OPPOSING THE WAR….Was Time’s Joe Klein opposed to the war in 2002? Here’s what he said on Monday:
I remember sitting in John Kerry’s office as he went to the floor to cast his vote in October 2002. He read me his speech supporting Bush and asked what I thought. I said I thought it was an ok speech, but I wouldn’t be voting that way. But I can’t prove that…I can, however, prove that as early as this column and this one, I was criticizing the Bush administration’s conduct of the war.
This provokes a question that goes beyond generic Klein bashing. Taking him at his word, he plainly opposed the war as early as October 2002. (It doesn’t get much plainer than opposing the war resolution, after all.) However, also taking him at his word that the columns he links to are the best examples he has of his opposition, it means that for five solid months he opposed the upcoming war in Iraq but never wrote a single word clearly saying so in public.
Why? What was he afraid of? Ditto for anyone else who does this kind of thing, since this phenomenon is hardly limited to Iraq or Joe Klein. What are they all afraid of?
UPDATE: Yeah, half rhetorical. But only half. Honestly done, Atrios’s idea would make a pretty good column.
