Kerry's Attempt to Finesse Iraq Issue May Backfire

President Bush's rationale for war in Iraq continues to crumble, but it seems that Sen. John F. Kerry has his own war problem.

While the effort to tar Kerry's Vietnam record has not been a positive development for the Democrat, it has obscured media coverage over a more current subject -- Kerry's position on the conflict in Iraq.

In case you missed it, Bush forced Kerry into a corner earlier this month by demanding he answer a simple yes-or-no question: "Knowing what we know now [would Kerry] have supported going into Iraq?"

If Kerry answered no, then the Bush campaign would take the sound bite and make the argument that Saddam Hussein would still be in power if Kerry had been president. If Kerry answered yes, they would argue that his position was essentially the same as Bush's position and that his criticism of the president's Iraq policy was hypocritical.

Kerry -- who insinuated at the Democratic convention that Bush had misled the nation into war -- said that he "would have voted for" the resolution that permitted the possibility of going to war in Iraq even given what we know now. But he added that as president, he would have "used that authority to do things very differently."

For Kerry, it all hinges on the word "authority." Kerry believes that Bush needed explicit congressional authority "to hold Saddam Hussein accountable for the agreements that Saddam Hussein made with the world, which were the only things that kept him in power after the Gulf War," said David Wade, a spokesman for Kerry's campaign.

In Kerry's convention speech in Boston last month, and more pointedly in interviews following the speech, he criticized Bush for using faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the war and suggested that the president knew better than to make strong links between al Qaeda and Iraq. And now, even knowing all that, Kerry says he would still have voted for the resolution.

But weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda were the predominant justifications in the resolution giving the president the authority to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." [Full Text of the Resolution]

The following are the only non-WMD, non-al Qaeda justifications cited in the resolution authorizing use of force:

• Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;

• The current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;

• Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;

• It is in the national security interests of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region.

So it seems that Kerry believes that Hussein's refusal to admit U.N. weapons inspectors, Hussein's attack on U.S. planes in Operation Southern Watch, and his 1993 attempt to assassinate the first President Bush are reasons enough for using U.S. forces to remove Hussein from power.

Kerry seems to be saying that he would have voted to give Bush the authority to go to war, even if he had known that U.S. intelligence was flawed, that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Political Implications

The Republican National Committee is circulating an edited video of Kerry's comments on Iraq, some of which show Kerry arguing that Iraq's efforts to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction and the potential of those weapons flowing from Iraq to terrorist organizations are a basis for removing Hussein.

"After months of attacking President Bush's motives and credibility during the Democrat presidential primary, going so far as to declare himself the anti-war candidate, John Kerry now says knowing what he knows now he would still have voted for the Iraq war," said Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie at a news conference this week. "Senator Kerry's ever changing positions on Iraq are not the kind of steady leadership we need in these times of challenge and change. And we're going to continue to make that point between now and November 2."

A spokesman for the Kerry campaign dismissed the Republican video as a distortion of his words for political purposes. But the bad news for Kerry is that those political purposes seem to have found an audience. The online video has been viewed more than 6 million times, according to the RNC.

For his part, Kerry insists that he has been consistent. His problem with Bush, he says, is that the president rushed to war without building an international coalition. But while the resolution calls on Congress to support the president's efforts to "strictly enforce all Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq" and obtain "prompt and decisive action" by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq comply all orders, it does not require coalition building as a precursor for attack.

Whatever the case, Kerry's position on Iraq is similar enough to Bush's to make the most important issue for most voters a non-issue. This might help Kerry with some independent voters in key battleground states, but a question remains over just how fired up the party's base will be able to get for a candidate who has an almost indistinguishable foreign policy from that of a president they strongly dislike.

In the closely fought state of Nevada, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday demonstrated the tough time that Kerry has in rallying top Democrats behind his position. Pelosi, after calling the war "a grotesque mistake," said she couldn't understand why Kerry still says he would have voted for the Iraq resolution, according to a report in the "Las Vegas Review-Journal."

Kerry's unwillingness to disavow his vote for the war has meant that he also hasn't been able to take advantage of dissent from some in the president's party. More and more members of Congress -- including conservative Rep. Doug Bereuter, a Republican from Nebraska -- say that they wouldn't have voted for the war if they knew then what they know now.

What will diminish this as a problem for Kerry is the fact that many Democratic base voters will assume that, no matter what Kerry says, he would never have handled Iraq as President Bush did. And this is the argument on which Kerry relies.

"The bigger question is, how would Bush answer the question, would you go to war with a plan to win the peace?" asks Wade, the Kerry spokesman. "Would you go to war again without virtually anyone else by your side…The president is the one who needs to answer some questions."

Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, August 27, 2004; 8:47 AM