Truth - Al Franken [36]
Remember. That was a lie.
HANNITY: Here’s a guy that by my count has had six separate different unique positions on the war on Iraq.
This was just stupid. Kerry’s position on Iraq was totally consistent. In retrospect, a bad position, sure, but it was absolutely consistent. Yes, Kerry voted to authorize the President to use force against Iraq. But he voted for that in order for Bush to go to the U.N. and get the inspectors back into Iraq, which Bush lyingly said was the only way to avoid a war.
It sounds counterintuitive that Bush would want an authorization to use force in order to avoid war. But Bush claimed that that’s what this was all about. Here’s an exchange between Bush and a reporter from September 19, 2002, just before the vote in Congress:
REPORTER: Mr. President, how important is it that that resolution give you an authorization of the use of force?
BUSH: That will be part of the resolution, the authorization to use force. If you want to keep the peace, you’ve got to have the authorization to use force. This is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It’s a chance for Congress to say, “We support the administration’s ability to keep the peace.” That’s what this is all about.
On the eve of that vote, Kerry explained his position:
As the President made clear earlier this week, “Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.” It means “America speaks with one voice.”
Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.
In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days—to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.
So the vote for the resolution was not a vote for the war. And when the President did launch his attack, not as a last resort, or even a second-to-last resort, Kerry did speak out. For example, here’s Kerry on CBS’s Face the Nation on September 14, 2003:
The President promised he would go to war as a matter of last resort. He didn’t. The President promised he would build a coalition and work through the United Nations. He didn’t. We’re paying the price for the reckless way in which this president approached this. It’s a failure of diplomacy, and today it’s a failure of leadership.
Totally consistent.
As Marc Sandalow, Washington bureau chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote on Thursday, September 23, 2004, after six-plus months of daily accusations of Iraq flip-floppery from Hannity and others, “An examination of Kerry’s words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters’ questions” showed that “Kerry has offered the same message ever since talk of attacking Iraq became a national conversation more than two years ago.”
So there weren’t, as Hannity asserted, “six separate different unique positions.” There was only one position. And it wasn’t unique. I held it myself.
Hannity was debunked over and over again, and yet he never wavered. It is time, therefore, for another lie about Hannity. This is even less true than the last one. Which wasn’t true at all. It’s been made up out of whole cloth. But it will shock you, just as it shocked me.
In 1993, utility workers repairing a gas line in the garden of Hannity’s Los Angeles–area home found a buried human hand missing its ring finger. Hannity denied any knowledge of the hand, and it couldn’t be conclusively