Kerry's Perfect Plan

He does have a plan, Michael. He just won't tell us what it is unless we vote him in, that's all. Maybe we could get him to give it up in a televised game of charades???

I don't think you guys are paying a whole lot of attention to Kerry's exposition of his plan. Which is fine; that's your prerogative. But when you get on your high horse about how he hasn't articulated one, you sound kind of silly.

He gave a (90-second-debate-format-limited) version of his plan in the Coral Gables debate. You saw that debate, right? It was the one where your guy looked like doofus.

You also seem fairly Web-adept. It took about 12 seconds for me to locate the page on Kerry's web site that gives more detail on his plan for Iraq. You go to JohnKerry.com, look for the "Plan for America" section in the lefthand navbar, and click on "National Security". That takes you to a page that talks about national security generally, and includes a section headed "National Security Plans", where the top item is: "Winning the Peace in Iraq."

http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/national_security/iraq.html

It lays it all out. If you want more detail, there are helpful links to "John Kerry's Speech at NYU: A Plan to Win the Peace and Avoid Failure in Iraq", "John Kerry's Op-Ed: A Realistic Path in Iraq", and "New York Times Editorial: Another Vision of Iraq."

Wow. Can't throw a rock around here without hitting John Kerry's plan for Iraq, eh?

After the first debate, no one doubts Kerry's ability to string together syntactically correct sentences full of important-sounding words. The question is whether those words contain any actual ideas. All I see in Kerry's plan is a jumble of proposals that are alternately meaningless business-school gobbledygook, vague promises to do better through unspecified means, promises that contradict other promises, promises to do things that are impossible, and promises to do things that are already being done.

The only substantial and feasible points I see are:

1. He wants to punish Halliburton (and presumably repudiate its existing contracts) on the flimsy pretext that it's being investigated, so it must be guilty.

2. He wants to fire some Pentagon employees because Iraq is somehow all their fault.

3. He wants to bribe nonparticipating countries with reconstruction contracts.

John, if I missed any coherent and feasible ideas on that page, please explain them. Kerry obviously has trouble expressing his ideas clearly. Perhaps that's because his thinking is far too sophisticated and nuanced for us rubes in the red states. Or perhaps that's because he really doesn't have any ideas at all.

Hey, don't you know...having a plan is hard work. :-)

In fairness to him, you can't really lay out a plan for healthcare, Iraq or whatever in 2 minutes.

I was infuriated when, in the last debate, an audience member asked Kerry what his plan was for Iran, and his response was in essence "I have a plan for Iran. It's important to have a plan for Iran because Iran is dangerous. Also North Korea is dangerous." He never articulated his plan for Iran, so he didn't answer her question. It was a question I'd like to hear the answer to as well.

In the previous debate, he'd said he planned to give them nuclear material to see what they'd do with it, and sanction them. Then Bush pointed out that there are already sanctions, and Iran flatly stated that they would not even deign to accept nuclear material.

So what, exactly, is Kerry's "plan" for Iran?