Hans Blix: U.S. has “poor excuse” for Syria incursion now

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90. I abhor the MSM & I hate the term flip-flopping.

With that said, I am sorry but Kerry has for more than 25 years been incredibly inconsistent in his actual statements both in speeches and in votes on the entire Middle East situation including most important the Wars in Iraq.

These are his actual words - facts as you point out. You can bitch about the media and the spin, and yet you can not contradict that he said the following:

Senate's Role In Wars With Iraq

Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in January 1991, Kerry broke with the majority of senators and voted against authorizing the first Gulf War. He said on the Senate floor, "It is a vote about war because whether or not the president exercises his power, we will have no further say after this vote."

Kerry thus voted against war after Iraq took aggressive military action. He said a vote in favor of military action was tantamount to giving Congress "no further say" on the war.

In October 2002, he supported the current war in Iraq, despite the fact that Iraq took no aggressive action against its neighbors.

In announcing his candidacy for president, in September 2003, he said his October 2002 vote was simply "to threaten" the use of force, apparently backtracking from his belief in 1991 that such a vote would grant the president an open-ended ticket to wage war.

Read Part One of our series:
President Bush's Top Ten Flip-Flops

If I Knew Then What I Know Now…

"We should not have gone to war knowing the information that we know today," Kerry said Wednesday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "Knowing there was no imminent threat to America, knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction, knowing there was no connection of Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda, I would not have gone to war. That's plain and simple."

But on Aug. 9, 2004, when asked if he would still have gone to war knowing Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, Kerry said: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have." Speaking to reporters at the edge of the Grand Canyon, he added: "[Although] I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has."

The Kerry campaign says voting to authorize the war in Iraq is different from deciding diplomacy has failed and waging war. But Kerry's nuanced position has contradicted itself on whether it was right or wrong to wage the war.

In May 2003, at the first Democratic primary debate, John Kerry said his vote authorizing the president to use force was the "right decision" though he would have "preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity."

But then in January 2004, Kerry began to run as anti-war candidate, saying, "I don't believe the president took us to war as he should have."


The $87 Billion Vote

In September 2003, Kerry implied that voting against wartime funding bills was equivalent to abandoning the troops.

"I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running," he said.

Then, in October 2003, a year after voting to support the use of force in Iraq, Kerry voted against an $87 billion supplemental funding bill for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He did support an alternative bill that funded the $87 billion by cutting some of President Bush's tax cuts.

But when it was apparent the alternative bill would not pass, he decided to go on record as not supporting the legislation to fund soldiers.

Kerry complicated matters with his now infamous words, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

On Wednesday, he acknowledged that his explanation of his Iraq war votes was "one of those inarticulate moments."

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-646435.html

Now don't get me wrong entirely, I am not just attacking Kerry. He is no different than just about every politician today no matter whether they have a D or an R after their name. They worry about votes, money, and positioning. They will say one thing on the campaign trail and do another once elected.

So once more, I do not have to be an 'expert' on the Middle East to question the veracity of my elected politicians' statements. I, and the rest of the American people, have been lied to so many times for the last few decades, that personally, I am very wary of them now. War or simply 'force' is just disingenuous semantic games.