Ragin' Cajun, Shootin' Blanks

This morning on Meet the Press, Russert asked James Carville whether Kerry's credibility on Iraq was undermined by Kerry's saying he would have voted to authorize the war, even knowing what we know now. Carville muttered a bunch of outraged incoherencies (when he's good, he's very good, but when he's bad he's Boomhauer).

Okay, as McLaughlin might say, the correct answer is:

There was a split in the intelligence community over whether Saddam had WMDs. We needed to get inspectors in, to find out what was going on in there. The only way to get the inspectors in was to credibly threaten force. Kerry voted to give Bush the power to credibly threaten force against Saddam Hussein; if we couldn't make that threat, we couldn't get the inspectors in. We now know the inspections were working, until Bush rushed us into war. It's Congress' job to give the President the tools he needs to threaten force, and as a Senator, Kerry did so. But Bush took those tools and misused them.

It's not my position, but at least it's intelligible.