You almost made this man President

(Or, "I lambasted the President on North Korea for doing what I lambasted him for not doing in Iraq!")

I had to watch it a second time. Most of the time my commentary pertaining to any discussions or interviews at FNS is directed at Juan Williams who can be counted on to make at least one absurd statement a week (this one being no exception). This week though, it's all about John Kerry.

Senator Kerry was an exclusive guest this week and his interview with Chris Wallace was well, stupefying and points out exactly why he never should have been and never should be, ever, allowed within 200 miles of the White House.

So a few favorite moments then...

I think my personal favorite of course was his "blasting" of the President for pursuing multi-lateral diplomacy with NK and calling it a failure:

WALLACE: Let's start with North Korea. What effect do you think that the U.N. resolution is going to have on North Korea and its effectiveness in trying to stop their nuclear program, and what would you do?

KERRY: Well, let me begin by saying that North Korea is a renegade nation and it's a nation we all understand does threaten.

That said, I think the administration -- and just listening to what I could hear -- I couldn't hear all of it -- of the secretary's comments, they're living in a world of make-believe, Chris. They're living in a complete fantasy with respect to the foreign policy they put in place.

It is a failure. It's a failure in Afghanistan where they have a sort of cut-and-run policy of not completing the job. We have seven times the troops in Iraq.

WALLACE: Well, forgive me.

KERRY: Well, I want to comment, because it's all tied together.

WALLACE: Let's talk about North Korea.

KERRY: Well, this is about North Korea, because the problem with Iraq is that it has diminished our hand and reduced our ability to be able to deal with Iran and North Korea. They are related.

One of the reasons that North Korea can misbehave the way it is today is because the United States has lost its leverage, lost its credibility and doesn't have the capacity to be able to bring countries together in the way that it used to. That's number one.

Number two, with respect to North Korea itself, you hit it on the head. This administration is tolerating. This administration is doing exactly what it said it wouldn't do, which is allowing North Korea to get away with what it's doing.

These sanctions are not the bold, tough sanctions that the secretary talked about. China walked out of there and said we voted for it, but we're not going to enforce the cross-border mechanism, it's too dangerous for our region.

So you have sanctions that are just, by statement of those involved, not going to do the job.

WALLACE: So what would you do differently to deal with this very erratic regime of North Korea?

KERRY: I would do precisely -- I would do precisely what I said for the last five years consistently, which is engage in bilateral, face-to- face negotiations with North Korea, make it absolutely clear to North Korea that we are not intending to invade and have a regime change, and work on the entire set of issues that are outstanding since the armistice with regard to the north.

WALLACE: But, Senator, let me ask you about that. Let's look at what you espoused as your basic foreign policy principle during the 2004 campaign. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KERRY: America is stronger. Our troops are safer. And our success is more certain when we build and lead strong alliances, not when we go it alone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Alliances, not going it alone. Multilateral, not bilateral. Doesn't it still make sense to engage North Korea in talks with all of its neighbors, including China and South Korea, who have a lot more leverage than we do, rather than just get into a conversation about nothing with them ourselves?

That's been part of the Democrats mantra on the Bush foreign policy of the last 4 years, and when he does it their way, it's a failure. The Senator desperately wants to have his cake and eat it too.

Just prior to this, Secretary of State Rice had pointed out the fact that unanimous sanctions against North Korea is a new development in this game:

RICE: There is no way to suggest that having China, Russia, the entire international community finally unified around a plan, around a program to deal with the nuclear threat from North Korea is somehow less successful than where we were in 2002 when the North Koreans were pursuing a new path to nuclear weapons, where they were breaking out of bilateral agreements with the United States -- where, by the way, just two years before that, they had, in fact, tested missiles.

No, it wasn't a good situation in 2002 -- 2000, and they have continued to pursue their programs, but we finally have the right coalition of states to put enormous pressure on North Korea to reverse its course. We did not have that in 2002 when the president made that speech.

Or was it his Oath of Failed-ty to the Agreed Framework (emphasis is mine):

WALLACE: But what leverage do we have?

KERRY: ... was prepared to send Kissinger to China -- the leverage of the stakes between the two nations.

Let me go back in time. Bill Clinton was in office for eight years. When he started out in office, there was enough fuel for bombs for about one to two bombs. They were members -- North Korea was a member of the non-proliferation treaty and North Korea had not tested.
At the end of Bill Clinton's term, they had enough fuel for one to two bombs, they were members of the non-proliferation treaty, and they had not tested. Now they have enough fuel for nine to 10 bombs. They say they're going to build -- get enough for five to six more. They've pulled out of the non-proliferation treaty. We no longer have cameras in the reactor. We no longer have inspectors in the reactor. We no longer know where the fuel rods are. We know that they have now tested.

The United States of America is less safe, and the six-party talks have been a cover to get away from the idea, because George Bush and Dick Cheney decided ideologically in 2002 they would break off the oil trade, they would not build the nuclear reactors, they would not keep the framework that had been agreed on, and from that moment on, it's been downhill with North Korea.

