Reply #35: I watched that speech live [View All]

[charlie]

and shared remarks right here at DU as it was delivered.

After his usual preamble about his Vietnam experience (which would have been a fine time to make a sidelong reference to the Gulf of Tonkin), he says this:

The administration's decision to engage on this issue now, rather than a year ago or earlier, and the manner in which it has engaged, has politicized and complicated the national debate and raised questions about the credibility of their case.

which does indeed cut to the crux of the matter. But after that momentary acknowledgment of Bush's machinations, he segues into how he would have "preferred" Bush agreed to Biden-Lugar. Then he moves into warning Bush about how he will "speak out" if he doesn't respect the constraints of the current resolution. Finally, he goes to Saddam is a Grave Threat But the Danger Isn't Imminent.......yet, and the grand finale: We Will Not Be Blackmailed By This Dictator. There's a little something there for everybody on all sides of the matter.

Here's Robert Byrd, from your link above:

To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50 per cent children is "in the highest moral traditions of our country". This war is not necessary at this time.

Bush went from "no plans on my desk", to "we don't roll out new product at the end of summer", to a monthlong vacation, to Operation Bumblefuck the Democrats. It was plain to anyone what he was doing. Kerry faced down Nixon, he knows what a president who'll use war for electoral gain looks like.

Kerry has my vote, if he is the nominee. I have no choice. And I'm not one who spends much time ragging on his IWR vote. But blithe characterizations of criticism of Kerry's stance as nothing more than pacificism outside the realm of the "real world", as made above, is horseshit.