BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Saturday, January 10, 2004
The Democrats and the war (a
semi-correction). Media Log reader F.C. thinks a correction is in
order for my item
on the New Republic's endorsement of Joe Lieberman, whom I
called "the only one of the nine Democratic presidential candidates"
to support the war in Iraq.
"In fact," writes F.C., "Gephardt,
Edwards and Kerry all voted to authorize Bush to use military force,
and Gephardt was among the first Democrats to do so
publicly."
I semi-agree. John Kerry, depending
on how things are going on any particular moment, can sound as
antiwar as Howard Dean these days, so I will definitely stick with
leaving him out of the prowar mix.
As for Gephardt, he said at the
time of the vote that he thought it represented the best chance for
peace.
Here's a postwar Gephardt statement:
I said to President Bush
in the Oval Office, a number of times early last year, that he had
to get the UN, he had to get NATO, he had to start the
inspections, he had to weld together an alliance to do whatever
needed to be done. He failed at that. We're now seven months into
the event, or eight months, and he still hasn't gotten it
done!
That said, Gephardt did vote "yes"
on the Bush administration's request for $87 billion to help
reconstruct Iraq. So did Lieberman.
On the other hand, Kerry and
Edwards voted "no." And though Edwards has not sought to distance
himself from his prowar vote with quite the vigor that Gephardt has,
his statement
about the $87 billion were pointed:
The policy this
administration was pursuing in Iraq was not working. It needed to
be changed. And I wanted to say absolutely clearly that it needed
to be changed.
What's beyond dispute is that no
one other than Lieberman has made this
kind of statement:
Look, long before George
Bush became president, I reached a conclusion that Saddam Hussein
was a threat to the US and to the world, and particularly to his
own people who he was brutally suppressing. I believe that the war
against Saddam was right, and that the world is safer with him
gone.
Which is why I called Lieberman the
only one of the nine to support the war. If I had added the word
"unreservedly," I suppose that would have gotten it exactly
right.
More on the Herald's
unlabeled front-page ad. WBUR Radio weighed in on Friday. Click
here
to see the fake front. You can also listen to a commentary by Boston
University journalism-department chairman Bob Zelnick.
posted at 10:29 AM |
|
link
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
