Hardly a surprise, is it? But that’s what happened yesterday, according to this article. Kerry spoke at Westminster College, about a week after Dick Cheney appeared; Kerry, as you will remember, was invited to speak after Cheney gave a speech filled with partisan, election year attacks on Kerry despite his promise to give a major foreign policy address.

And Kerry’s speech was by far the better, leaving out campaign rhetoric, and instead focusing on the issues–and saying pretty much what I said in my last post, that we have to hand over real control of Iraq to the U.N.:

Mr. Kerry urged the appointment of a United Nations high commissioner to oversee Iraq’s reconstruction and political transformation. He said such a high commissioner, modeled on the role of the United Nations representative deployed to Bosnia, would be authorized by the Security Council to organize elections, draft a constitution and work with both Iraq’s interim government and the United States ambassador.

Kerry went on to point out that “This may be our last chance to get this right. We need to put pride aside to build a stable Iraq.” This could be an unpopular idea with many Americans, but it is the right and necessary tack to take.

My feeling is that he didn’t go quite as far as I did, but he is absolutely in the right direction. This is a feeling that many Democrats have in regard to Kerry’s public positions–many of us feel he should be taking a much bolder stance–but it also must be understood that this election could stand on the edge of a knife, and as distasteful as it might be sometimes, candidates cannot always go too far out on a limb.

Of course, there is a difference between going out on a limb and being a complete weenie. Which, naturally, Bush was up to today. It was the one-year anniversary of Bush’s aircraft carrier PR stunt. They wanted to get him out there in a jet so he could wear the suit and look like he was a military man. They made the claim that the carrier was too far out for the helicopter to reach, and even turned the carrier around so that none of the media’s cameras would be able to see the San Diego skyline close by. They also claimed that another reason Bush went by plane was because they did not want to “wait until the ship was in helicopter range to avoid delaying the troops’ homecoming,” which is not only the opposite of the truth–Bush delayed their homecoming by turning the ship–but doesn’t even make any sense, when you look at the statement carefully. And then there was the “Mission Accomplished” banner, which Bush later tried to blame the carrier’s sailors for, but later had to fess up was his own people’s work.

Well, those were the lies of a year ago. Today, he tried to smooth things over with a whole new batch of lies and obfuscations. “A year ago,” he said, “I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we had accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein.” Um, yeah, right. Actually, what he said was, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” But I guess he has no choice but to lie about it, with more Americans dying now at a much faster rate than before. But perhaps we can cut him some slack on that one, as he might not have foreseen how horribly he would botch the occupation so as to create an even greater combat situation than was experienced in the actual invasion.

Bush went on: “As a result, there are no longer torture chambers or mass graves or rape rooms in Iraq.” Holy moley, George, can you not go ten seconds without putting your foot in your mouth? Bush made this statement even as the top story was how American soldiers had run torture chambers and rape rooms in Iraq! He may be right about “mass graves,” but is it really so much better that we bury them individually instead?

Correction: There are mass graves. My mistake.