Qaqaagate the Ultimate Kerry Flip-Flop
John Kerry's habit of grasping for what ever comes up in the latest media spin cycle as campaign ammo to use against President Bush is anything but new. This "missing explosives in Iraq" business is just the latest example of it.
If, however, this was the big "gotcha" the President's enemies have been holding in reserve for the sprint to the tape - a sloppy, underresearched "story" marred by convenient assumptions and partisan wishful thinking that collapsed inside of a day without fabricated documents and incestuous media-Kerry collusion (so bad, in fact, that the New York Times couldn't even get the "journalistic" batton to their dubious partners at CBS to run on - I swear I couldn't make this up - 60 Minutes) - color me as unimpressed.
Reminds me of what T.S. Elliot once wrote (with one word strategically replaced):
"This is the way a political party ends
This is the way a political party ends
Not with a bang
But a whimper"
It goes without saying that both the Times and Kerry are blustering forward with this discredited turkey anyway. They may as well, since draftmongering and scaring grandma and counterfeit messiahnism hasn't gotten them anywhere.
But do you really want to know just how bottom-of-the-barrel John Kerry's propects have become (leaving aside the rumor that he's abandoning Florida - not that he is pulling out of the sunshine state, but that there could even be such a rumor)? Consider the underlying premise of this fraudulent story:
1) Saddam Hussein had high-explosives used to detonate nuclear weapons; ergo
2) Saddam Hussein had, or wasn't far from acquiring, nuclear weapons;
3) These explosives could be passed on to terrorists;
4) American troops didn't get to al Qaqaa soon enough, and let these 380 tons of dual-use high explosive get stolen by "looters" right out from under their oblivious noses (a logistical and physical impossibility)
Now, what has Kerry spent all year insisting?
1) Saddam Hussein didn't have any WMD;
2) George W. Bush "misled" the country into believing that he did;
3) He "rushed to war" instead of giving multilateral diplomacy yet another round of chances
Does anybody besides me (and Jason Smith) see a contradiction here?
Okay, I won't be coy about it: After spending all year as the McGovernite pacifist anti-war candidate attacking the President with relentless ferocity from the Left (which got him precisely nowhere), John Kerry's last-chance gambit is to attack the President with compressedly frantic ferocity from the Right.
The logic of the underlying premise is irrefutable: to use this critique of Mr. Bush's wartime leadership, you must conclude that Saddam was dangerous, a terrorism sponsor, possessed WMDs, and that the President's mistake was in not "rushing to war" fast enough.
Oh, yes, and that the elite 101st Airborne Division is bumblingly incompetent.
It is an argument that, actually, does possess a great deal of merit (not about the 101st Airborne, or the "looted" explosives, which were long gone by the time our forces arrived - most likely to Syria, along with the rest of Saddam's WMD stockpiles). When Mr. Bush foolishly took Colin Powell's advice, went to the UN, and tried to go the John Kerry route, I was highly critical. I called it a waste of time, scoffed at the idea that France, Germany, Russia et al would ever truly cooperate with us, and predicted that we would have to go in anyway without a UN fig leaf, that this extra time squandered on diplomatic dithering would give Saddam the chance to come up with some unpleasant surprises, and that Bush would never get credit from the DisLoyal Opposition for this gesture to "multilateralism."
Every one of those stances was vindicated.
But John Kerry, even in his "hawkish" persona, never once held any of them (an astounding realization when you stop and think about it...).
Until now, apparently, whether or not he realizes it. Next, he'll be calling Bush a "wimp" for having failed to keep going into Syria to capture the Qaqaa HE.
Just goes to show that the Boston Balker really will say anything to get even one more vote.
Even if it makes him look and sound utterly incoherent.
And nobody is really listening anymore.
If, however, this was the big "gotcha" the President's enemies have been holding in reserve for the sprint to the tape - a sloppy, underresearched "story" marred by convenient assumptions and partisan wishful thinking that collapsed inside of a day without fabricated documents and incestuous media-Kerry collusion (so bad, in fact, that the New York Times couldn't even get the "journalistic" batton to their dubious partners at CBS to run on - I swear I couldn't make this up - 60 Minutes) - color me as unimpressed.
Reminds me of what T.S. Elliot once wrote (with one word strategically replaced):
"This is the way a political party ends
This is the way a political party ends
Not with a bang
But a whimper"
It goes without saying that both the Times and Kerry are blustering forward with this discredited turkey anyway. They may as well, since draftmongering and scaring grandma and counterfeit messiahnism hasn't gotten them anywhere.
But do you really want to know just how bottom-of-the-barrel John Kerry's propects have become (leaving aside the rumor that he's abandoning Florida - not that he is pulling out of the sunshine state, but that there could even be such a rumor)? Consider the underlying premise of this fraudulent story:
1) Saddam Hussein had high-explosives used to detonate nuclear weapons; ergo
2) Saddam Hussein had, or wasn't far from acquiring, nuclear weapons;
3) These explosives could be passed on to terrorists;
4) American troops didn't get to al Qaqaa soon enough, and let these 380 tons of dual-use high explosive get stolen by "looters" right out from under their oblivious noses (a logistical and physical impossibility)
Now, what has Kerry spent all year insisting?
1) Saddam Hussein didn't have any WMD;
2) George W. Bush "misled" the country into believing that he did;
3) He "rushed to war" instead of giving multilateral diplomacy yet another round of chances
Does anybody besides me (and Jason Smith) see a contradiction here?
Okay, I won't be coy about it: After spending all year as the McGovernite pacifist anti-war candidate attacking the President with relentless ferocity from the Left (which got him precisely nowhere), John Kerry's last-chance gambit is to attack the President with compressedly frantic ferocity from the Right.
The logic of the underlying premise is irrefutable: to use this critique of Mr. Bush's wartime leadership, you must conclude that Saddam was dangerous, a terrorism sponsor, possessed WMDs, and that the President's mistake was in not "rushing to war" fast enough.
Oh, yes, and that the elite 101st Airborne Division is bumblingly incompetent.
It is an argument that, actually, does possess a great deal of merit (not about the 101st Airborne, or the "looted" explosives, which were long gone by the time our forces arrived - most likely to Syria, along with the rest of Saddam's WMD stockpiles). When Mr. Bush foolishly took Colin Powell's advice, went to the UN, and tried to go the John Kerry route, I was highly critical. I called it a waste of time, scoffed at the idea that France, Germany, Russia et al would ever truly cooperate with us, and predicted that we would have to go in anyway without a UN fig leaf, that this extra time squandered on diplomatic dithering would give Saddam the chance to come up with some unpleasant surprises, and that Bush would never get credit from the DisLoyal Opposition for this gesture to "multilateralism."
Every one of those stances was vindicated.
But John Kerry, even in his "hawkish" persona, never once held any of them (an astounding realization when you stop and think about it...).
Until now, apparently, whether or not he realizes it. Next, he'll be calling Bush a "wimp" for having failed to keep going into Syria to capture the Qaqaa HE.
Just goes to show that the Boston Balker really will say anything to get even one more vote.
Even if it makes him look and sound utterly incoherent.
And nobody is really listening anymore.
posted by JASmius at 11:41 PM
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