As anyone who has followed this election for about five minutes realizes, this primary process is essentially over. Sen. Clinton has lost and it seems like she’s the last to know. That said, these kinds of comments about her vote in favor of the Iraq War underline why she has a fundamental flaw were she to be the nominee.
“I made a considered judgment, I didn’t make a speech, I made a decision and it was a decision based on my best assessment on what would be in the interest of our country at that very uncertain time.”
Clinton said that historians will judge if her decision was the right one, but she reminded voters that Obama’s voting record on the war is not very different than hers.
You made a “considered judgment” that was wrong. You spent eight years as first lady, and in your first six years in the U.S. senate on the most important issue of that entire tenure, you made the wrong vote. If her actual quote really does cite the judgement of historians about her vote in favor of the Iraq War, she’ll be echoing another famous Iraq War proponent: George W. Bush. Bush too cites that only historians of the future will eventually judge him rightly or wrongly for the Iraq War. It’s that sort of jackassery that has led him to be a 30% approval president (and that’s being generous). And Sen. Clinton sounds just like him. She refuses to this day to acknowledge her vote in favor of the war was stupid, heck she’s done all sorts of verbal gymnastics to ineffectively say that the vote for the war wasn’t a vote for war. That’s a Jedi mind-trick that Obi Wan couldn’t even pull off.
Furthermore, Clinton begins to play fast and loose with the truth like she did with the now infamous phony Tuzla sniper story and gives out this whopper:
“I started criticizing the war in Iraq before he did. So, I’m well aware that his entire campaign is premised on a speech he gave in 2002 and I give him credit for making that speech. But that was not a decision.”
This is simply untrue. It is patently false. It is a lie. At the time Sen. Obama was running for his seat and criticizing the war before it even began, Sen. Clinton was lining up with the rest of the senate to burnish her national security credentials and vote for the war in Iraq. Certainly she followed public opinion and began critiquing the war’s execution and issues like body armor shortages - but before the guns started shooting - when it mattered most - before, as Sen. Obama put it, our country was driven in to the ditch that is the Iraq War, she was not a critic.
She was pushing the accelerator.
The reason why this would be so troubling and a drag on the party if she was the nominee is that her stance on the war makes John Kerry in 2004 sound as clear as a bell. This is a woman who is for or against the war depending on the dossier that Mark Penn brings her in the morning (after he gets off of his Colombian flight). Just a while back she was one of the people slamming a timetable for redeployment from Iraq. Now she’s in favor of it. She criticized David Petraeus, then a few weeks later complimented him.
Any day now I expect her to distill her position on the war to something like: “I was for it before I was against it, then I was for it again… I think. Mark, what do I think?”
Many of us spoke against the war when the entire media was for it. We saw the folly of this incursion into a hostile foreign nation while the entire foreign policy establishment thought it was a good deal. We realized that a war of occupation in Iraq would weaken America at the same time the Democratic party abandoned its long history of smart power by lining up to give George Bush the blank check to wage this war.
Thousands of lives and casualties later, Sen. Clinton still does not truly see the folly of her vote for the war in 2002 and goes so far as to lie about it.
At 3AM the only phone call she should be getting is a wrong number.
UPDATE: In Oregon, Clinton Makes False Claim About Her Iraq Record Vs. Obama’s
It’s an odd way to measure opposition to the war — comparing who gave the first criticism of the war in Iraq starting in January 2005, ignoring Obama’s opposition to the war throughout 2003 and 2004.
But even if one were to employ this “Start Counting in January 2005″ measurement, Clinton did not criticize the war in Iraq first.
Scrambling to support their boss’s claim, Clinton campaign officials pointed to a paper statement Clinton issued on Jan. 26, 2005, explaining her vote to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State.
“The Administration and Defense Department’s Iraq policy has been, by any reasonable measure, riddled with errors, misstatements and misjudgments,” the January 2005 Clinton statement said. “From the beginning of the Iraqi war, we were inadequately prepared for the aftermath of the invasion with too few troops and an inadequate plan to stabilize Iraq.”
But Obama offered criticisms of the war in Iraq eight days before that, directly to Rice, in his very first meeting as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Jan. 18.
Obama pushed Rice on her answers to previous questioners regarding the effectiveness of Iraqi troops, and he criticized the administration for conveying a never-ending commitment to a US troop presence in Iraq.
Sen. Clinton: Stop lying. Stop.
Hillary’s Margaret Thatcher 2.0 shtick is wearing thin
What has Senator Obama done to oppose the war besides his speech? I’ll vote for him if I have to, but I don’t trust him or his supporters.
