Helen Thomas: Message To Kerry: Time To Protest War Again

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0520-13.htm

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Kerry, who first came to the national political scene with his anti-Vietnam war mission in the 1970s, should concede he made a big mistake in supporting the invasion of Iraq and blame it on Bush for giving him false information about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
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Kerry should declare that if he were elected president, he would set a timetable for gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, with the pullout complete by January when Iraqi elections are to be held.

Such a bold move by Kerry would show courage and it would blunt any political appeal that Ralph Nader's tough anti-war rhetoric may attract.
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After 18 comfortable years in the Senate, Kerry has lost the persona that had set him apart back in the Vietnam era.

On the Middle East, Kerry is simply a "me too" echo of Bush when it comes to endorsing Israel's illegal land grab on the Palestinian-occupied West Bank.
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It's time for Kerry to split with the administration on this ill-conceived war. Otherwise, disaffected voters may decide to sit this one out.
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...goes far beyond questions about who wins the election in November. Current plans in Iraq are the center piece for the neo-conservative foreign policy in the ME. Simply changing the person in the Oval Office will have little effect on derailing those plans if Kerry continues them. It isn't a question of whether there's any "difference" between kerry and Bush-- we all know there are huge differences-- but rather whether or not they ultimately serve the same ideological objectives in U. S. foreign policy.

I agree with Helen-- it is way past time for Kerry to repudiate the neo-con imperialism and start articulating a DIFFERENT foreign policy.

on edit-- merging threads a bit-- the current discussion that Kerry is playing smart politics by letting Bush implode on his own suggests that winning the election is the only part of the American political process that matters. That's wrong, IMO. Kerry needs to be articulating-- forcefully-- a different direction for American foreign policy, starting with our biggest current screw-up: Iraq. The resulting debate will inform the process of selecting not only a president, but a national direction.

time for noninterventionism and isolationism to get a fair hearing. This international garbage is (literally) killing us. If Nader shames us on an issue I'm gonna :puke: . Fuck this half-assed war shit. It is poisoning everything.