CNN WOLF BLITZER REPORTS
Aired August 10, 2004 - 17:00 ET
BLITZER: You probably know, and I'm sure you do, that the president today on
the campaign trail in Florida ridiculed the Democratic nominee, John Kerry,
for now saying -- he said it yesterday -- that if he had to vote all over again
for that authorization for the president to go to war, knowing what he knows
right now, he still would have voted for it. Can you clarify precisely what
Senator Kerry's position is?
HOLBROOKE: I think it's very clear. Senator Kerry has not changed his
position ever on this issue, although the White House has tried to make it appear as
though he has.
He twice voted for regime change in Iraq, in 1998 and again in 2002. He feels
strongly that Saddam Hussein was a terrible man, a brutal dictator, and that
his removal is a net plus for the world. But he has also made clear that, in
voting for that resolution, he was not giving a blank check to the
administration to do what they did the way they did it, without international support,
sufficient support, without authorization and NATO unity.
And he would not have done it the same way it was done here. And I think that
the White House position -- and I saw the president's statement, watched it
several times today as you showed it -- I think the White House statement today
was a deliberate misstatement of Senator Kerry's position.
BLITZER: All right, I just want to get you on the record on this whole issue
of Vietnam, John Kerry's service in Vietnam.
You were a young American diplomat serving in Saigon during the Vietnam War.
So this is a personal matter for you as well. When the Democratic candidate
makes such a big issue of his Vietnam service during the war at the Democratic
Convention and now other veterans opposed to him come out and say, effectively,
he's lying about that, what do you do to make sure that this does not become
a negative campaign issue for the man you want to be the next president of the
United States?
HOLBROOKE: First of all, Wolf, I don't think that the Republicans are doing
themselves any service by questioning the credentials of a man, John Kerry, who
volunteered three times. First, only a handful of his classmates in college
volunteered for military service at all.
Then he volunteered for Vietnam. And then when he was on a slow boat out in
the South China Sea, he asked for the Riverine Force to command a swift boat. I
was not just in Saigon, as you said. I spent three years in Vietnam and a
year and a half of that in the Lower Mekong Delta, in the same area where John
Kerry was. I was a civilian, but everyone was getting shot at down there.
I was not in as much danger as John Kerry, but I know those mangrove swamps
very well. Danger and death lurked behind every single turn. And when the
attack ads say that his wound was only a light wound, what are they talking about?
The distance between a light wound and death is an inch. It's one aorta. It's
one artery. It is unbelievable to me, given the danger that people in the
Riverine Force faced, that any of them would go to town and be used this way 30
years later.
I'm embarrassed for the people who have done this ad. And I think that
everyone should read what Jim Rassmann wrote in today's "Wall Street Journal,"
reaffirming how he owes his life to John Kerry. Rassmann is a Republican who was
not recruited by the campaign, but just got angry about the earlier
misrepresentation.
Anyone who served in Vietnam deserves the admiration of all Americans. We're
not attacking. John Kerry, myself, we're not attacking those people who are
attacking Kerry. They served. He served. He was wounded three times. He saved
lives. And let the record speak for itself. As Senator Kerry himself says, let
them attack. They're just advertising his heroic war record.
BLITZER: Ambassador Holbrooke, unfortunately, we have to leave it there.
Thanks very much for joining us.
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