Reason and Radical

Kerry Hits Bush Hard

Great speech -- read it.

His 4 point plan for Iraq (from Al Franken's radio show site):

1. Hold an emergency summit of major allies and Iraq's neighbors to rebuild the coalition.
2. Greatly expand the project to train Iraq's troops, and make sure they're trained better--he'd double classroom training time.
3. Fire the officials responsible for screwing up Iraq's reconstruction and hire more Iraqi firms instead of Halliburton. Actually spend the reconstruction money.
4. Pull together a U.N. protection force to make sure the elections go forward.

More from the speech:

"The President has said that he “miscalculated” in Iraq and that it was a “catastrophic success.” In fact, the President has made a series of catastrophic decisions … from the beginning … in Iraq. At every fork in the road, he has taken the wrong turn and led us in the wrong direction.

The first and most fundamental mistake was the President’s failure to tell the truth to the American people.

He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.

By one count, the President offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.

His two main rationales – weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda/September 11 connection – have been proved false… by the President’s own weapons inspectors… and by the 9/11 Commission. Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat.

The President also failed to level with the American people about what it would take to prevail in Iraq."

Really, you need to read the speech -- its fantastic.

posted by Leimodnu @ 3:04 PM