MESSAGE--"WE'RE LOSING, I'LL QUIT":

Divergent Views of Iraq Defining Election: Despite the Pitfalls for Bush and Kerry, Candidates Stay on Topic (Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei, September 19, 2004, Washington Post)

With some Kerry advisers convinced he cannot win a debate over whether the United States should have gone to war, given Bush's relentless attacks on Kerry for shifting his positions on the war, the Massachusetts senator has settled on a two-phase plan to refocus the debate. Aides say he will first challenge the president's optimistic assessment of conditions in Iraq and then draw a sharp contrast with Bush over getting the United States out of the country within four years.

The president's advisers say Bush maintains the public's confidence on Iraq and the war on terrorism, in large part because they say Kerry has yet to provide a clear explanation of why he voted to authorize the war in the fall of 2002 but later opposed $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. Kerry has been urged by some advisers to say his initial vote was wrong, given what Bush did with that authority, but he has resisted.

Nevermind our domestic politics, can a responsible American really make these arguments when they are certain to encourage the enemy? After all, if you're al Qaeda and John Kerry is saying that bombings and beheadings and the like show that the extremists are winning and he'll withdraw our troops then don't you have further incentive to bomb and behead?

MORE:
Kerry Links Iraq War Cost, Domestic Woes (LIZ SIDOTI, September 19, 2004, The Associated Press)

Democrat John Kerry links the cost of the Iraq war to problems at home and vows in a new television ad to both "defend America and fight for the middle class."

"200 billion dollars. That's what we are spending in Iraq because George Bush chose to go it alone," Kerry says in the ad, to start airing Monday in 13 competitive states where he is on the air.

So now he's back to opposing the $87 billion?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 19, 2004 4:44 PM