Posted by
on Monday, February 05, 2007 2:41:04 PM
John Edwards is out on the stump already. Yesterday, he showed up on Meet The Press where he and Tim Russert had a little heart-to-heart. Jim Geraghty and Dean Barnett have both taken him to task. Here are some excerpts, starting with a video regarding his war vote back in 2004:MR. RUSSERT: If you knew today, and you do know, there is—there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, would you still vote to go to war with Iraq?
SEN. EDWARDS: I would have voted for the resolution, knowing what I know today, because it was the right thing to do to give the president the authority to confront Saddam Hussein.I think Saddam Hussein was a very serious threat. I stand by that, and that’s why we stand behind our vote on the resolution.
(End of videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: That’s a year and a half into the war.
SEN. EDWARDS: Mm-hmm. Perfect—that’s a very fair question. I can tell you what happened with me, personally. We got through—I was—at that point, I was in the middle of a very intense campaign, one that I thought was very important for America. When the campaign was over and the election was over, we had a lot going on in my own family. Elizabeth had been diagnosed with breast cancer, we were taking care of her. And for the first time I had time to really think about, number one, what I was going to spend my time doing, and, number two, my vote for this war.
So, after the defeat of Kerry/Edwards, and after his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer John Edwards decides to sit down and contemplate his vote for war? What, was he too busy to weigh the consequences of his vote then? If he was unsure of it then, why not vote against it, and when the Democrats demanded the second vote (they have demanded three, up to this point), if he had finished contemplating things, he could have changed his vote. After all, it is not like the AUMF was ever really threatened with failing. Only the moonbats voted against the bloody thing. And he could have explained it away as not having "all the information" for the first vote. With the second vote he would have had it. He could have straddled the fence far and wide, and still managed to get away with it. But this was not about being right. It was about being politically correct, and he regretsmaking the decision because those supporters of him and Kerry were not happy with their war vote and waffling in 2004.
MR. RUSSERT: If you were in the Senate, would you vote to cut off funding for the war?
SEN. EDWARDS: Well, first of all, I’m not running for the Senate, I’m running for president of the United States. What I would do is, is say we’re not going to fund an escalation of this war. That’s what I think we should do. I would not cut off funding for the men and women who are part of our troops and serving in, in, in Iraq. Now, we know that a significant number—in fact, I think most of the troops who are part of the surge—and by the way, there was a disturbing report in the last couple of days that, you know, 20,000-plus troops may turn into 40,000 troops, because there’s 20,000-plus combat troops who will have to be supported. I think that’s—will be very surprising to most of America who heard the president speak about this.
Point one, the surge is not an escalation. They are more like reinforcements to finish their recent offensive. An escalation would be far larger--an inordinate amount of troops, and closer to 100,000-plus. Point two, and this goes to Edwards' inexperience in military matters, but when you send extra troops aborad, they need to the support staff. Those in Iraq now would not be able to support the forces there already, plus the surge. And I do not think it would be in the excess he is saying it is. It may be as many as what is being sent, but I think it is actually less than the full complement of 21,500. And a third point is that most of the surge is not there already. Many are (I believe the last figures we saw were around five to six thousand are there). If "most" of them were already, then why did the Senate, over the last two weeks, screw around on resolutions that would not have mattered.You cannot stop what has already been deployed, right?
MR. RUSSERT: But why shouldn’t voters in Democratic primaries say, ‘On the big issue of the war, Obama was right, Edwards was wrong’?
SEN. EDWARDS: I was wrong. They should say that. And the question becomes,‘Who’s best suited to be president of the United States? Who has the depth, the maturity, the judgment to be president of the United States?’ And what I would say to anybody is I take full responsibility for what I did, I should be held accountable for that, but I do think it matters when you’re willing to be open and honest with voters about what you’ve done. I think it’s really important that the next president of the United States—and I’m not criticizing anybody, certainly not Senator Obama. But I think it’s really important that the next president of the United Sates be a good, decent, honorable human being who’s open and honest with the country because that is the only way we’re going to re-establish trust between the American people and the president. And I also think it’s going to be really important to re-establishing trust between America and the world, because the president is, in effect, the personification of America. And when the president, what I believe—one of the things I do believe the president needs to do is, in the first 100 days, travel the world, not just meet with leaders, but speak to the people of the world the way great American presidents have in the past. The famous John Kennedy “ I am a Berliner” speech is an example. And for that to work and for us to spread a message that America doesn’t tolerate diversity, we embrace diversity, different cultures, different faith beliefs—it’s the heart of who we are—that spokesperson is going to have to be somebody that the rest of the world looks up to and respects.
