Bush running against Saddam Kerry

As soon as John Kerry yesterday at New York University opened his mouth to level his strongest criticism yet of the conduct of the invasion of Iraq by President Bush, the president in reply sprung a heavy steel-jawed trap, smashing and holding Kerry's bloody, crippled legs.

Kerry decried that, "The president misled, miscalculated, and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking and he has made the achievement of our objective – a stable Iraq, secure within its borders, with a representative government, harder to achieve".

Okay, some voters may buy Kerry's promise to be a better imperialist than Bush. But here is how the president, laying in wait for the tentative Kerry, swung back with a visceral appeal to base emotion:

Another lesson of September the 11th, another lesson is that we must take threats seriously, before they fully materialize. (Applause.) Prior to September the 11th, if we saw a threat, we could deal with it if we felt like it, or not, because we never dreamt it would come home to hurt us. So if we saw a gathering threat overseas, maybe it's something to pay attention to, maybe it wasn't. Today, that world changed. Today, we've got to take every threat seriously because we saw the consequences of what can happen. We're still vulnerable.

So I looked at the world and saw a threat in Saddam Hussein. (Applause.) I'll tell you why I saw a threat. He was a sworn enemy of the United States of America; he had ties to terrorist networks....

Saddam Hussein was a threat. We had been to war with him once. Many politicians prior to my arrival in Washington had said we better -- it would be naive, to the point of grave danger, not to confront Saddam Hussein -- that would be Senator John Kerry -- "naive to the point of grave danger"....

The world had given Saddam Hussein a chance, a last chance to listen to the demands of the free world. And he made the decision -- and so did I. I had to either trust a madman, or forget the lessons of September 11th, or take the touch decision to defend our country. Given that choice, I will defend America every time. (Applause.)

Thank you all. Today, my opponent continued his pattern of twisting in the wind, with new contradictions of his old positions on Iraq. He apparently woke up this morning and has now decided, no, we should not have invaded Iraq, after just last month saying he still would have voted for force, even knowing everything we know today. Incredibly, he now believes our national security would be stronger with Saddam Hussein in power, not in prison.

Whoa. Take that Saddam Kerry! You aint ever gonna protect this country like I will you, you TRAITOR!!

Kerry is in a box of his own making. Bush has expertly thrown Kerry's war support straight back at him – in a manner designed to resonate like a laser into the minds of the electorate. As I warned in two postings from last fall – one before the capture of Saddam (Nov.3, Saddam is Back! Bush Re-Election Strategy Emerges); and one after (Dec.16, Saddam may be useful) – "Progressives who want to use the bloody occupation of Iraq as an election issue against Bush better look out. The president and his rich campaign/advertising machine will have a powerful answer for us".

Now with some news outlets reporting, "Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi says the trial of the Saddam Hussein is likely to begin next month" – that is, before the election – Kerry better get some kind of treatment for those wounded campaign legs. He's got a very, very tough last stand ahead of him.

Update 10:45am: I just read Juan Cole's posting on the Bush New Hampshire remarks. Cole says

Bush attempted to turn [Kerry's] statement around and suggest that Kerry was preferring dictatorship to democracy.

Iraq, however, does not have a democracy, and cannot possibly have a democracy any time soon because of events such as those described below (and they are only 24 hours' worth)-- that is, because of a failed state and a hot guerrilla war.

Yep, Professor Cole is exactly right, but it doesn't matter. Bush plays to emotions and uses people's emotions to lie to them. The truth about Iraq will have a very difficult time emerging, and Kerry is a flawed messenger. Kerry oughta just say, yes, Saddam probably still would be in power. But he'd be in a box and couldn't hurt anyone. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people, ours and theirs, would still be alive and the Iraqi people would have a chance to make their own history. That would have to be better than allowing Bush to pummel him like this.

Professor Cole finishes with this lament: "I have a sinking feeling that the American public may like Bush's cynical misuse of Wilsonian idealism precisely because it covers the embarrassment of their having gone to war, killed perhaps 25,000 people, and made a perfect mess of the Persian Gulf region, all out of a kind of paranoia fed by dirty tricks and bad intelligence.... How deep a hole are they going to dig themselves in order to get out of the bright sunlight of so much embarrassment"??

I'd offer that I think the American people certainly have a clue that the Iraq thing is a mess. But I think challenger Kerry has done a terrible job conveying the horror of the death and destruction the invasion has brought. That's the gut-wrenching truth we must act on to save ourselves from Bush.