HANOI JOHN KERRY IS ALL OVER THE MAP ON IRAQ!!

By ERIC FETTMANN
NY POST

August 11, 2004 --

JOHN Kerry finally defined his position on the war in Iraq - or his
latest one, anyway.

It took a direct challenge from President Bush, who asked if Kerry
would still have voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam
Hussein if he knew that no weapons of mass destruction would be found.
Kerry's reply: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe
it was the right authority for a president to have."

Even at that, Kerry could be parsing words here: Stressing his support
for "the authority" echoes his bizarre earlier distinction (which he
made after Howard Dean's campaign started taking off) that he'd only
voted to "threaten the use of force," not actually to use it.

Still, Kerry's answer likely will raise some eyebrows among people who
believed the Democratic nominee when he agreed that he was one of the
"anti-war candidates" - someone who is "unhappy with this war [and]
the way it's been fought," someone who charged that Bush "misled every
one of us" with his "rush to war."

Of course, Kerry has been all over the political map when it comes to
ousting Saddam. He certainly showed no hesitation when Bill Clinton
was the president threatening to use force in Iraq. (Back then, Kerry
even endorsed unilateral action against this "grave threat to the
well-being of our nation.")

But his latest statement raises an important question: If ousting
Saddam now was justified, even if we knew in advance that there were
apparently no WMDs, why did Kerry so vehemently oppose moving against
Saddam after he invaded Kuwait and was a much greater military threat?

Back in 1991, John Kerry was a leader of the movement to keep America
from fighting in the Persian Gulf - at one point begging the first
President Bush to send someone to Baghdad for a "face-to-face meeting"
with the Iraqi despot.

And Kerry's rhetoric in throughout that debate was one long Vietnam
flashback.

"In a country that still struggles with Agent Orange, outreach
centers, post-traumatic stress disorder, homeless veterans - is this
country ready for the next wave?" Kerry asked. " 'Mom, is that you?'
Are we ready for the changes this war will bring - changes in sons and
daughters who return from combat never the same, some not knowing
their families and their families, not even recognizing them? Are we
ready?"

Indeed, Kerry's Senate speeches sounded like the broken soundtrack
from a Jane Fonda film. "I would like to share with my colleagues
something that Dalton Trumbo wrote in a book called 'Johnny Got His
Gun,' " Kerry said. "He wrote about a young soldier who went to war
who ended up losing his arms, legs, sight, hearing, his smell,
capacity to speak. After years of lying in a hospital, he finally
figured out how to tap his head in Morse code - and finally somebody
heard his message."

Kerry even held a congressional hearing at which an official of the
left-wing Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War flatly predicted that U.S. military
casualties in that first Gulf War would reach 45,000 - including
10,000 dead.

And the senator himself predicted that any U.S. invasion of Iraq would
"lead to renewed terrorist attacks on America as a result of our
having killed innumerable Arab civilians."

In other words, Kerry took it for granted that U.S. soldiers would
behave like war criminals - just like they did in Vietnam, right? -
and that the Arab world would make us pay for our barbarism.

Operation Desert Storm went ahead anyway, and none of Kerry's dire
predictions came true.

At which point - with public opinion running heavily in favor of the
war - Kerry started waving the flag, hail- ing Bush Sr.'s "moxie" in
leading the war effort.

That flip-flop was hilariously brought out when one of Kerry's
constituents accidentally was sent copies of two letters from the
senator - one targeted at anti-war constituents and one at those who
supported the war.

The first stressed Kerry's demand that "economic sanctions be given
more time to work" and how he'd warned the Senate "that a decision to
go to war was 'rolling the dice' with our future."

The second, dated just nine days later, emphasized how "I have
strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the
crisis and the policy goals he has established . . . in standing up
this shocking aggression in the Persian Gulf."

John Kerry's back and forth and back again through two wars with Iraq
is disturbing enough, suggesting a lack of genuine conviction and a
disquieting tendency to keep one eye on the opinion polls.

But what's really troubling is the distinct impression that Kerry
remains haunted by Vietnam syndrome - which leads one to wonder
whether a President Kerry would be prepared, if necessary, to commit
to using military force to defend this nation.

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Liberals Hate America!