Kerry vs. Kerry
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Maybe President Bush should skip the presidential debates and just let Senator Kerry argue both sides. That’s what the junior senator from Massachusetts has been doing in this presidential campaign when it comes to the Iraq war.
Yesterday, in a speech at New York University, Mr. Kerry said that getting rid of Saddam Hussein had made America less safe. “We have traded a dictator for chaos that has left America less secure,” he said.
But while campaigning in Iowa on December 16, 2003, Mr. Kerry criticized Howard Dean for taking that position after the capture of Saddam. “Those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be president of the United States,” Mr. Kerry said then, according to the Des Moines Register. On “Meet the Press” on January 11, 2004, Mr. Kerry said, “We are safer with the capture of a man who wanted to build weapons of mass destruction and who, actually, had them and used them at one point in time.”
Yesterday, in New York, Mr. Kerry called the war in Iraq “a profound diversion” from the war on terrorism. He compared it to the Vietnam War, which he opposed. And he said, “We’re not talking about 20/20 hindsight, we’re not talking about Monday morning quarterbacking. Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bipartisan congressional hearings, major outside studies, and even some in his own administration predicted virtually every problem we face in Iraq today.”
But in the Senate in October of 2002, Mr. Kerry voted for the war. In his speech on the Senate floor explaining his vote, Mr. Kerry said that Saddam Hussein “has supported and harbored terrorist groups, particularly radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and he has given money to families of suicide murderers in Israel.”
Yesterday, in New York, Mr. Kerry said that Mr. Bush’s “two main rationales” for the Iraq war, “weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda-September 11 connection, have both been proved false.”
But in the Senate on October 9, 2002, Mr. Kerry gave that speech explaining the vote he was about to cast in favor of the Iraq war. He spoke about weapons of mass destruction, and about September 11. “With respect to Saddam Hussein and the threat he presents, we must ask ourselves a simple question: Why? Why is Saddam Hussein pursuing weapons that most nations have agreed to limit or give up?” Mr. Kerry asked. He called Saddam “a war criminal who used chemical weapons against another nation and, of course, as we know, against his own people, the Kurds.”
Mr. Kerry said then, “The Iraqi regime’s record over the decade leaves little doubt that Saddam Hussein wants to retain his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and, obviously, as we have said, grow it. These weapons represent an unacceptable threat.”
Mr. Kerry said back in that Senate speech in 2002, “The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.” He tied that threat directly to September 11. “In the wake of September 11, who among us can say, with any certainty, to anybody, that those weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region?”
Mr. Kerry said. “And while the administration has failed to provide any direct link between Iraq and the events of September 11, can we afford to ignore the possibility that Saddam Hussein might accidentally, as well as purposely, allow those weapons to slide off to one group or other in a region where weapons are the currency of trade? How do we leave that to chance?”
Yesterday, Mr. Kerry essentially said he would have ignored that possibility, left that to chance. It’d be one thing if Mr. Kerry wanted to argue yesterday that Mr. Bush had mishandled the war in Iraq and that Mr. Kerry also would have fought it, but done a better job. But Mr. Kerry has lately been calling it “the wrong war in the wrong place,” suggesting, as he did yesterday, that the war was a mistake.
Had we to choose a Kerry, we’d prefer the slightly older model to the new, antiwar version. However, it doesn’t look like the old model of Mr. Kerry is out on the campaign trail anymore. Which, we’d predict, is going to leave a lot of voters pulling their lever for a third candidate in November – not the old Mr. Kerry or the new Mr. Kerry, but George W. Bush.