Kerry cheered in Baghdad, decries Bush team's 'blunders'
Once criticized for war stance, he says force alone won't win

Borzou Daragahi, Chronicle Foreign Service

Thursday, January 6, 2005

Baghdad -- Sen. John Kerry, whose seemingly shifting positions on the U.S. war in Iraq plagued him throughout his presidential campaign, came to this war- torn capital Wednesday to see for himself whether the country was moving toward stability or deeper into chaos.

Kerry, who repeatedly charged during the presidential campaign that President Bush had botched the war effort, was greeted warmly by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad.

"I've been visiting a lot places like Des Moines and Green Bay, and it has been great," the Massachusetts Democrat said during an informal lunch meeting with a small group of reporters and representatives of nongovernmental organizations. "But we are at war, and I think you can't really make all the judgments that you need to make without digging in."

He declined to compare the growing insurgency with the one he faced in South Vietnam as a Navy gunship lieutenant more than three decades ago. But he insisted that superior firepower alone wouldn't quell the uprising disrupting Iraq.

"No insurgency is defeated by conventional military power alone," he said. "Look at the IRA," the Irish Republican Army, which fought a decadeslong guerrilla war against the British in Northern Ireland before a Catholic- Protestant power-sharing government was put in place. "It was defeated by a combination of time and political negotiation."

Kerry, who talked with U.S. intelligence officials and Iraqi officials on Wednesday, was also scheduled to meet with officials of the U.S. Embassy and with members of the interim Iraqi government, including interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and a deputy to Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite leader at the top of an electoral list favored in Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.

U.S. soldiers approached Kerry inside the restaurant of the Rashid Hotel, asking him to pose for photographs and sign T-shirts. The star-struck restaurant manager insisted on serving Kerry the restaurant's specialty, a plate of grilled chicken and lamb.

Later in the day, Kerry met with about 20 soldiers based in his home state, including reservists from the 356th Engineer Detachment and 126th Aviation Company of the Massachusetts Army National Guard at Camp Victory, where soldiers are bivouacked in luxury villas once inhabited by Saddam Hussein and his loyalists.

"They all joked about how living conditions had changed since Sen. Kerry was in Vietnam," said David Wade, the senator's communications director.

Kerry was scheduled to fly on a C-130 military transport plane today to visit troops in Fallujah and Mosul.

The senator said he was more interested in asking questions of soldiers, U.S. officials, Iraqis and even the journalists themselves instead of rehashing the political battles of the past campaign season.

But in several instances, Kerry attacked what he called the "horrendous judgments" and "unbelievable blunders" of the Bush administration. The mistakes, he said, included former U.S. occupation leader Paul Bremer's decisions to disband the Iraqi army and purge the government of former members of Hussein's Baath Party. Both moves are widely believed to have fueled the largely Sunni insurgency.

"What is sad about what's happening here now is that so much of it is a process of catching up from the enormous miscalculations and wrong judgments made in the beginning," he said. "And the job has been made enormously harder."

He added, however, that it was time to move forward.

"Mistakes have been made," he said. "Now, it's a different time and different set of judgments that have to be made. I'm here to make judgments about what moves are available to us."

Kerry is visiting Iraq as part of a Middle East tour that also includes meetings with leaders in Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories. He said success in Iraq was vital as part of the struggle for wider change in the Middle East.

"The stakes are very important, very high, and not just for Iraq," he said. "You have another election in the West Bank, a set of challenges to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the region that are quite daunting."
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What magnificent "monday morning quaterbacking". Thanks John Boy for letting us know what we should have done......

He is as intitled to an opinion on the matter as you, I, president Bush, and anyone else is.

What I got from the article is pretty much what Bush is doing...that is digging in for a long haul (ala IRA struggle). Kerry thinks it will take a long time, and so does the Bush Administration.

I do as well, and I can see that it is necessary.

Look beyond the "red" and "blue". I have, and things are much more clear now.

I see well "beyond the red and blue" and things are clear. And, in my opinion, as yours we are digging in for the long haul. But does it help our "united front" when our own question the validity of finishing the task?

As much as some do not care for it, we are entitled as free Americans to dissent to what the government and the military does.

Kerry, as well as anti-war protesters, have every right to express their opinion.

I would fight to keep that right!

Another way to look at this is to see value in different opinions and views.

Just as I get annoyed when I hear blindly religious people claim that the only way to know God is to do things their way, I feel the same way when I hear politicians say that there are no better ways besides their own.

Just as there are many paths to God, goodness, victory, and health; there are many paths to freedom and democracy as well.

What Kerry is expressing is his world view on how to achieve freedom and democracy in Iraq. Is he 100% correct? Probably not, since just about nobody really is. Is the administration 100% correct? That is not likely either.

