What Would Kerry Do? Just Talk!!!

[FishForLunch]

He talks a good game, but Kerry won't find it easy to convince voters he'd be a better commander in the war on terror

By Richard Wolffe and Susannah Meadows
Newsweek


Aug. 16 issue - While the president gets briefed in his high-tech Sit Room deep in the West Wing's basement, John Kerry's intel sessions are a much more makeshift affair. Seven hours after the White House offered to brief him, Kerry, who'd been unwilling to bump any campaign events, was finally parked in one place long enough so that a secure phone line could be set up in his bus. After playing softball with firefighters and autoworkers in Taylor, Mich., Kerry boarded his bus next to the field, and, still wearing his TEAM KERRY jersey, heard what lay behind last week's terror warnings. While his aides described the call as simply "informative," the glimpse into the top-secret intel made its political mark all the same. Kerry tiptoed warily around the warning, and kept his distance from Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, who accused the Bush administration of manipulating the warning to help boost the president's re-election bid. Kerry wasn't always so respectful. Standing beside Dean six months ago, he reacted with scorn to a previous Orange alert. "The president is actually playing for the culture of fear in our country," he said in a televised debate in Iowa.

Whatever his change of tone, Kerry's campaign remains deeply critical of the president's war on terror. His aides say the president has failed to secure the homeland by spending too little on firefighters, port security, or protecting nuclear and chemical plants. Kerry's advisers blame the shortfall in part on the fact that the areas facing the biggest threat—the corridors connecting Boston to Washington, Chicago to Detroit, and Seattle to San Diego—vote Democratic. "If they really looked at where the threats were, they'd be spending money in areas that are not their base," says Rand Beers, Kerry's national-security adviser, who previously served in the Bush White House as its counterterrorism director.

What would Kerry do differently in the fight against Al Qaeda? He wants to double the number of Special Forces and spies. He also wants to deploy a bigger international force to secure Afghanistan, not least in Al Qaeda and Taliban territory on the border with Pakistan. He also might scrap the color-coded alert system—aides say it's become ineffective—for a new one that incorporates more specific information about what precautions people should take. Beyond military force, Kerry wants to win the war of ideas in the Arab and Islamic world, with stronger trade and improved educational programs.

While the president talks about stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, Kerry wants to spend more money, and sign new international agreements, to secure loose nukes. While the president talks about closing down terrorist finances, Kerry wants to name and shame uncooperative banks and countries—and even shut them out of U.S. markets. And where Bush would create an intelligence director outside the White House and the cabinet, Kerry says he would give the new czar full power to control funding and personnel across the intel community.

He may talk tough, but Kerry still faces his biggest challenge convincing voters he'd be a better commander in the war on terror than Bush. Polls show the president holding a double-digit lead over Kerry on terrorism and homeland security. And the Bush campaign is relentlessly attacking Kerry's Senate record, accusing him of missing intel committee meetings and proposing to cut intel spending a decade ago. For Kerry, that leaves little room for maneuvering. While his aides dodged the media's questions about the move to Code Orange, Kerry criticized Bush for lingering in a Florida classroom on the morning of 9/11. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani shot back by accusing Kerry of being "indecisive" and taking his cues from filmmaker Michael Moore. With or without a secure phone line, Kerry knows he'll need a better connection if he's going to beat the man who runs the Sit Room on the terror front.

[Drbio]

What would Kerry do?

1. Use the speed dial to see what Chiraq wants.
2. Flip Flop for about three weeks while Rome burns.
3. Blame someone else.

[Murphy3]

4. Fire one up.
5. Abort a baby.
6. Marry a gay male
7. Buy a volvo
8. Move to San Francisco
9. Pierce his genitals.

[dude1394]

Damn murph!!! LOL...

[FishForLunch]

Missing in action: Kerry's complete strategy for Iraq
It all sounds so good and plausible and logical. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, so say his advisers, didn't dwell much on his plans for Iraq at last month's convention — a turn-away-and-you-miss-them 55 words or so in a 45-minute speech — for good reason. The nation, they say, needed to get acquainted with him as a person. So it was more about biography: presenting the Vietnam War hero, the man who would transfer his courage under fire to the tough role of commander in chief.
That is the norm for conventions. But take a trip to www.johnkerry.com, Kerry's campaign Web site, and just what a President Kerry might do in Iraq remains elusive.

The reasons have partly to do with the politics of the Democratic Party, which is torn between the many who opposed the war in the first place and the few, like Kerry himself, who supported it. But the result is that with the election just three months away, Kerry has done little to separate his views from those of President Bush.

Both want more international military and financial help, a stable and relatively democratic government, an intensive training of Iraqi security forces and a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops. But who wouldn't? The question is how to get there.

Kerry's main difference with Bush, and one he underscores, is that he would be better able to get other countries to help by returning to a more traditional inclusiveness. Involving allies heavily in everything from reconstruction to discussions on Iraq's future, Kerry says, is the way to bring more international troops to Iraq, lessen anti-U.S. hostility and start bringing U.S. troops home.

Kerry might, indeed, be better received than Bush, who has angered allies by trying to dictate policies from Iraq to global warming. But help in Iraq isn't likely to be on the way anytime soon — at least not in numbers that would change the U.S. burden.

Since the Cold War, Europe has slashed defense budgets, and NATO already is stretched thin stabilizing Afghanistan. Even if more forces were found, the question remains: How would their inevitably small numbers change the role of the 140,000 U.S. troops already there?

Kerry suggests that they might be used to train Iraqi troops and patrol Iraq's borders, but that, presumably, would leave the U.S. to fight the insurgency until an Iraqi force could manage on its own.

Nor are Muslim forces the answer. They could even exacerbate the problem. Workers from Muslim countries are already being targeted by hostage-takers.

Politically, the war's unpopularity in both Europe and the Muslim world gives their leaders powerful political incentives to stay out. Kerry suggests that sharing economic opportunities, such as oil contracts, would bring others in. But so far, the insurgency is driving companies away, even those from areas eager to share in the contracts, such as Turkey.

Bush faces the same issues, of course, but he is forced to defend his actions frequently. Challengers prefer to camp out in the chorus of critics and offer generalized solutions.

Thirty-six years ago, Republican candidate Richard Nixon made a similar pitch for ending the Vietnam War: He slammed the Democrats as incompetent, called on allies to bear more of the burden and suggested that he had a plan to end the war that he couldn't disclose until he was in office.

Four years later, he still had no answer.

Iraq isn't Vietnam, and Kerry's plan isn't quite as opaque as Nixon's, but the historical echoes are strong enough to suggest that if Kerry has a credible proposal for Iraq, he needs to fill in the blanks.

[Drbio]

OMG Murph...hahahaha

[reeds]

4. Fire one up.
5. Abort a baby.
6. Marry a gay male
7. Buy a volvo
8. Move to San Francisco
9. Pierce his genitals.


#8 wouldnt be that bad actually

[LRB]

Originally posted by: reeds
4. Fire one up.
5. Abort a baby.
6. Marry a gay male
7. Buy a volvo
8. Move to San Francisco
9. Pierce his genitals.


#8 wouldnt be that bad actually

Lots in Boston and Washington would probably not only agree with you Reeds but be willing to help make it happen. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]