Brainwashed? - WSJ

[question everything]

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107567851536117452-search,00.html?collection=autowire%2F30day&vql_string=brainwashing%3Cin%3E%28article%2Dbody%29

(snip)

But is it really likely that this savvy Washington insider was hoodwinked? As an 18-year member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has spent plenty of time thinking about how to handle Iraq. He also had privileged and direct access to U.S. intelligence, the same data that led President Clinton into a military confrontation with Saddam in 1998, which was the same year "regime change" became stated U.S. policy after Mr. Kerry allowed the Iraq Liberation Act to pass the Senate with unanimous consent.

Presumably, similar intelligence played a role in Senator Kerry's speech on October 9, 2002 that "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." If Mr. Kerry was misled into believing in such a threat, so were the likes of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Madeleine Albright and Senator Carl Levin, all of whom made similarly unequivocal statements on the matter.

Nor does it appear to have been any contrary evidence that started Mr. Kerry's drift back into the antiwar camp. Rather it was the sudden traction Mr. Dean was getting with his antiwar message that led Mr. Kerry in January 2003 to start accusing Mr. Bush of a "rush to war." These days Mr. Kerry has more or less adopted the entire Dean line, decrying as "fraudulent" a coalition that includes most of our key allies from World Wars I and II.

Mr. Kerry has an explanation for all this, sort of. He says Saddam should have been evicted from Kuwait but voted "no" on the first Gulf War to give the former President Bush more time to amass domestic support. He says his "yes" vote in 2002 was premised on this President Bush attracting more international help. He didn't, he told Rolling Stone, expect Mr. Bush to "f -- it up as badly as he did."

(snip)

[lastknowngood]

1. I don't believe he didn't expect the shrub to F*** up the war

he has F***ed everything he has ever done.

[bpilgrim]

2. that's becuase it's all about the OIL which concerns OUR WAY OF LIFE

aka our NATIONAL SECURITY obviously...

but isn't it cheaper just to buy it vs rampaging?

or is it IMPERATIVE that we get in there now and the less compitition the better?

i'd say that probably akes perfect sense to any PNAC signator.

why doesn't the media focus on the real issues instead of the BS?

maybe because they are on the same side?

peace

[wabeewoman]

3. My problem with this is

if we knew why didn't he. I just don't buy it. I would buy they were afraid to stand up to bush. Why in the world would they trust what bush told them if they looked at his record at all? I'm sorry but this just calls into question the judgement of the ones who voted yes. I believe Hillary Clinton was another to my great disappointment.