Did he think he could get away with this?
by digby
Honestly, what the hell is wrong with John Kasich? Is there something more to his weirdness than we know?
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” aired Sunday, Kasich said, “I would never have committed ourselves to Iraq.”
But in November 2002, Kasich, then a former congressman, made a very different argument during an event at The Ohio State University, as the United States was gearing up for war in Iraq.
“We should go to war with Iraq. It’s not likely that (Saddam) Hussein will give up his weapons. If he did he would be disgraced in the Arab world,” he said then.
Kasich’s 2002 comments, in front of a crowd of 100 students at the Kuhn Honors and Scholars House, were reported at the time by The Lantern, Ohio State’s student newspaper, under the headline: “Fireside speaker favors war with Iraq.”
He was a Fox News host and contributor at the time. This note from an Iraqi scientist gives a little hint of where Kasich was at on the subject:
During my recent FOX TV Heartland show interview with John Kasich about a week ago, I was one dimensionally bombarded with flimsy arguments by the anchor on the abundance of “Iraqi defectors have told of nuclear weapon sites” and who am I to refute Khidhir Hamza, the infamous “bombmaker” who has been claiming the existence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program for a year now on CNN, along with speaking to American congressional committees and right wing “think tanks.”
I’m sure there are endless examples of his Fox cheerleading which will be dug up in short shrift.
His spokesman “clarified” later that he didn’t mean what he said he meant — he actually said that if we knew then what we know now he wouldn’t do it. This is becoming the catch all focus group tested line of bullshit among these guys and they should not be allowed to get away with it.
The Bush administration pulled the inspectors out when they were unable to find any WMD!!!! And these idiots all cheered him on, rejecting all the information that was out there at the time that contradicted their propaganda.
And that’s not even taking into consideration the fact that they couldn’t get the rest of the world on board, much less the UN, and based the whole thing on a ridiculous thesis that had been illegal since World War II.
Please.
.