So what is best for the nation, and what has made us what we are, is to hear the argument from all sides, so that we may find a solution that is as close to being 100% correct as it can get.

There were some critical flaws that took place. But as you look at those critical flaws, the reasons to go in far outway this miscalculations.

Kerry and Edwards both saw the same intelligence as Bush. I can't stand how this guy tries to make it look like he had no responsiblity for this war, and didn't see the WMD intelligence.

He didn't say that today. He said we fucked up after the war started by disbanding the Iraqi army and dismissing all the bureaucrats in the previous government who could have helped get the new government up and running faster.

I wish I could see what you see when you read.

--PunkDavid

Yes, they both saw the fabricated, false, incorrect, cherry-picked, pre-1991, exagerated "intelligence". They believed the lie that the Bush Administration was spinning on Congress and the world as a whole. They trusted there Government, until they found out it was all WRONG. How hard is it for you to understand? I've seen this same line used prior to the election, and it really baffles me that people can't comprehend that they were misled along with the rest of the American public.

are we seriously back at square one with this mentality that a "united front" with no questions asked is what is needed here? this contributed heavily to the mess we are in now i.e. NO ONE asking any questions until it was too damn late to do anything about it.

we're fighting the terrorists because they oppose everything that is america, supposedly. yet the people that wage the war on this ground just want us to shut the fuck up and nod. unbelievable.

Wise you are macJ!!!

I said it before and I believe it to be true. What is best for the nation, and what has made us what we are, is to hear the argument from all sides, so that we may find a solution that is as close to being 100% correct as it can get.

Yeah, that's it. Or maybe John Kerry was trying to run for president in 2004, and maybe Hillary Clinton is trying to run in 2008. And maybe, just maybe they realized at that time that voting against the war under any circumstance would have been seen by the people as unpopular. Maybe that's just it. And no offense, but I saw plenty of intelligence that was gathered post 1991. And I saw plenty of evidence to go into Iraq in 2002 from the post 1991 period in Iraq. Just because stockpiles haven't been found, doesn't mean that they don't exist, and it doesn't mean they weren't transported and removed prior to the war like the "380 tons of high explosives." Oh, and I've copied and pasted well cited documents on what WMD's we have found since we've been over there a dozen times since coming to this forum, but I'll do it again today just for good measure. Keep your eye open.



Yeah, okay. "We're gonna take the folks pointing their guns at us, keep them united, and then use them to build a new government." Okay, that's not a foundation to disaster... Seriously, how can you possibly expect the majority Shi'ites to warm up to America allowing people responsible for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of their people to REMAIN POWER instead of getting what they deserve...trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And of course this is going to fuel the Sunni insurgency. WHEN YOU TAKE POWER AND MONEY AWAY FROM TYRANTS, THEY GET PRETTY PISSED OF! DESPOTS LIKE POWER!

Now, contrast that, with the alternative generated by Kerry's plan. First of all, our major mistake and miscalculation from GWI, was abandoning and betraying the Shi'ites in the south. The majority of Iraq. They didn't warm up to us when we came in like many believe. They threw rocks at our convoys, the blocked streets trying to capture convoys and steal aid. In 1991 we told them to go after Saddam. Then the Sunni's slaughtered them for a decade. And you actually support, and Kerry supports, keeping these people in power? Oh yeah, the Shi'ites would just open their hearts to that...no problems would be generated by keeping the old despots in power...

Unbelievable. I cannot honestly believe that you advocate this, or support Kerry's notion that this was a horrendous blunder on account of Bush to put away mass murderers.

You just take everything to the illogical extreme, don't you?

Of course you don't leave the war criminals in power. But in your mind, everyone who was a member of the Baath party was a war criminal right? And every member of the Iraqi military too?

You're so tired. I have a response to every point you made, but it's just a chore for me to do so. I come to this board to have fun and also some intelligent discussion, and you provide me with neither. I don't know why some days you are a reasoned voice on the right, and others you're just another dittohead blowhard.

Seriously, it is totally possible to be a conservative based on true facts and reasoned arguments. I suggest starting with the true facts and moving on from there.

--PunkDavid

WTF are you talking about? Where are the WMD's? The Kay Report?!!! Hahaha. My eyes are wide open and I see nothing from you other then the typical rhetoric. I'll patiently wait for all your copy and pasting skills to come into play, and you can show us all the true reports of WMD's being found in Iraq and justifying all the lies. Did you not watch Collin Powell's U.N. Security presentation? It was a complete farce. But I'll wait and let you do it over for good measure...

music to my ears!!

That's exactly how I feel half the time on this board.