Posted on 06/13/2006 3:49:46 PM PDT by fuyb
Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission "a mistake."
"We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true," Kerry said. "It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it]."
Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because "you cannot change the future if you''re not honest about the past." He criticized supporters of the war, who label anti-war activists and politicians as unpatriotic and pessimistic.
"The true pessimists are those who will not accept that America''s strength depends on our credibility at home and around the world," Kerry said. "The true pessimists are those who do not understand that valuing our principles is critical to our national security and it is as critical to our national security as our military power itself."
He said questioning the war and fighting in it are "two sides of the very same patriotic coin" and compared the modern anti-war movement to the anti-war movement in the Vietnam War. Kerry, who served in Vietnam, returned to the United States and offered testimony to Congress, opposing the war and describing horrific war crimes he said soldiers committed there.
He said opposing the war is "a right and an obligation" because it was "founded on a lie [and] can never be true to America''s character."
Kerry also lashed out at war supporters who accuse anti-war activists of not supporting the troops. "The best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that destroys their lives," he said.
Kerry renewed his call for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, saying that he supports setting a timetable for the removal in Iraq that is not "cut and run." Without saying when he would like troops removed from the war zone, Kerry said he believes "we need a hard and fast deadline."
Kerry made his comments during a speech at the annual Take Back America conference in the nation''s capital. Organized by the liberal Campaign for America''s Future, the conference has also feature U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton and U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. U.S. Sens. Russ Feingold and Barack Obama are scheduled to appear Wednesday.
A spokesman for the Republican National Committee was not immediately available for reaction to Kerry''s comments.
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
bush made it wrong
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” Letter to President Clinton, signed by: — Democratic Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others, Oct. 9, 1998
“We were misled”
By whom????
Did anyone present any part of the case based on anything they KNEW AT THE TIME was not true?
No.
So, who “misled” Kerry?
The same man who misled everyone, Saddam Hussein.
Sadda,’s strategy was - as far as information circulating in the intelligence communities - to prevent total transparent knowldge by the international inspectors, so they could not come to definitive conclusions, while providing not only the suspicisions that the inspection processs alone left, but additional misinformation to again lead to suspicions that his opponents and neighbors WOULD believe that, contrary to all his denials to everyone, that many of his weapons programs WERE intact. Saddam wanted just enough lack of evidence and just enough suspicion that real clarity on this issue could not be obtained.
The entire point to Saddam was for him to quit all the subterfuge and just totally come clean, in a way that would give any inspection process confidence it had been able to reach definitive conclusions; in order to avoid any necessity for us to use force to find all the answers. Saddam denied that possibility. He wanted to publicly deny his programs were active, while leaving anyone who might engage Iraq militarily to believe they were still active.
Saddam misled everyone.
But Kerry is simply a liar if he is trying to say that anyone in the U.S. administration misled him.
Is he also trying to say that it is a mistake that Iraq is not a nominal democracy, too?
There. I fixed it.
I was a conniving opportunist then, and I am one now. But there were no opportunities created for me by voting yes,so I was wrong to do so. Oh, and there are those dead people who speak some weird language I don’t understand. I suppose that would have happened no matter what, so that’s a good rationale for a mea culpa. It shows that I really care.
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