Coalitions? What about 'em?

AlphaPatriot reports on this AP article regarding Senator/Presidential Candidate John Kerry:

Kerry says Bush misled Americans on war

Alpha comments:

"Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry says that President Bush broke his promise to build an international coalition before attacking Iraq. Evidently, a coalition of at least 37 countries is not a coalition without the French.

Today [06/19/03], the NY Times reports that troops from a dozen nations of the non-existent coalition will replace between 20,000 and 30,000 G.I.'s in Iraq.

Now, I don't really have a problem with Alpha's analysis - if that's actually what Kerry said. And he may have indeed actually said something like that, it's just the original AP article doesn't provide any real support to that supposition:

The first paragraph states:

"Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Wednesday that President Bush broke his promise to build an international coalition against Iraq's Saddam Hussein and then waged a war based on questionable intelligence."

It then goes on to quote Kerry on several WMD-related grievances which support the second half of the paragraph.

On down in the article, the statement is made:

"But the Massachusetts senator has criticized the president's diplomatic efforts. He that concern Wednesday saying Bush had alienated U.S. allies in the runup to war."

Well, yeah, whatever. Aside from being grammatically suspect, it still doesn't actually give a Kerry quote regarding a lack of coalition consensus.

The article concludes with more of the same old quotes about WMD's.

Why exactly did the author not give any supporting direct quotes from Sen. Kerry to support the assertion he makes in the very first paragraph?

As a matter of fact, take out the first paragraph and it's focused almost entirely on Bush lying/receiving bad intelligence - same stuff we've been hearing for weeks.

As a reader, I'm left wondering what exactly were Kerry's words decrying Bush's coalition-building (or lack thereof)? Can we not judge them on their own merit, or is the author just saying, "Trust me - he said them (or something like that). Just let me sortof paraphrase to support my initial contention - you don't want to read all those messy quotes, anyway. I'll summarize and you can assume that's the official version.

But now, anyone who reads the article and uses it to support an anti-Kerry argument is quite possibly basing a course of action on false pretenses---

Wait - does that sound familiar?