John Podhoretz:
HERE'S a question for which only Tuesday will provide an answer: Did John Kerry make a colossal blunder by deciding to spend the last week of the campaign highlighting the fact that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was one giant ammunition dump?Ignore for a moment the conflicting details of the incredibly confusing story about the 380 tons of high explosives that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad. Accept, for now, John Kerry's contention that the explosives went missing after the fall of Baghdad and that President Bush's negligence in the planning and execution of the war and its aftermath are responsible.
The other day, Kerry said: "After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this administration failed to guard those stockpiles — where nearly 380 tons of highly explosive weapons were kept. Today we learned that these explosives are missing, unaccounted for and could be in the hands of terrorists."
Kerry has just bollixed up his own storyline about the war in Iraq. He is concluding his campaign by drawing an explicit association between Saddam Hussein, dangerous weaponry and international terrorists.
That's Bush's argument. Not Kerry's.
...
Kerry has inadvertently added fuel to Bush's fire. He has advanced Bush's case without meaning to. In his eagerness to jump on any piece of anti-Bush news and turn it to his advantage, Kerry failed to examine just how his new argument makes a hash of his old argument — and how it might actually do the president a little bit of good.
This is more proof of the Bush campaign's secret weapon — Kerry's poor political instincts. Somebody with a better feel for the political game would never have said that he voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it.
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