John Kerry - as Deep as a Wading Pool

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had this to say on CNN's Crossfire as President Bill Clinton got revved up for a big four month bombing run in Iraq in 1997:

Secretary Cohen canceled his trip, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff canceled a trip, troops are deployed, the aircraft carriers are being brandished. There's no misunderstanding here about where the United States is prepared to go.

Clearly the allies may not like it. Where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity?

Sounds like reckless unitalateralism to me, John.

The [Clinton] administration is leading. The administration is making it clear that they don't believe that they even need the U.N. Security Council to sign off on a material breach because the finding of material breach was made by [U.S. weapons inspector Richard] Butler.

Kerry didn't even care what the U.N. thought in 1997.

I think the United States has always reserved the right and will reserve the right to act in its best interests.

Unless there's a Republican in charge, I guess. Then we need endless U.N. resolutions, a congressional mandate, and a permission slip from every two-bit political hack on the planet. Oh, and by the way, the congressional mandate only entitles a Republican to ask for the permission slips. If someone says "no," then congress didn't really mean it.

It's worth noting that not only is Kerry again revealed as a hollow political opportunist, but that it took George Bush about month to overthrow Saddam and set about rebuilding the country while Clinton spent four months bombing the daylights out of Baghdad and ended up with nothing to show for it.