Well, if it's Wednesday, it must be Lileks' Newhouse Day--Taking Your Allies Where You Find Them

[...] Now let's examine the statements of presidential hopeful John Kerry. Sour, dour, determined to wake America to the need to get Syrian blessing for the war on Iraq, Kerry blasted our allies with the following characterization:

"The greatest position of strength is by exercising the best judgment in the pursuit of diplomacy," he said, "not in some trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted, but in a genuine coalition."

That would be a coalition in which French is spoken without shame.

Leave aside the fact that we have been pursuing diplomacy for six months, and that a reasonable observer might conclude that diplomacy does not wish to be caught. Forget Kerry's suggestion that strength isn't expressed by aircraft carriers, but by a rowboat full of "statesmen" so adept at double-talk that they can't order lunch without praising breakfast, brunch, supper and a midnight snack. [...]

Kerry is another one of those who seemed quite willing to allow Mr. Clinton to do his bidness on Yugoslavia and on Iraq without too much in the way of moral outrage--from The Weekly Standard of September, 2002:

[...] John Kerry was equally hawkish [about Iraq]: "If there is not unfettered, unrestricted, unlimited access per the U.N. resolution for inspections, and UNSCOM cannot in our judgment appropriately perform its functions, then we obviously reserve the rights to press that case internationally and to do what we need to do as a nation in order to be able to enforce those rights," Kerry said back on February 23, 1998. "Saddam Hussein has already used these weapons and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so. That is a threat to the stability of the Middle East. It is a threat with respect to the potential of terrorist activities on a global basis. It is a threat even to regions near but not exactly in the Middle East." [...]

As a refresher, it might be good to read the quotes from Mr. Clinton at the bottom of this same article:

[...] "Just consider the facts," Bill Clinton urged.

"Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave the lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports. For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM. In 1995, Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, and chief organizer of Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more. Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities and weapon stocks. Previously, it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth."

Clinton was on a roll:

"Now listen to this: What did it admit? It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability--notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And might I say, UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production.

Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door. And our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it. "

More Clinton: "We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century," he argued. "They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein." [...]

Those of you who think Bush = Hitler, that This War Is All About Oil--where were you back when this was being said? Where were all the giant papier mache heads? Where were all the sweaty, spittle-dripping, drum-banging peace marchers? Either you didn't care then because you thought he was right, or you knew Mr. Clinton wasn't really serious in the first place.

Either way, your moral high ground wouldn't make a decent pitcher's mound.
posted by Terry at 2:37:00 PM