Jon Henke at QandO, the essential neolibertarian blog, does some research on John Kerry's oft-repeated assertion that the US "outsourced" its efforts at Tora Bora in order to do war on the cheap. Despite the vehement denials by General Tommy Franks and others within the Afghan operation and the detailed explanations as to why our strategy not only made sense but paid off, Kerry continues to use this canard as a major part of his stump speeches.

It should surprise no one at this date that Kerry's position represents a complete reversal from what Kerry advocated at the time of the Afghan operation. Jon notes Kerry's appearance on the Bill O'Reilly show for December 11, 2001, where Kerry not only approved of the Afghan operation as implemented but called for moving our focus to militarily removing Saddam Hussein and leaving the liberation of Afghanistan to the Afghanis. He also made clear that if the international community refused to act against Saddam, then we should respond unilaterally:

O’REILLY: Have you seen any...evidence that’s really compelling that has not come out yet?

KERRY: I have not seen any evidence yet with respect to the 11th. But there are avenues of -- to pursue there. The important thing is that Saddam Hussein has used weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein fired weapons on Israel. They took some -- I think it was 29 or more Scuds without even responding during the war.

In addition to that, he has refused to live by the terms of the treaty that he signed at the end of the war in which he agreed to do certain things.
[...]
He hasn’t...the international community ought to hold him accountable for that.

O’REILLY: But the international community won’t. If we’re going to get -- if he’s going to get...

KERRY: Well, ultimately...

O’REILLY: ... out of there, it’s going to have to be us. ... Nobody else going to do anything because they’re all frightened little ninnies. Now...

KERRY: In the end ... we protect our own national security interests. In the end, I’m prepared for the United States to do what it has to do in order to do that.

Read all of Jon's excellent post, which is too rich and complex to excerpt properly here.

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Posted by Ed Morrissey at November 1, 2004 12:22 PM

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