We’ve been asking all along: When will American voters get Yes, conspired. When you read about the secret British documents, which surfaced Saturday<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, Questions about the “legality” of the war were Consequently, the conspirators (chief among them, British Prime Minister Tony Blair) Will John Kerry’s speech yesterday about the war — his “Harshest Critique Yet”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> — help The Washington Post reports<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> Kerry has said this before, but never with such force and coherence. If today’s editorials and Robert Scheer Coming from a vociferous liberal columnist like Scheer, that’s to be expected. But even the Bring on the debates. And let’s have three of them, not just the two that the White In his response yesterday to Kerry’s point that U.S. troops should leave
\nit?<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> When will they realize they were hoodwinked, bamboozled, suckered,
\ntricked, fooled, misled into the war in Iraq? When will they recognize that their thuggish
\nNincompoop in Chief and his gang conspired with the British high command against their own
\nand the world’s best interests?<\/P>
\n
\nshowing that “frantic transatlantic discussions” between U.S. and British officials “were dictated
\nby the imperative of
\nthose officials except as conspirators? <\/P>
\nAccording to the documents, Peter Ricketts, political director at the [British]
\nForeign Office, described the US as “scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida”, a
\nlink that was “so far frankly unconvincing.” He told [British Foreign Secretary] Jack Straw: “We
\nhave to be convincing that the threat is so serious\/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to
\ndie for. Regime change does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge match between Bush and
\nSaddam.”<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\nwhich has done him no good with the conspirators. But Annan only said in public what officials at
\nthe highest level of the British government have been saying in secret. As The Guardian in
\nLondon notes, the documents “have revealed the depth of official fears about the legality of the
\nIraq invasion — and the disaster it presaged.”
Will political niceties about whether the
\nwar was “legal” register with American voters? Or will such questions be trumped by the rhetoric
\nof the Nincompoop’s wishful thinking? He continues to argue that he should be elected for ridding
\nthe world of Saddam Hussein. But “regime change on its own was illegal,” as the documents
\nindicate, “and there was no justification in terms of ‘self-defence against an imminent threat.'”
\nThis, the documents said, made “moving quickly to invade legally very difficult.”<\/P>
\n
\ndevised the strategy that “a war would be legal [based] on an interpretation that U.N. Security
\nCouncil resolutions” had been violated by the Iraqi regime. That the regime had not complied with
\nthe resolutions is beyond doubt. But the emergence of that strategy was simply an excuse, or as
\nthe Guardian put it, a way “to wrongfoot Saddam.”<\/P>
\n
\nvoters realize they’ve been hoodwinked? <\/P>
\n
\nthat Kerry accused the Nincompoop “of deception in taking the country to war in Iraq and
\nhistoric miscalculations since the invasion ended, arguing that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent
\nthreat and that his removal has turned Iraq into a terrorist breeding ground that has left the United
\nStates even less secure.” The New York Times reports that he accused the Nincompoop of
\n“stubborn incompetence” and “colossal failures of judgment.” Kerry charged that our
\nprevaricating gunslinger “misled, miscalculated and mismanaged every aspect of the war.”<\/P>
\n
\nop-ed columns are right about his speech, maybe it will be part of a turning point.
\nhe “laid out a well-grounded, intellectually straightforward and powerful critique” and “finally
\nseems to have found his voice on what ought to be the central issue of this year’s election: the
\nmismanaged war in Iraq and how to bring it to an acceptable conclusion.” <\/P>
\n
\nwrites<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> in today’s Los Angeles Times that “moderate Republicans and
\nconsistent conservatives would be supporting John Kerry” if they would stick to their own
\nprinciples. And he quotes three top Republicans who’ve been telling us for a while that they don’t
\ntrust the White House and the Pentagon. Sen. Chuck Hagel: “The fact is, we’re in deep trouble in
\nIraq.” Sen. John McCain: “We made serious mistakes.” Sen. Richard G. Lugar, who blames “the
\nincompetence in the administration” for what Scheer terms “the glaring failures in Iraq.”<\/P>
\n
\nconservative columnist David “Bobo” Brooks — who claims idiotically<\/I> that Kerry’s speech
\n“substantively” was “completely
\nirresponsible”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> — concludes: “This country has long needed to have a straight
\nup-or-down debate on the war. Now that Kerry has positioned himself as the antiwar candidate, it
\ncan.”<\/P>
\n
\nHouse is pushing for. Karl Rove has good reason for knocking back the number. He
\nwants to limit the potential damage. Without a teleprompter (even with one), his candidate
\nis capable of screwing up what he’s been trained to say. <\/P>
\n
\nIraq, for example, the Nincompoop trapped himself with one of his typical slips of
\nthe tongue. He said in rebuttal (and I quote from the video), “It will be better off if
\nwe did<\/EM> leave.” Oops. Realizing his mistake quickly (I’ll give him that), he
\nreversed himself: “If we didn’t — if we left, the world would be worse.” And on he
\nsailed. Nobody in his friendly pre-screened audience seemed to notice the slip. In the
\ndebates that will be different, right?<\/P>
\n