WALLACE: Senator, there are several points you've made that I'd like to ask you about.

KERRY: Absolutely.

WALLACE: But first of all, one, all independent experts say that by 1997, North Korea was cheating on the Clinton agreement.

KERRY: Absolutely. But cheating...

WALLACE: If I may ask my question -- and in fact, had already begun secret uranium enrichment. I think to get to the larger issue...

KERRY: Can I stop you there for a minute? Because it's very important, what you just said. Uranium enrichment -- their bombs are plutonium.

And the fact is with respect to the threat of the United States, while we knew they probably were cheating, we were on a road where we had them in the non-proliferation treaty. They didn't have additional bomb capacity, and they hadn't tested.

And if we had stayed on that road, then we could have perhaps had a better opportunity to be able to curb this.

Apparently, a failed agreement is always better than no agreement.

Maybe it was this attempted addition to the left's political lexicon:

WALLACE: I'm going to ask you a question, and then you can answer the whole thing. You made a speech in New Hampshire on Friday night where you blistered the Bush approach to North Korea. Let's take a look at that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KERRY: When George W. Bush turned his back on diplomacy, Kim Jong Il turned back to making bombs, and the world is less safe today because a mad man has the Bush bomb.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: The Bush bomb?

KERRY: Yes.

WALLACE: I mean, don't you really think you should blame this on Kim Jong Il, not President Bush?

KERRY: It's a bomb that has been developed because of the unwillingness of this administration to engage in opportunities that every expert says have been there all the time.

President Carter went over there in 1994 and President Carter negotiated an agreement. Now, rather than continue that agreement in 2002, this administration just arbitrarily decided, out of ideological whatever - - anything but Clinton -- they proceed down a different road.

And things have gotten worse. Things have gotten worse in Afghanistan. Things have gotten worse in Iraq. They're not telling the truth to the American people about a civil war in Iraq.
They don't listen to the generals on the ground in Iraq. The generals have said it's a debacle. They've said Rumsfeld doesn't have credibility. They're not standing down while the Iraqis supposedly stand up.

In every aspect of our foreign policy, this administration has misled Americans and misled the world. And they don't have credibility. Chris, this is not political. This is not political.

Or it could have been this discourse on how the Administration could have solved the problems in Iraq in 2004 had they only listened to Kerry's advice:

KERRY: No, we were about one year out from the start of the war then, Chris. A whole series of things that we thought could be done -- I was still saying that I thought we could, hopefully, if they made the following decisions, make it a success.

I went to Fulton, Missouri. I went to New York University. I went to Georgetown University. I gave three speeches in which I laid out what I thought the president needed to do to make a success of Iraq.

In each case, we offered the president the best advice that we could give. The president didn't follow that advice. On the last occasion, I said this may be the president's last chance to get this right. The president didn't do what's necessary. He still hasn't.

You have to resolve the differences, political differences, between Shia and Sunni. And there's nothing our troops can do to do that. General Casey has said this can't be resolved militarily. Condi Rice has said this can't be resolved militarily.

The Senator wishes us to believe he's a smart guy. Does he not read? Say what you will about the pace or the ultimate disposition of them all but the political steps and accomplishments in Iraq continue on.

What does the Senator have to offer? The same condescension that put-off millions of Americans in 2004 and was on display again today in another mini-tirade against Administration efforts at coalition building (and in case there are any Democrats out there usure about what that means--it's multi-lateralism in action):

KERRY: No. I was for the $87 billion if we paid for it and if we had a plan, and we voted on that in the Senate. And when the vote lost, then I voted against it because I thought it was a matter of conscience and principle. And I should have said that more clearly.

In the same way now, this vote -- look at what the president's done. He said he would go to war as a last resort. He didn't. He said he would exhaust the remedies of inspections. He didn't. He said he would build a legitimate coalition. He didn't.

With every lingering second of this interview, I was reminded yet again how grateful I am and ought forever to be that this man did not become President of the United States. As, it seems, was Bill Kristol:

KRISTOL: Yeah. I mean, national security is supposed to be the advantage for Republicans, and now it's neutral. I mean, John Kerry's recommendations are even more ridiculous than Condi Rice's wishfulness.

I wonder, as an aside, what my colleague has to say on the subject, as one who voted for the Senator out of deep dissatisfaction with the Bush Administration.

And of course there was Juan in a statement whose absurdity speaks for itself:

WALLACE: And we've got about 30 seconds left in this segment. So did George W. Bush fall into the Democratic trap by going multilateral?

WILLIAMS: No. I think that it's the right thing to do. But you're in a situation here where, you know, in fact, they've tried to blame the Clinton people, tried to blame...

HUME: Who in the administration did that?

WILLIAMS: John McCain.

HUME: Name one person -- McCain is not in the administration.

WILLIAMS: Well, I think McCain was carrying administration water here when he...

HUME: Oh, please.