With his statement about the president needing to be fair and decent he's attacking the sitting one. President Bush has done his best with what he's been given. I do believe him to be a decent and honorable man that chose to be president, and wanted to preside over a period of peace. The man never wanted to go to war, but that war was delivered to our doorstep, and there was no way he was to continue the failed policies of the previous administration. Indictments clearly did not sufficiently frighten our enemies into ending their bloody jihad against the United States.
Secondly, the idea that the JFK speech that Edwards cioted was some sort of "goodwill tour," as he is proposing, it pure idiocy. The "I Am A Berliner" speech was given shortly after the Soviets erected the Berlin Wall. The speech was given to show the United States's solidarity with the people of West Germany, and thoroughly tossed the gauntelet down in front of the Soviets that we were not going to back down in the face of their expantionist Communism. Edwards needs to research a little history before injecting something into his spiel that has nothing to do with the subject he was discussing.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that Senator Clinton has been open and honest about her support of the war in Iraq?
SEN. EDWARDS: I don’t know the answer to that question, honestly. I, I can’t—I can’t—I don’t know what’s inside her, her head and her heart about this. I can’t tell whether there are political calculations going on.
I find it most telling that he will not confront her. And because of this, I have to question if any of the Democrats are going to confront Senator Clinton. If they are not going to go after her or her ideas, then the Democrat primaries are going to be pretty boring.
MR. RUSSERT: But if Democrats voted to cut off funding for the troops who are part of the surge, the accusation would be they’re not supporting the men and women.
SEN. EDWARDS: But there’s a very easy way to do this. In fact, I saw you questioning Senator Kennedy on the show about this. Senator Kennedy actually has a bill that, that—what it says is, in order—if it’s passed into law—in order for more troops above the levels that are there now to be put into Iraq, the president would first have to come to Congress—and they use their funding authority as the basis for this—would have to come to Congress and get their permission. And I don’t believe the Congress would give him that permission under the circumstances. So there—there’s an easy, straightforward way to do this, but we, we have to have the strength to do it.
Um, no. The president should not have to go to Congress with his hat in his hand asking them for anything. The surge is still part of the Iraq phase of this war, and Congress has already given its assent on that matter. Yes, he has to obtain the extra funding, but that is in the overall defense appropriations for 2007. He does not have to get their permission. He already has it, and it included his singular vote for the use of military force on Iraq. And we know the Democrats will try to block it. Their attempt to do so does not come from some new intelligence gleaned in recent months (unless they count the faulty ISG report), but rather from political partisanship. They CAMPAIGNED on a withdrawal of troops, remember? That stance came out long before the ISG report, or any other report detailing the problems we have had to deal with over there.
Based on what I have cited above, and what is still in the interview I do not think I could take him seriously as a contender for president. He is a former one-term senator who loved to play the political schmoozing game. He is a trial lawyer--an ambulance chaser, if you will--who knew how to hit the right notes for his clients, and his pocketbook. And based on the boast that came later in the interview that he would withdraw 40,000 troops from Iraq and halt the surge, I do not think he understands the depth of the war. He has jumped on the "Withdrawal Bandwagon" that Senators Obama and Clinton have created, and he is not thinking clearly on the subject. (Lord knows we love Joe Biden for his comedy, but her recently drilled Edwards on his boast he would withdraw troops, and agreed with our position on it.)
If Edwards supporters point to this interview as an example of his "presidential" stature, then I have to seriously question their sanity. Especially given the fact that Edwards in this interview admitted he would raise taxes, then raise taxes on Social Security; in essence giving this nation a higher tax increase than Bill Clinton did, and to date he had the highest increase in the nation's history. No, I am sorry, but Edwards is hardly a serious contender for the presidency. Like Joe Biden, he will be among the king of comedic gaffes, which should not come as a surprise to anyone. Had John Kerry not been upstaging him in 2004, he would have been the ticket's court jester.
Marcie