Kerry Vows to Command 'a Nation at War'

First, an admission: I did not watch a single minute of the DNC convention, not a single quip from his holiness Al Sharpton or from the wise President Carter. Nope, not a moment.

To balance out this heinous shortcoming of mine, I don't plan to watch even a single minute of the RNC convention, either. It would bore me, or put me in a bad mood as soon as someone walks on the stage to speak about social issues (typically poorly). Nope, to quote a famous man, "not gonna do it."

Instead, I want to make a broader point about the message that Kerry is putting forth to differentiate himself from Bush: credibility.

"I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president," Mr. Kerry said. "Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and a certain response."

This is good speechifying (itself a good expression of Southern english), but hardly anything that let me know what's different about Kerry. He indicated at some point in the speech that this stance is what separates him from Bush, his willingness to go to war for the right reasons, without ulterior motives or half truths...

To this argument, I can only laugh.

Kerry voted for the war in Iraq, admitted later that it was the right thing to do at the time (does that mean that he wouldn't do it again?). He has no plans to withdraw American forces from Iraq, only to "internationalize" them, which I think is liberal code for make them eat more fortune cookies while wearing lederhosen.

With our newly internationalized troops in Iraq, somehow the Sunni fighters in Falluja will forget that they have lost power to their age old rivals -- everyone else in Iraq -- and the Kurds will run away with the spoon.

I see, empirically, that the anti-war protesters hate, despise and loath Bush, seemingly anything Republican (never really defined outside of having an insatiable appetite for alchemically transmuting blood into oil), and war itself.

Leaving aside many obvious rebuttals to each of the above points, can someone please explain to me (or make a construction paper explanation) of the bad faith that Bush had, his half-truths that he personally knew about, and the ulterior motives that he believed would never come to light when he invaded Iraq?

The Occam's Razor test here is passed most easily by believing (the key word) that Bush simply took less BS than anyone before him, especially given 9/11. The obstruse argument that backroom oildeals led him to lie to Amreican people (however cleverly and eloquently alluded to in Kerry's speech) are much more difficult to believe than that Bush thought that Saddam had defied the UN for too long.

If the logic (supplied by ANSWER?) that Bush went to war for oil is valid, can we suppose that Kerry will go to war to secure vast plantations of tomatoes? Or that Edwards will make the world safe for trial lawyers?

I'm still laughing...

PS -- Wasn't war the "problem, not the solution?"

Kerry Vows to Command 'a Nation at War'