Saturday, August 6, 2005, 8:30am
During the campaigns for the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry was labeled a flip flopper:
- Blogs for Bush: Flip-Flop Kerry Archives
- NoJohnKerry.org Archive of John Kerry Flip Flops and Flop Flips
- John Kerry's Flip-Flops - Funny Picture
I could list more, but I'm sure you can google for more. Anyhow, a lot of people who wanted to see George W. Bush back in the Whitehouse jumped on the flip flop bandwagon. But let's look at some current flip flopping from none other then W himself.
On March 19, 2003, Bush announced:
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
On May 29, 2003, he makes another statement:
We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.
But while in Pennsylvania on September 9, 2004, Bush flip flops:
I recognize we didn't find the stockpiles [of weapons] we all thought were there.
Seems that not only was he sure they were there, he was sure that the weapons were found. How can you find something that doesn't exist?
Now Bush no longer thinks that he is fighting a war on terror, rather, it is a struggle against violent extremism. Why? Because mentally, people think of wars having winners and losers. This entire affair in the Middle East isn't looking so good and its hard to hide the dead bodies that come back to the country every day. But a struggle on the other hand, there's no clear cut win and lose mental picture. Instead, you imagine a long drawn out series of conflicts. A back and forth sort of thing. This war on terror won't be over for another decade, probably longer. Something like one third of the country thinks that the United States is winning the war on terror, meaning that the majority of the country either thinks they are losing (if you count a loss of civil liberties as terrorists winning, then they are right) and don't have enough information to make the decision (if you count a government not telling you what you feel you have the right to know as terrorists winning, then they are right as well).
That being said, I haven't seen many people associate the term flip flop with Bush, however, some have: