[Peace-discuss] Kerry rejects compliance with UN charter

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

 Kerry Backs Much of Bush's Pre-Emption Doctrine
by Ken Guggenheim
 

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry 
said he would be willing to launch a pre-emptive strike 
against terrorists if he had adequate intelligence of a 
threat.

Kerry on Friday offered some support for one of the most 
controversial aspects of President Bush's national security 
policy, even as he criticized the president for not reforming 
intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist 
attacks.

"Am I prepared as president to go get them before they get us 
if we locate them and have the sufficient intelligence? You 
bet I am," he said at a news conference at his Washington 
headquarters.

The Bush administration laid out the doctrine of pre-emption 
months before the Iraq war began in March 2003. It argued 
that the United States cannot rely on its vast arsenal to 
deter attacks and must be willing to strike first against 
potential threats. Critics of the policy say the Iraq war 
shows how the country could be driven to war by flawed 
intelligence.

Kerry said the intelligence needs to be improved so that the 
word of a U.S. president "is good enough for people across 
the world again."

But he added, "I will never allow any other country to veto 
what we need to do and I will never allow any other 
institution to veto what we need to do to protect our nation."

Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt complained that 
Kerry proposed cuts in intelligence spending while in the 
Senate. "John Kerry's attack is another example of his 
flailing efforts to defend a record that is out of the 
mainstream," Schmidt said.

Kerry spoke one week after the Senate Intelligence Committee 
sharply criticized prewar intelligence on whether Iraq 
possessed weapons of mass destruction. The report did not 
address Bush's role, but Kerry said, "as commander in chief, 
the president of the United States must take responsibility 
for what happens on his or her watch."

The four-term Massachusetts senator said that nearly three 
years after the Sept. 11 attacks, "this president has not 
taken action sufficient to fix the intelligence problems that 
have plagued us."

Outlining his own proposals, Kerry repeated his call for 
creating a director of central intelligence who would oversee 
all facets of the nation's intelligence operations. He also 
proposed at least doubling spending for clandestine 
operations, improving interagency coordination and 
accelerating reforms at the FBI to improve its handling of 
domestic intelligence.

But Kerry stopped short of supporting a proposal by his 
running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, to create 
a new domestic intelligence agency similar to the British MI5 
agency. Supporters of a new agency say the FBI has been more 
concerned historically about criminal investigations than 
intelligence; opponents fear a domestic spy agency 
threatening Americans' privacy.

Edwards made it clear later at a Democratic fund-raiser in 
Los Angeles that he had backed away from that approach, 
proposed during last winter's primary elections, and that 
Kerry's plan was "our plan."

He said the plan was "just plain common sense."

"It's been almost three hears since 9/11. It won't take us 
three years to put the reforms in place," Edwards vowed.

© Copyright 2004 Associated Press