September 15, 2004

Under the circumstances ...

I found this paragraph, in a Washington Post report describing an interview Kerry gave on the Don Imus show today, quite perplexing:
When asked whether there were any circumstances under which the United States should have gone to war in Iraq, Kerry responded, "Not under the current circumstances, no. There are none that I see." He voted to authorize the administration to use force against Saddam Hussein but has said Bush used the authorization in the wrong way.
Strange double use of the word "circumstances." There were no circumstances under the current circumstances? The only way to make sense of that is to say he was just not answering the question and was only saying that given the way things turned out, he now thinks it would have been better not to have gone to war. But that reverses what he recently said about going to war. I thought his position was that Bush went to war the wrong way, as the Post indicates, which implies that there was a way--a circumstance--that was justified.

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