President Bush and Sen. Kerry have taken very different stances on Iraq. Some people have tried to say that Sen. Kerry is a flip-flopper on Iraq. These criticisms are based on two situations.
The first instance deals with comments Kerry made in 1998 in regards to Iraq expelling weapons inspectors. Kerry said he supported “air and missile” strikes against Iraq – something well short of a full blown invasion. Kerry said that ground troops should be left as an option, but should only be used as a last resort.
The second situation where critics declare Kerry a flip-flopper deals with a speech Kerry gave on Oct. 9, 2002. In that speech, Kerry talked about the threats that Saddam posed to the United States, including biological and chemical weapons. Kerry said that sending weapons inspectors back into Iraq was the right choice and that Bush gave up on them too soon. Again, Kerry never said that we should absolutely go to war with Iraq.
President Bush, however, seemed to have made up his mind about invading Iraq well before going to the U.N. In fact, he had to be coaxed into going to the U.N. in the first place. Bush had to be persuaded to allow weapons inspectors into Iraq.
If the U.N. had voted against weapons inspectors, Bush probably would have invaded. Had weapons inspectors found weapons of mass destruction, Bush probably would have invaded. The only other possibility is that weapons inspectors wouldn’t find weapons, and Bush invaded under that circumstance. There was no way Bush wasn’t going to war.
There is other evidence to support that Bush had his eyes on Iraq for a long time. The administration started talking about Iraq only days after the 9/11 attacks. Documents created during Cheney’s meeting with oil companies before included a map of Iraq, complete with a breakdown of areas each company wished to control.
The fact that President Bush says we were right to go into Iraq as resoundingly today as the day we invaded – despite the fact that every rationale for war that they presented has been proven to be false – adds to the idea that Bush doesn’t really care what the rationale was.
Bush only cared about being able to persuade enough people to support him in doing something which he had always planned to do.

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