he DID say his favorite color was yellow, Kerry and Co. will enlighten you by pointing out that green is just an even mixture of yellow and blue, and therefore BOTH of his statements are true and not at all incompatible - hence, the Kerry dance of nuance.

Let's try this once again. The "global test" as I understand it, and as I'm sure most Americans understood it, does not imply approval, or agreement, or a permission slip.

When you start pretending that's what Kerry said, you're being intellectually dishonest.

If all our evidence about Iraq had been true, we were close to being able to prove to the world that we were doing the right thing.

Given what we know now, could we prove to the world that what we did was the right thing? Perhaps if we had made the humanitarian case, yes. But, that's not the case that was made.

Would Darfur pass the global test? Since there's a genocide there, yes. Maybe other countries might disagree, but they couldn't say we did it for illegitimate reasons.

Instead of the "global test," how about we try a "history test?" As in, "will history show that I did this for the right reasons as opposed to this being an illegitimate action?"

Given that the charges of "No WMD" have been proven conclusively false with things like the sarin shell that someone tried to detonate near our troops, the mustard gas discovered, centrifuges found and the statements of the former head of Iraq's centrifuge program, and various other things, the idea that what we said was a lie or untrue just doesn't fly. It's nothing more than partisan spin by people who put their electoral victory above the defense of the nation.

As for the "intellectually dishonest" remark, that's pure nonsense. Kerry's remark was pretty clear, and you seem to be trying to read quite a bit into it in order to change its obvious meaning, which is that he would have sat around kowtowing to the UN while it kept siphoning off Oil-for-Food moneys and while the French kept on giving illegal arms to Iraq.

Once again, our magnificient "allies" are the ones who are intellectually dishonest. It wouldn't have mattered if we'd brought photos of Saddam posing with a nuke-tipped ICBM like a farmer with a prize pig, and France, Germany and Russia still would have opposed us because they, like all other nations in the UN, are supporting their own interests. Frankly, I'd love to live in John Kerry's world where all our allies have the best of intentions and would never do anything harmful to us. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world.

Contrary to the rantings of Jazz and Lonewacko Kerry DID say we had to pass a global test. It does contradict what Kerry said just before that when he said he would not give any nation a veto. Thus Kerry's answer is at best incoherent and at worst a fraud. If we must pass a test then there is a veto over our actions. Despite what the looney left would like you to believe words mean things.

So what considerations do we owe to the rest of the world in matters such as preemptive attacks based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence? Do we just make it a standing policy to always go it alone?

That's pretty risky policy for a country that has, through greed and shortsightedness, dispersed much of its productive and financial infrastructure throughout the world, far beyond its borders. I can conceive of a scenario wherein we are punished and not a shot is fired; they simply stop buying our stuff.

Global means the big picture. Ask Cheney and Halliburton.

How in the hell can anyone say were going it alone? If Chirac had agreed with us but Blair did not, would it change anything? If Kerry uses the first Gulf war as the standard then why did he vote against it? And, as Cheney pointed out, we have more allies in this war! And as for making it a standing policy to always go it alone...YES! If we have to! To stand here with arms folded and say "Darn, they just wont listen" would be a grave mistake. Besides, France is more than happy to use our troops when it serves their intrests, are we not to use our own troops to serve our intrests?

"That's pretty risky policy for a country that has, through greed and shortsightedness, dispersed much of its productive and financial infrastructure throughout the world, far beyond its borders."

LOL. Well, I guess you have real issues with economic liberty, freedom, and capitalism.

If you ever own a business that could expand or operate profitably outside the U.S. (an unlikely event for you, I acknowledge), I assume you'll turn down the opportunity.

LOL.

If you have issues with economic liberty, freedom, and capitalism...you might be a liberal.

If you think the world is best served by American businesses staying right here at home and not inflicting themselves on other people...you might be a liberal.

If you think it is wrong to use legal, ethical measures to maximize your profits...you are most certainly a liberal.
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I do not think it is wrong in a moral sense to engage the rest of the world in productive enterprise. In fact, the genie, if it could be called that, is already out of the bottle. I don't see us getting back to the way we were. Besides, I like making money, too.

Despite the rhetoric condemning "internationalism", we are now much less national and much more global, regarding our capitalistic interests. People further down the chain just haven't caught on yet.

I think that it may be wrong in a strategic sense to have so much of our capacity located outside of the country, beyond our control. This is an idea that I first encountered in a course in Business Strategy and Policy at UT in the 1990's, when American business was getting its teeth into domestic outsourcing and farming out its business operations, both manufacturing and financial.

The upshot was that your employee today will be your competitor's employee tomorrow, and will have intimate knowledge of your business.

This could be an area of vulnerability for us.

SemiPundit:

If, when confronted with the facts, you try to change the subject, claim that you were saying what something different from what you were in fact saying, and lamely follow up with some vague platitudes in the hope that no one will cut through the BS you tried unsucessfully to shovel...you might just be a liberal.
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