The White House is calling on Kerry to name the foreign leaders that allegedly told him that they are behind a regime change in Washington.

Of course, Kerry declined. McClellan reportedly said:

"If Senator Kerry is going to say he has support from foreign leaders, then he needs to be straightforward with the American people and say who it is that he has spoken with and who it is that supports him."

If Kerry refuses then he is probably: "making it up."

I have no idea if Kerry's allegations are true. But the fact that the White House has responded to them, lends them an air of credibility. Converse to McCllelans' public admissions.

I saw Kerry's television ad today at lunch. I'd say it was pretty neutral. Not at all like the attack dog tactics used by the GOP.

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In my post below, I question the White House's motives for sending Rumsfeld(does anybody believe a thing this guy says?), Powell(thoroughly discredited at the U.N. using known garbage in front of the Security Council), and Rice(Mushroom cloud?) to defend the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

I think that this can be summed up as "the smell of fear."

Let's run through each of the three's more dubious statements.

Rumsfeld:

9/11/2001 With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." -- meaning Saddam Hussein -- "at same time. Not only UBL" -- the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden.

This is not a guy I'd send out to affirm going to war in Iraq. If it wasn't so tragic, it would be comical.

Henry Kissinger is reputed to have called him: "Donald Rumsfeld is the most ruthless man I have ever met... and I mean that as a compliment."

I don't make this stuff up, folks. Who'd believe me? Wikipedia has more Rumsfeld.

Powell. Now, this is an easy one. I fail to see why Powell is held is such regard. He's a yes man. Without further ado, Colin from The U.S. State Dept. website. These are Powell's words during an exchange with Egyptian Foreign Minister Amre Moussa.

We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.

Well, Colin. Seems pretty clear that on February 24, 2001, you were sure that sanctions were working.

Sorry, but I see a huge credibility gap. I won't bother rehashing Powell's widely discredited presentation to the U.N. Security Council. A search on this site will give you all the detail you need.


Condoleezza Rice. Ms. mushroom cloud. This lifted directly from the Memory Hole:

On 29 July 2001, Condoleezza Rice appeared on CNN Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer (an anonymous reader sent me the full transcript from Lexis-Nexis). Guest host John King asked Rice about the fact that Iraq had recently fired on US planes enforcing the "no-fly zones" in Iraq. Rice craftily responds:

Well, the president has made very clear that he considers Saddam Hussein to be a threat to his neighbors, a threat to security in the region, in fact a threat to international security more broadly.

Notice that she makes it clear that Bush is the one who considers Hussein a threat. She doesn't say, "I consider..." or even, "We consider..."

Then King asks her about the sanctions against Iraq. She replies:

"But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

These three are the people the White House trots out on the Sunday news programs to defend the Iraq war? The case is obviously very weak.

Richard Perle is already on record as saying "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable."

French intransigence, he added, meant there had been "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein".

So, I think the case for the Iraq War is full of more holes than a round of Swiss cheese.

But then, I'm a semicon engineer, not an international lawyer.