Maybe that Kerry guy knew what he was talking about

January 27, 2006

In the 2004 presidential race, John Kerry offered a very clear approach as to how the United States should deal with Iran: have the international community offer Iran nuclear fuel to be used in a peaceful nuclear energy program. As Kerry put it at the time, “We should call their bluff and organize a group of states that will offer the nuclear fuel they need for peaceful purposes and take back the spent fuel so they can’t divert it to build a weapon.”

Nonsense, said the Bush gang, which argued such an approach would effectively be “appeasement.” Condi Rice dismissed Kerry’s approach, telling Fox News, “This regime has to be isolated in its bad behavior, not quote-unquote ‘engaged.'” Frank Gaffney Jr., a former Pentagon official and Bush ally, knocked Kerry’s plan in an op-ed entitled, “Kerry’s Nuclear Nonsense.” Gaffney boasted, “Mr. Bush understands the folly of going that route.” National Review ran an item calling Kerry’s proposal “ignorant” and “dangerously wrong.”

But Kerry was unyielding, insisting that this was the best approach, even working his idea into an answer in one of the presidential debates. “”I think the United States should have offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel, test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes. If they weren’t willing to work a deal, then we could have put sanctions together,” Kerry said. “The president did nothing.”

That was 2004. Now, suddenly, after deriding Kerry in the campaign for his dangerous ideas, Bush is staring to think, “You know, maybe that Kerry guy was on to something.”

President Bush’s endorsement of a plan to end the nuclear standoff with Iran by giving the Islamic republic nuclear fuel for civilian use under close monitoring has left some of his supporters baffled.

One cause for the chagrin is that the proposal, which is backed by Russia, essentially adopts a strategy advocated by Mr. Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.

“I have made it clear that I believe that the Iranians should have a civilian nuclear power program under these conditions: that the material used to power the plant would be manufactured in Russia, delivered under IAEA inspectors to Iran to be used in that plant, the waste of which will be picked up by the Russians and returned to Russia,” Mr. Bush said at a news conference yesterday. “I think that is a good plan. The Russians came up with the idea and I support it,” he added.

Maybe so, but he was against the idea before he was for it.

Just out of curiosity, any chance we’ll see National Review blasting Bush’s new approach to Iran as “ignorant” and “dangerously wrong”? Or maybe Condi Rice will explain why the idea rewarded Iran for bad behavior when Kerry recommended it, but it’s brilliant leadership when Bush recommends it?

Ahh, but the difference is obvious. Kerry came at this as a peacenik dove, cowering at the sight of his own shadow and willing to make a deal with the devil just for one day of peace; while Bush is coming to this as a sterling cowboy, riding high in the saddle and scaring those damn Iranian bastards into submitting to our high-flying agenda.

This isn’t about the outcome at all, but about the income. Bush has an awesomely powerful framework to work from, while Kerry’s was running scared and shitting itself silly. It’s that simple.

  • Goes to show how gulled the Bush supporters are; Bush doesn’t have any choice. The military is disintegrating before our eyes and is in no position to conquer another country–even if the world was cool with doing so (which it isn’t; Iran, if we are foolish enough to try, could well be our Poland). Iran knows we’re militarily a paper tiger, and so can sit back and sneer at our threats.

    Of course, I’m not convinced Bush is aware of his weakness. Bush has a habit of being, shall we say, disingenuous.

  • Bridbrain:

    The only thing simple here is the functioning of your grey matter. Kerry was right. And not just about this, but about everything. And here were are a little more than a year after the election and that’s starting to sink in with the electorate.

    Payback’s always a bitch: it just doesn’t happen on an electoral timetable. I expect the repercussions to play out over the next two cycles as the Dems get stronger and the Reps fragment in their haste to get away from Bush’s legacy of incompetence.

  • “Doctor Biobrain” (as opposed to “Humanbrain”???):

    Perhaps, having survived the horror that was Vietnam, Kerry KNOWS that peace is always preferable to war.

    “Running scared”? That definition decribes our AWOL preznit. Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam and to serve on a Swift Boat.

