John Kerry: I Was For More Troops in Tora Bora While I Was Against Them

Holding onto your pissed off fringe left base requires a hefty dose of "Blame Bush (Cheney, Rumsfeld, et.al)".

Senator Lurch obliges with a handy committee report claiming "that none of this would be necessary if former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had only deployed more troops eight years ago. Yes, he really said more troops."

In 2001, readers may recall, the Washington establishment that included Mr. Kerry was fretting about the danger in Afghanistan from committing too many troops. The New York Times made the "quagmire" point explicitly in a famous page-one analysis, and Seymour Hersh fed the cliche at The New Yorker.

On CNN with Larry King on Dec. 15, 2001, a viewer called in to say the U.S. should "smoke [bin Laden] out" of the Tora Bora caves. Mr. Kerry responded: "For the moment what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way."

To understand the reasoning of a really smart guy like John Kerry, you just have to figure out the magic number between "more troops" and "too many troops".

I think that number is 12.

posted by Dave In Texas at 01:20 PM

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