Kerry's Press Conference
Here is my favorite passage from John Kerry's "press conference" about Iraq:
KERRY: ... Al Qaeda is in 60 countries. Are we invading all 60 countries? 35 to 40 countries had the same --more-- capability of creating weapons, nuclear weapons, at the time the president invaded Iraq than Iraq did. Are we invading all 35 to 40 of them? Did we invade Russia? Did we invade China?
Let's break this down logically by a process of elimination.
1. He says Al Qaeda is in 60 countries. Presumably he concedes that one of those 60 is Iraq. Minor point: but doesn't that undercut the argument that there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda?
2. He says 35-40 countries had as much or more capability than Iraq of creating nuclear weapons. But how many of those were also among the 60 countries that had al Qaeda cells? And how many of those were countries where the government itself was supportive of anti-West and anti-American terrorism? Probably not that many.
[As a sidebar, are there really 35-40 countries that may have the capacity to create nuclear weapons? That seems highly exaggerated, unless he's talking at a very high level of abstraction, i.e., the country has the intellectual and material resources, if they decide to, to create nuclear weapons, regardless of whether they have any intent to do so. (For instance, Belgium might have the intellectual and material resources to do so, but no one lies awake worrying about the Belgians.)]
3. Going back to point #2, how many of however many (probably very few) countries there are left who have active Al Qaeda cells, and the capacity to create nuclear weapons, and a history of supporting anti-West, anti-American, Islamofascist terrorism, also have (a) a history of using WMD's against their own people and others (b) invaded two other nations within the past twenty years; (c) defied a dozen years of UN sanctions and resolutions; (d) shot at American planes thousands of times during a decade-long sanctions regime; (e) gave asylum to a terrorist who was a member of the 1993 plot to blow up the World Trade Center; (f) gave $25,000 bounties to Palestinian suicide bombers who murdered Israeli civilians, including children; (g) committed genocide within their own borders; and (h) conspired to assassinate a former President of the United States?
I think the answer is, only one, and that country was Iraq. The notion that Iraq wasn't anything unique to be concerned about is as specious as the argument that if Bush would invade Iraq, he'd have to logically invade lots of other countries too.
Finally, for my money, conspiring to assassinate President George H.W. Bush was all I needed to know about Iraq and Saddam. The instant Clinton learned of that plot in the 1990s he should have gone to Congress and gotten a declaration of war. If we don't have a policy that you can't even think about assassinating our President without dying, we should.
KERRY: ... Al Qaeda is in 60 countries. Are we invading all 60 countries? 35 to 40 countries had the same --more-- capability of creating weapons, nuclear weapons, at the time the president invaded Iraq than Iraq did. Are we invading all 35 to 40 of them? Did we invade Russia? Did we invade China?
Let's break this down logically by a process of elimination.
1. He says Al Qaeda is in 60 countries. Presumably he concedes that one of those 60 is Iraq. Minor point: but doesn't that undercut the argument that there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda?
2. He says 35-40 countries had as much or more capability than Iraq of creating nuclear weapons. But how many of those were also among the 60 countries that had al Qaeda cells? And how many of those were countries where the government itself was supportive of anti-West and anti-American terrorism? Probably not that many.
[As a sidebar, are there really 35-40 countries that may have the capacity to create nuclear weapons? That seems highly exaggerated, unless he's talking at a very high level of abstraction, i.e., the country has the intellectual and material resources, if they decide to, to create nuclear weapons, regardless of whether they have any intent to do so. (For instance, Belgium might have the intellectual and material resources to do so, but no one lies awake worrying about the Belgians.)]
3. Going back to point #2, how many of however many (probably very few) countries there are left who have active Al Qaeda cells, and the capacity to create nuclear weapons, and a history of supporting anti-West, anti-American, Islamofascist terrorism, also have (a) a history of using WMD's against their own people and others (b) invaded two other nations within the past twenty years; (c) defied a dozen years of UN sanctions and resolutions; (d) shot at American planes thousands of times during a decade-long sanctions regime; (e) gave asylum to a terrorist who was a member of the 1993 plot to blow up the World Trade Center; (f) gave $25,000 bounties to Palestinian suicide bombers who murdered Israeli civilians, including children; (g) committed genocide within their own borders; and (h) conspired to assassinate a former President of the United States?
I think the answer is, only one, and that country was Iraq. The notion that Iraq wasn't anything unique to be concerned about is as specious as the argument that if Bush would invade Iraq, he'd have to logically invade lots of other countries too.
Finally, for my money, conspiring to assassinate President George H.W. Bush was all I needed to know about Iraq and Saddam. The instant Clinton learned of that plot in the 1990s he should have gone to Congress and gotten a declaration of war. If we don't have a policy that you can't even think about assassinating our President without dying, we should.
posted by PDB at 1:23 PM
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