Kerry: Hawk or Dove? (Redux)

I’ve had people tell me that despite the campaign rhetoric, they know that “in his heart” Kerry opposed the war in Iraq.

This theory appears to verge on the unfalsifiable. For instance, you have to ignore things like this from Sunday’s Washington Post:

Knowing then what he knows today about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Kerry still would have voted to authorize the war and “in all probability” would have launched a military attack to oust Hussein by now if he were president, Kerry national security adviser Jamie Rubin said in an interview Saturday. As recently as Friday, the Massachusetts senator had said he only “might” have still gone to war.



Of course, it’s possible that Kerry does oppose the war despite what he says, how he votes, etc. But what exactly does it mean to oppose something “in your heart” when it seems to have no effect whatsoever on your actions? And aren’t actions all we have to go on in judging political figures?