Hundred to Zip, Iraq, North Korea

The Senate gave final passage yesterday to an $82 billion funding the war in Iraq. Spending this amount will push the cost of the war past $200 billion. Among the Senators voting FOR the bill were Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. Politics is of course a very strange sport, but this seems to require a little thought.

Kerry is easier to understand. It was pretty clear that he voted against the bill in ’04 because he wanted to improve his support on the left in case he needed it in the primaries. He famously wanted to be as firmly on both sides of the issue as he could so actually uttered on tape “Well actually I voted FOR the $87 Billion before I voted against it”. It is true that Bill Clinton was able to get elected after “I Didn’t Inhale”, but given the post 9-11 world, such a solid example of “Senator straddle” in action was probably the biggest single thing he did to hurt his election hopes.

He voted against before to shore up the left, he voted for it this time to be consistent (with himself). He has been on both sides of every issue during his entire Senate career, so this was just one more book-end. He voted against the first Gulf war, but he voted for this one … he just voted against funding it. Now he has voted FOR funding it (this time). He is absolutely consistently on both sides of every issue. What could be simpler to understand?

Kennedy on the other hand has gone out of his way to say any horrible thing he can dream up about the war, one would never suspect that he would vote for an appropriation for it, and enjoy having the chance to say more bad things about Bush. The only thought that crosses the mind is … he is up for re-election in 2006! It seems like that would be paranoid reasoning, but 60 or so years of alcoholism, womanizing, and drowning your secretary might make one paranoid after awhile. We have known of his insanity for a long time, paranoia becomes him.

We can be certain that voting for the money to fight the war won’t change the rhetoric, nor will anyone in the media point out that it seems odd to be completely against something, yet vote to fund it. They will blather on forever if the reasons for going in were good enough.

If N Korea were to nuke, say Tokyo, and threaten to nuke Los Angeles, Bush should come on TV with the following basic speech …

After consulting with my advisors, we see that there is no PROOF that N Korea is a threat to the United States. We studied our mistakes in Iraq, and realize that we were led down the wrong path by Saddam’s USE of chemical weapons as being an indicator of his HAVING chemical weapons. When the Russian Intelligence provided us with information that he was planning to attack US targets by “all means possible”, we believed he may use terrorist sources, or his own security forces to attack the US with chemical weapons. We have seen the error of our ways. He was “all out”.

There is NO PROOF that N Korea has more than a single weapon, and until we have that proof, we simply can’t risk any action. Since the LA Times has been very instrumental in pointing out the error of our ways, we know this decision will meet with their complete approval. Even if N Korea does have a weapon, maybe they don’t have a long enough range missile, or maybe their targeting isn’t as good as it could be. Remember; always look on the bright side … EXCEPT, if you happen to see something VERY bright, take a look at your hands. If you see the bones, please make an exception and just hit the deck without looking. None of us like to be wrong, but we know that we all can be.

We made a horrible mistake in Iraq, we thought that using chemical weapons meant that they existed, and that threatening to attack the US by “any means” meant “any means”. Silly us, we blundered in, deposed great leader that had brought a lot of extreme order to the country, and now it is on a road where it could end up with a liberal press.

It has been said that the Bush Administration doesn’t learn from its mistakes, but that is not true. If it turns out that N Korea is able to take out LA, and some other suitable number of cities, and the polls turn in favor of doing something stronger than sending in Jimmy Carter and asking them to be nice, we will reconsider.

I’m thinking that I’d make a GREAT Presidential speechwriter.