    “Any Fool can Start a War… Peace takes Leadership” (www.gaialovegraffiti.com)

  • Don’t forget Kerry shot himself three times in the ass in order to avoid combat in Vietnam. How can anyone trust a guy willing to do that?

  • Bush is coming to this as a sterling cowboy, riding high in the saddle and scaring those damn Iranian bastards into submitting

    Who WOULDN’T be scared of Lil’ Boots, standing there in his feetie pajamas and waving his lil’ fist? “Whah, you Iranimanians better OBEY me! I’ll GET you if you don’t!”

    My guess is someone pointed out to him a) the sad state of our military and b) the fact that the Iranimanians can shoot back. Which means we’ll have to attack Syria instead.

  • Good for Bush. It’s a practical approach, lacking the tough vapid sound byte sloganosity demanded by the right. As for the racist biobrain, he merely represents those folks who prefer posturing to progress. To his ilk, it is more important to feign bad-assedness than to achieve anything.

  • no, he didn’t shoot himself to avoid combat; he shot himself during combat in order to receive medals. if you lost your talking points, i can re-fax them to you.

  • Is biobrain our own troll? I am assuming Bruce is being sarcastic.

    “Or maybe Condi Rice will explain why the idea rewarded Iran for bad behavior when Kerry recommended it, but it’s brilliant leadership when Bush recommends it?”–Because George is her sugar daddy? Pimp? Man-whore?

  • Wow, Bush just can’t catch a break with you people. He finally does something right and you are all over him. How is he going to learn to to his job if you punish him for doing the right thing?

    Jeeze Louise!

  • As a newbie here, I initially read Doctor Biobrain’s reply as tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. Not so, apparently.

    So in honor of that illogical ignoramus, I humbly submit the following satire:

    Everything George Bush does is perfect. He breathes perfect, he walks perfect, he even shits perfect. All because he’s comes to everything as a sterling cowboy.

    Everything John Kerry does is flawed. He breathes flawed, he walks flawed, he even shits flawed. All because he’s comes to everything as a peacenik dove.

    And whoever once quipped that even a broken clock is right twice a day was an anti-American, George Bush hatin, Saddam lovin, pinko commie bastard. Everything is so simple!

  • Bush is coming to this as a sterling cowboy, riding high in the saddle and scaring those damn Iranian bastards into submitting to our high-flying agenda.

    First of all, I don’t see the Iranians submitting to anything as of yet. And I don’t think they are particularly scared of us at the moment, seeing how our army is tied behind our back in Iraq.

    That said, I agree with the your allusion to Bush riding high in the saddle, although I think your use of ‘sterling’ is wrong. Perhaps you meant ‘brokeback’.

  • Kerry was most definitely right. But it will never occur to or be admitted by the vast majority of Bush supporters. Nobody likes to admit that they were wrong and they will spin like a whirling dervish to avoid those words. In no time at all this will have been their plan all along and Kerry will be accused of trying to coopt it.

  • Hey #7, speaking of asses and Vietnam avoidance, you forgot to mention Dick Cheney, who grabbed a little too much of his wife’s ass and parlayed that into countless draft deferrments.

    And then there was Rush Limbaugh, who parlayed a zit on his ass into a draft deferrment. Talk about finding a needle in a haystack!

    I’m putting together a documentary on this. Tentatively titled, “Republicans, Asses and Draft Deferrments.”

  • How is he going to learn to to his job if you punish him for doing the right thing?

    I’d much rather he DIDN’T “learn to do his job” and just went back to El Rancho Malario and let real adults run things.

  • What, you think this is the first time the Bush Adminstration has done an about-face on an issue? Does “Department of Homeland Security” ring any bells?

  • Guys, Biobrain’s no troll. What he’s saying (I think) is that the GOP partisans are not forced to admit to any hypocrisy in this instance because Bush has shown himself (to them) willing to go to war and wave his plastic sword whereas Kerry had been successfully painted as a wimp on national defense. So to the Faithful it’s perfectly honorable for a “proven” warrior Republican to negotiate, but not some effete and timorous Democrat.

