Flip Flop Hooray

In the 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry was infamously and repeatedly quoted as voting "for the Iraq war before I voted against it." Branded a flip-flopper on an issue of the utmost national importance, Kerry never truly overcame the label and his seemingly hypocritical voting record.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot…or hoof, if you will. Not content with simply spitting on the US Constitution, the Interloper has set out to render irrelevant the Geneva Convention. That Republican congressional cronies would be on board is no surprise; what is, however, is that Dubya and some of his most ardent supporters today were singing a different tune in the not-too-distant past.

… Some of the very Republicans who now say the War Crimes Act needs to be amended were among those who helped write it 10 years ago. [House Armed Services Committee chairman] Duncan Hunter, in fact, was one of the 15 Republicans in the House (there were also three Democrats) who co-sponsored the original legislation, and he also co-sponsored an expansion of the act, covering even more potential transgressions, that passed the very next year. Similarly, in the Senate, the man who shepherded the original bill through that body in 1996, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, is now a co-sponsor of the bill that would gut it.

Bush, too, is not above going back on his word. During a radio address in March 2003, Dubya said he was committed to strict adherence to the accepted laws of war. "The contrast could not be greater between the honorable conduct of our liberating force and the criminal acts of the enemy," he said.

So what happened? Are Bush and the GOP flip-floppers on a scale that goes far beyond John Kerry? It's hard to argue otherwise, at least when you look at the facts.

But I'm not convinced. The self-proclaimed " Decider" is not known to easily change his mind, and flip-flopping – even if/when warranted by new evidence – is completely out of character. No, my guess is that the Wonderful Wizard of the White House talked the talk back in 2003, but never truly intended to walk the walk. Through his blatant disregard for political tradition, diplomacy and universally acceptable behavior, George W. Bush has repeatedly shown that he thinks he is above the law. He may have paid lip service to the Geneva Convention when it was politically beneficial for him to do so, but that was all for show.

When rules don't apply to you, how can you break them? And when you don't mean what you say, how can you ever be judged harshly for going against your word? That's not flip-flopping, friends…that's just a big "fuck you".