Kerry, Edwards Dogged by Their Votes on Iraq

Re “Kerry-Edwards Stonewall,” editorial, July 13: I will vote for John Kerry and John Edwards in November.

But, sadly, I have to agree with your editorial on their votes to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq at his discretion.

The thing that bothers me the most about this is that six months before Bush ordered the invasion, Kerry, Edwards and all the others who voted for the Iraq resolution ignored their responsibility under the Constitution to declare war.

By the time Bush decided to go to war, the U.N. weapons inspectors had been on the job for months and had found nothing. Congress should have debated a formal declaration of war then. The founding fathers gave this power to Congress, not the president.

Maybe instead of debating a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages, the Congress should be debating an amendment to grant only the president the power to declare war. Otherwise, the Constitution is a dead letter on this issue.

And we intend to lecture the world on constitutional democracy?

No wonder the United States has lost its moral authority everywhere.

Carlton S. Martz

Redlands

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Kerry and Edwards can do themselves and all the rest of us a profound favor by saying the radically simple and morally courageous words George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will never utter: “We were wrong and soldiers died because we were wrong. And we will never let it happen again.”

That is the only way out of the box they were put in by the Bush administration’s deceptions.

John F. Luke

Sierra Madre

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The tortured logic that the Democratic candidates-to-be, Kerry and Edwards, cannot criticize Bush’s Iraq war without incriminating themselves relies on the simplistic notion that if you are not for us, you are against us; if you are not for the war, you must be a traitor. Shame on The Times for perpetuating that lie.

Rex Styzens

Long Beach