Andrew Sullivan Nails It! Kerry's Not Ready.

Readers of this column will know that I am strongly in favor of the war in Iraq and that I don't share the cynicism of many regarding how the President is handling it now. Andrew Sullivan is highly critical of the Bush Administration's handling of Iraq, but he hit it on the head today in his review of Joe Lockhart's comments in the LA Times today.

"BEYOND BELIEF: I'm going to wait till after next week's national security debate to make a final assessment of John Kerry on the war, but this statement by Joe Lockhart about Ayad Allawi is just vile:

'The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips.'

This is the same Joe Lockhart who calls nutjobs in Texas at the behest of CBS. Look, Bush's war-management deserves ferocious criticism, but the notion that Kerry is fit to wage this war is getting more and more untenable as the days go by. He has sent signals that he wants to withdraw troops soon; he disses our allies; he shows contempt for a man risking his life to bring democracy to Iraq. We're in a war, senator. Fight the enemy, not our friends."

I don't often agree with Sullivan, but he got it right this time. And people (read: voters) of each party affiliation will not react well to this comment. Just another in a long line of bad lines from the Kerry camp.