Politics & Power Quote by Edward Kennedy

Kennedy’s line lands like an indictment disguised as a timeline. By starting with “from the very moment,” he denies the public the comfort of believing Iraq was a reluctant response to new threats. The move is prosecutorial: establish premeditation, then motive. “Unfinished business” is the key phrase, because it reframes the Iraq War not as national defense but as dynastic housekeeping - a father’s war left incomplete, a son’s presidency bent toward closure. It’s political critique sharpened into a story Americans instantly understand: inheritance, pride, payback.

The second sentence twists the knife. “Find a rationale” doesn’t argue that Saddam was harmless; it argues that the reasoning was reverse-engineered. Kennedy is pointing at the alleged manufacturing of consent: evidence and messaging arranged to fit a predetermined destination. In the post-9/11 climate, that accusation carried extra heat, because fear was a powerful solvent for skepticism. Kennedy’s subtext is that the administration exploited that solvent, dissolving the normal standards of proof.

Context matters: Kennedy was a leading Democratic voice during the run-up to and early years of the Iraq War, speaking to a country still traumatized, still primed to equate dissent with disloyalty. His intent is to reclaim a moral high ground for opposition by making it less about policy disagreement and more about the legitimacy of the process itself. If the agenda was “clear” from day one, then the tragedy isn’t just the war’s cost; it’s the democratic failure that allowed a rationale hunt to masquerade as strategy.