    Given that the Republican faithful still think Saddam and 9/11 are linked, it’s entirely plausible that they still don’t realize that Bush was forced into being conciliatory by the simple fact that our country cannot sustain another war either militarily, politically, or economically–a fact entirely due to Bush’s mismanagement of every aspect of his presidency. But I suspect the GOP noise machine will ensure that the Faithful never learn that sobering fact, either. But the short answer is that the GOP won’t see (or admit) the hypocrisy in their flip-flop.

  • It’s not about the faithful. They were able to come up with soothing rationalizations for this policy change by the time they finished reading the article. Their father-king is always right, always.

    Instead, the issue is that the Bush administration always counts on the majority of people and the press not paying close attention. They know that they have the megaphone, courtesy of the MSM and a whipped Congress. The press will never highlight any changes in policy he makes, even when they’re 180-degree switches. Bush has done it a dozen times over, with steel tariffs, with time-tables on Iraq pullouts.

  • Just because John Kerry wasn’t actually in that photo with Jane Fonda doesn’t mean he wasn’t actually there.

    —

  • Wow, Bush just can’t catch a break with you people. He finally does something right and you are all over him. How is he going to learn to to his job if you punish him for doing the right thing?

    I don’t have a problem with him making the right decision or changing his mind. I just have a problem with the fact that he ridicules it as “flip flopping” when his opponents do the same thing, and that the press gives him a free pass on such things.

    If he’s going to flip-flop and do something that he criticized when John Kerry proposed it, he should credit Kerry (or whoever originated it) with the idea and admit he was wrong. What are the odds of that happening?

  • I cant help but think of Bush’s facial expression as he followed a rogue automated camera while answering a question during his recent press conference.
    I didn’t think he could do it. Bush was actually multi-tasking.

    Perhaps he has other as yet unrevealed super powers like “intelligent rational decision making”. I doubt it.

  • It is great when the Commander in Chief of the world is brought into the reality based part of the planet by the facts. If Kerry was president there would be a chance for this conciliatory tactic to actually work. Bush’s problem is that he has played the war card and the Iranians rightly believe his ‘change of heart’ to be a sign of the present weakness of our military. You can’t speak softly and carry a big stick when its obvious you’ve got a wiffle ball bat in your hand. The lack of coherent strategy other than ‘if we say it…it is so’ is coming back to bite the necons hard. Another great example is the march of democracy in the Middle East which seems to be leading to governments that are philosophically closer to the Iranian clergy than the Texas Legislature. We’re gonna be cleaning up after these smug, self-satisfied, chickenhawk idiots for a long, long time……

  • I’ve seen Dr. Biobrain before, at Digby’s place IIRC, and he’s no troll. My sarcasm meter was off the scale when reading his post.

  • If it wasn’t for the continued threat of rising gas prices, it would still be a bad idea.

  • RE: …he was against the idea before he was for it.

    Nothing new here. He was for the Constitution too, before he was against it.

  • Get serious. Bush is only saying it’s a good idea because he knows it will never happen. He can benefit from seeming to be as great a diplomat as Kerry is while never having to endure the consequences of as monstrously stupid an idea as a nuclearized Iran.

  • Nation-builder Bush did not flip-flop; he looked into the soul of Vlad the Impaler, his fellow monarch, and saw it was good. God, sounding a lot like KRove, then told him it was a fine plan, a noble plan, a chance to spread the holy seeds of freeance among the fertile heathen. He had a religious conversion as only a pious mystic like St. George could have.

    He couldn’t have stolen it from Kerry, he never understood a word Kerry said. He’s got that funny French-like accent.

  • To the typical GOP ditto-head, when Bush pisses on their head, they’ll tell you it’s raining.

  • I wouldn’t worry, with logic that twisted Toby Kreskin will be disappearing down a rabbit hole soon enough.

  • I remember before Jan 2001 when all you heard was how Iran was starting to listen to their more “liberal” voices – the young people. Democracy was on the march in Iran before Bush. Well, we allow the Child King a couple months and he calls them names like the small – in over his head – child he is.

