Here’s another thing about Kerry that’s always annoyed me. He always seems ready to take foreign leaders at their words — which, not to get too fancy with the language here, is stupid.

Diplomacy is just another word for lying.

For instance, here’s what Kerry had to say when Russert asked him what President Bush has to do going forward:

SEN. KERRY: Well, you have to behave as if you really are at war. I’ll give you an example. I was in Egypt three weeks ago. I met with President Mubarak. We were talking about training. I asked him, “You know, why don’t you do more training?” His response was, “We’ve offered do more training. We’re doing 146 officers today. I don’t know why we’re not doing more. People haven’t followed up with us. They haven’t gotten back to us.”

And, a question or two later:

I mean, look, I sat with any number of Arab leaders, and I said to them, you know, “Mr. Prime Minister” or “Mr. President, is your country–do you believe Iraq, being successful there is important?” The answer is yes. “Do you believe that if it’s a failed state, that’s a threat to the region?” The answer is yes. “Do you believe that it could be a haven for terrorism even more than it is today?” and so forth. The answer is yes. Then you say, “Well, why aren’t you there? What is the problem?” And the problem becomes one of the way in which this administration–they will tell you openly–has approached them and the world.

On three different occasions, the Bush administration spurned the offer of the United Nations, the international community. People have offered police training. People have offered peacekeepers. People have offered other forms of assistance, and our administration has gone it alone.

These statements are really breathtaking. Either John Kerry is as naïve as a six-year-old girl (in which case he had no business even running for president) or he knows that these “leaders” — in the distinctly unelected sense — are lying through their rotting, despotic teeth (in which case he has no business criticizing the president).

Arab “leaders” wish Iraq well about as much as Southern plantation owners wished Northern abolitionists well. A successful democratic transition in Iraq is about as welcome in Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc., as a slave rebellion would have been in antebellum Georgia.

The people of Iraq are former slaves to a Baathist regime who have been liberated and now are taking control of their own destiny as a nation for the first time. This is earth-shattering, if it succeeds.

And the earth that is being shattered is that directly under the feet of the despots and murderers John Kerry would build America’s Iraq policy upon.