“What has Senator Obama done to oppose the war besides his speech? I’ll vote for him if I have to, but I don’t trust him or his supporters.”
merl… I don’t know how you can read Oliver’s post and say something as inane as that. You’re parroting back Clinton talking points that are just… well… stupid. If Obama were in the Senate at the time when Congress voted on the war, there’s little doubt he would have voted against it (despite the blowing of the political winds at the time). As it is, he wasn’t. What else would you have liked him to do besides from strong vocal opposition? He’s never been anything but 100% clear on his stance on the Iraq war. Clinton, on the other hand, keeps lying in comparisons between her and Obama with respect to the war. And it’s Obama that you don’t trust. What the fuck kind of loony nonsense is that?
Oh, and why don’t you trust Obama’s supporters, pray tell? I’d love to hear why the lot of us are untrustworthy. I’m sure that you have a great reason for your opinion.
Christ, would you please think critically for two seconds before posting comments, so that you can avoid sounding like a complete idiot? Thanks in advance.
I give him credit for making that speech. But that was not a decision.”
This is simply untrue. It is patently false. It is a lie. At the time Sen. Obama was running for his seat and criticizing the war before it even began,…
Agreed.
Page 293-294 of The Audacity of Hope
So it was a decision he had to make; in light of increasing popularity to go to war, he decided to run for the US Senate in opposition to “a rash, dumb war.”
I’ll vote for him if I have to, but I don’t trust him or his supporters.
Yeah, I don’t get that either. I’m no political expert, but I’m no neophyte either. I am under no delusion that Obama will say what he has to to get his points across. But I honestly feel he has been the most conscientious and forthright candidate, nay politician, I have seen in…I don’t even know how long. He isn’t willing to bend his views about things he feels passionate about, but he is willing to listen thoughtfully and respectfully to opposing views and weigh them against his own.
One more thing, merl. What would it take for you to gain his trust, or the trust of Obama supporters, for that matter? He has been honest about his background, honest about past drug use (which I admire a great deal. You can’t be 47 years old and not claim some knowledge of drug and alcohol abuse), honest about his faith, honest about his loyalty, honest about his stand on issues. He’s been fair about working out this whole primary mess, and he has not resorted to smears, lies and dirty tricks.
So what do you need?
It’s not like I don’t have problems with Obama. He has weaknesses as a candidate and he will have weaknesses as a president. But the choice between Obama and Clinton was pretty easy for me.
What it came down to was this: I want Clinton to lose because I want the Democrats who supported the Iraq nightmare to lose.
It’s not just that they supported a disaster, that they acted without morals or principles, and that they displayed political cowardice. It’s also that they made Bush more popular. They enabled a cornucopia of right-wing policies that will take the rest of my life to reverse and correct.
What can I say about Clinton but that she failed, and failed and failed. And in keeping this campaign going despite the fact that the only way she can win is by mutual destruction she is failing again.
Is she all bad? No. But to support her I have to ignore Iraq and look at all those other things Clinton stands for or represents. What are they?
With respect to progressive policies, Obama will do as good or better. He will not have to carry all the baggage that Clinton brings with her.
merl: What has Senator Obama done to oppose the war besides his speech? I’ll vote for him if I have to, but I don’t trust him or his supporters.
I’m curious, merl. What would you have him do? What, exactly, would you have him do to show his opposition to the war?
And is there something Hillary or McCain have done that you can point to as an example?
I’m curious, merl. What would you have him do?
This, of course, is central to my point.
Once again, as was said in the YouTube election propaganda clip above, Senator Clinton had a difficult decision to make.
She said it was informed by living on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, by looking at it from a Presidential and historic point of view: When the President comes to the Congress and says he needs and asks for the authority to use force, what should the Congress do?
Exactly what Clinton did: Trust in the history of the Presidency, and give him the Executive power he requests but subject to checks and balances, which were an integral part of the AUMF. They required 60-day updates, and a review of the decision, they required regular oversight and control from the Legislative Branch.
Clinton could not know that after October 2002, Daschle would be out and the Senate and COngress in the vile, partisan, irresponsivbly criminal hands of Frist and Tom DeLay, and all the safeguards built into the AUMF would become nothing more than paper for Bush & Co. to wipe their asses.
She had a valid position, from a responsible US Senator’s point of view, at that point of crisis in time.
Barack had the luxury of being a local bit player at the time, with a total constituency of his local Illinois district of what, 100,000 people?
Senator Clinton had to look at precedents set, the Constitution, the impact on future history, and representing the wishes of a state of 20 million people, a majority of whom wanted action in Iraq when she made her decision.
I disagreed with her then; but then again I understand and respect the fact that neither me nor Barack nor Ollie were in the hot seat at the time.
That’s no answer, Wellstone. All it says to me is that if she wins the Presidency, the next time she’s in the hot seat–say, starting in January, 2012–she will not hesitate to trust incredibly untrustworthy people if it will bolster her political career.
What would it take for you to gain his trust,
Sorry, should be wwhat would it take for him to gain your trust?
Clearly, given your support for Sen. Clinton, the bar can’t be that high.