    No wonder Iran elected the Jerry Falwell of Islam, the 12th Imam loving lunatic, as president. This freak wants WW3 as much as Robertson and Bush want the rapture.

    When is the nation going to see we have national security risk for a president.

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/12/20041206-6.html

    http://www.commondreams.org/scottie/120604.htm

    Dec 6, 2004

    Mokhiber: Scott, on the Middle East – many evangelical Christians in the United States are supporting right-wing Jews in Israel who want to rebuild the temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. They (Evangelical Christians) believe this is a prerequisite for Christ’s return to earth. They believe that when Christ returns to earth – they call this the rapture – he will take back with him the true believers. And the rest – the non believers – Jews, Muslims – will be left behind to face a violent death here on earth.

    My question is, as a born again Christian, does the President support efforts to rebuild the temple on the Temple Mount?

    Scott McLellan: Russ, we can sit here and talk about religious issues. I will be glad to take your question, and if there is more, I will get back to you on that.

    Mokhiber: Is he a born again Christian?

    Scott McLellan: Thank you. (McLellan abruptly ends the press briefing and walks out.)

  • Any chance you could call Frank Gaffney and ask him to comment? Then let us know what he says?

  • I wonder if Powell is chuckling now.

    Condi says “I don’t see much room for further discussion in any format,” everybody’s happy and on-message, and then the POTUS goes off the reservation, using the idea of a liberal she spent years bashing, and makes her look like she’s clueless.

    I wonder if someone told Bush that “Secretary of State” means “Presidential kick-toy.”

    Ah, schadenfreude. ^.^

  • The difference is Bush is going to give them the nuclear material in the form of a few intercontinentally and rather ballistically launched warheads.

  • Wow, Bush just can’t catch a break with you people. He finally does something right and you are all over him. How is he going to learn to to his job if you punish him for doing the right thing?

    Jeeze Louise!

    * * * *

    Ummm, it’s NOT Bush’s job. It’s Al Gore’s job. Gore was elected, not Bush.

    The only part of “his job” I want him to learn is the two-word phrase: “I resign.” Then we can ship him off to share a cell with Milosevic and the rest of the world’s war criminals.

  • ‘Tis a brave new world in which hardcore right-wingers would rather credit the Russians with giving Bush a peaceful solution, than credit one of their own countrymen.

  • It’s all Kerry’s fault. He lied us into war and gave us all those false reports. He didn’t catch the Anthrax murderer, or Bin Laden. He sat on Bin Laden tapes until their release is politically convenient. He didn’t catch Osama while quoting “dead or alive” posters, then FLIPPING to I’d don’t think much about him.” He claimed to be getting warrants before listening in on us, and when he did even get them retroactively like he could have. Kerry claimed he didn’t apologize to the Chinese over and over while babbling like a litte baby, “I’m sooooooooooo sorry.” Kerry didn’t pay attention to memos again and again. Kerry flew all those planes on 9/11. Wait! No that was Gore. No, it was Gore’s DNA injected into John Kerry…

    Oh, and all those brave men and women died over a vanity war because of John Kerry. He killed them in the kitchen with a candle-shtick.

    Aren’t we all have that this “war is peace” brave new world is here?

    But just when IS this “new era of responsibilty” suppose to start?

  • “Perhaps, having survived the horror that was Vietnam, Kerry KNOWS that peace is always preferable to war.”

    Always? Including when the Nazis were rampaging over Europe? Maybe we need a little perspective?

  • “Always? Including when the Nazis were rampaging over Europe? Maybe we need a little perspective?”

    No, you see, Nazis rampaging over Europe was “war.” “Peace” would have been preferable to that. Or does your perspective say that the Nazis rampaging over Europe was preferable to the Nazis not rampaging over Europe?

    That we had to go to war to stop the Nazis has never been questioned by anyone. However, the Bush administration has gone to war when it was unnecessary (Iraq), and would do so again if it could (Iran). That is the unpreferable option.

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