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Edited on Fri Oct-01-04 06:06 AM by KzooDem
Important distinction/talking point in clarifying Kerry's "global test" comment about pre-emptive war:
When asked his views on pre-emptive war, Kerry said yes...the President should always have that option to protect America, and offered this caveat:
Kerry: "If you're going to do it, you have to do it in a way that passes the test...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."
Bush: "Ahhhhh....sigh....let me, um.......I'm not exactly sure what he means "passing the global test." You,you,you take premptive action if you pass a global test? Um, um...my attitude is you take premptive action in order to protect the American people. That you act to make this country secure."
First of all, Kerry had just SAID the President should have premptive authority to attack to protect the country.
Second, Bush twisted Kerry's answer around in his repsonse to make it sound like Kerry would only take premptive action AFTER the reasoning for the action met this "global test."
The implication...the picture Bush was trying to paint, was one of Kerry running around asking world leaders if it would be okay with them if he attacked anouther country pre-emptively.
The key here is Kerry said you should be able to prove to the world why you DID it...he used the past tense. Kerry didn't say "we need to prove to the world why were going to do it." Any intelligent adult could interpret Kerry's response to mean: Yes, the president should order pre-emptive attacks to protect our country, but we better be damned sure it was for a very good reason, and we had better be able to prove it to the world.
I suspect, however, that the right-wing media whores and the other minions of the media who are just plain stupid to get it are going to latch onto this "global test" thing and distort it more than the Boy King already did.
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