The new team at Kamp Kerry has decided the new theme of his campaign is that “W stands for wrong:” the “wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
This is a little different from the message the prior Kerry team chose for his December 16 speech in Iowa, where he said “those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president.”
Tim Russert asked Kerry about that comment on “Meet the Press” on January 11, 2004:
MR. RUSSERT: You said this about Howard Dean . . . “those who believe we are not safer with [Saddam Hussein’s] capture don’t have the judgment to be President — or the credibility to be elected President.” . .
SEN. KERRY: . . . This is a man who has used weapons of mass destruction, unlike other people on this Earth today, not only against other people but against his own people.
This is a man who tried to assassinate a former president of the United States, a man who lobbed 36 missiles into Israel in order to destabilize the Middle East, a man who is so capable of miscalculation that he even brought this war on himself.
This is a man who, if he was left uncaptured, would have continued to be able to organize the Ba’athists. He would have continued to terrorize the people, just in their minds, because of 30 years of terror in Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator . . .
SEN. KERRY: There isn’t a soldier there, Tim, who doesn’t understand that the capture of Saddam Hussein helps to reduce the capacity for the insurrection, for the insurgency, and helps move forward. We are safer with the capture of a man who wanted to build weapons of mass destruction and who, actually, had them and used them at one point in time.
And its is a lot different than the message the prior team before that one chose for Kerry’s August 31, 2003 appearance on “Meet the Press,” where this exchange took place:
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that we should reduce funding that we are now providing for the operation in Iraq?
SEN. KERRY: No. I think we should increase it.
MR. RUSSERT: Increase funding.
SEN. KERRY: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: By how much?
SEN. KERRY: By whatever number of billions of dollars it takes to win. It is critical that the United States of America be successful in Iraq, Tim.
And then there is this, from Kerry’s October 9, 2002 speech on the Senate floor regarding the resolution authorizing the war:
SEN. KERRY: Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing weaponizing of a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles, such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives which would bring them to the United States itself.
In addition, we know they are developing unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents. According to the CIA’s report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that they are seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop them.
In the wake of September 11, who among us can say with any certainty to anybody that the weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region? Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater, a nuclear weapon?
All U.S. intelligence experts agree (October 2002). Whatever it takes to win (August 2003). Safer and better off without Saddam (December 2003). Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time (this week).
What doth it profit a man to energize the base, but lose his soul?