Passing On An Opportunity

Invaluable CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale explains

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden dishonestly suggested on Saturday that he had opposed the war in Iraq "from the very moment" it began in 2003 -- even though Biden's campaign said in September that he "misspoke" when he made a similar claim.

Biden was responding Saturday to a voter in Des Moines, Iowa, who told him, "I'm with you 90% of the way" but questioned his judgment in part because "you were for the second Gulf War, which was a mess."

Biden said that "from the very moment" President George W. Bush launched his "shock and awe" military campaign, and "right after" that occurred, "I opposed what he was doing, and spoke to him."

It's false that Biden opposed the war from the moment Bush started it in March 2003. Biden repeatedly spoke in favor of the war both before and after it began.

Biden's language on Saturday -- saying he opposed "what he was doing" at the moment the war commenced -- was more vague than his language in September, when he flatly said he had opposed "the war" at that moment. But the new version was highly misleading even under the most generous interpretation.

On both occasions -- and on another occasion earlier this week -- Biden created the impression that he had been against the war at a key moment when he was actually a vocal supporter.

Anyone can lie and in the case of our President, continually and extravagantly.  It's less of a hindrance politically than in years or decades past. So a lie about support for a war conducted 17 years ago will not be a major hurdle to nomination, nor election, of Joseph R. Biden.

However, his campaign needs to be able to think on its feet and this isn't it:

Asked for a profile by New York Magazine about what role she might play as a member of Congress should Biden capture the White House, the freshman House Democrat from New York responded with a groan.

“Oh God,” she said. “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.”

A spokesperson for Biden’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.

The obvious- and magnanimous- response would be something akin to

We're a big tent and there is room for supporters of Obamacare such as myself and also for Democrats on the far-left such as Alexandria or Bernie. This is not the GOP, where Donald Trump says "sit down" and Republican politicians don't look for a chair. And it's not a party whose leader. praises Russia and its murderous dictator and accuses FBI agents of treason.

Ocasio added that the Democratic Party as currently constituted "can be too big of a tent." Biden might have added that his is a Party which welcomes not only diversity of race, religion, national origin, and gender, but also of viewpoint. He might then have challenged Senator Sanders, whom the Queens congresswoman has endorsed, to disagree with him.

Or he could have tried a pithier remark with more of an edge and asserted

I appreciate Alexandria and her devotion to the Democratic Party since she started working for Bernie Sanders five years ago, just as I wish she appreciated my efforts on behalf of the Democratic Party for the past half century.

Biden's policies, including unflinching support for the Affordable Care Act, may not be better than those of Cortez or even more popular. But voters in November (and probably primary voters) are not likely to reward a candidate who is appears so weak that he answers an attack with silence.

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Of Stern And Trump

The history of Donald Trump and Howard Stern, of appearances by the real estate mogul on the radio program of the perpetually overrated shock jock, is one of using and being used.  And in at least one instance, it is a case of cowardice on the part of Stern himself.

You can't fully blame Stern for wanting to set the record crooked about a controversial conversation he had with a man who may become the next president, whose vindictiveness and authoritarian tendencies have been on full display.

"Nothing! I said nothing new," protested Stern on his program on October 3.  "And so I emailed Trump and I wanted to explain to hin, uh, that is not what I said.

But it, uh, was what he said.  Stern was exorcised by the CNN headline reading "Howard Stern says Trump backed Iraq War in 2002."  Unfortunately for Stern and Trump, the day after the presidential debate, the radio host had in fact stated on his program

I was up late watching the debate.   I hung in until about 10:30 almost, heard my name mentioned, and I went to sleep. It was kinda thrilling. Yeah, oh yeah. Well, it always comes up because, you know, Trump was on our show years ago and said yeah, you know, he was kind of for the Iraq war, us going into Iraq. He was saying he really wasn’t for it, and so they were forced to mention my name. Yeah. It was cool. Good promotion.

The Hill's Joe Concha, spinning the story in Trump's favor, wrote "later interviews before the war and as it began show Trump voicing a need to 'wait for the United Nations' before invading and stating 'the war is a mess' in its first week of operations."

But as Fred Kaplan pointed out, on October 10, 2002 Trump's current opponent argued on the floor of the US Senate

... the question is, how do we do our best to both diffuse the threat Saddam Hussein poses to his people, the region, including Israel, and the United States—and, at the same time, work to maximize our international support and strengthen the United Nations.”

She went on to say that there was “no perfect approach to this thorny dilemma” and that “people of good faith and high intelligence can reach diametrically opposing conclusions.” But, she concluded, “I believe the best course is to go to the United Nations for a strong resolution” that calls “for complete, unlimited inspections with cooperation expected and demanded” from Saddam.







There was little difference in their thinking as Mrs. Clinton went on to vote for a resolution which did not advocate invasion but authorized the President to launch one if he found it "necessary and appropriate." Though he wished the President had gotten the United Nations more involved, Donald Trump supported the invasion. Hillary Clinton apologized and Donald Trump boasted. and Howard Stern is still a coarse and crude coward.








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Wall Street And Trade, However, Are Other Things

Bernie Sanders has now acknowledged that Hillary Clinton is qualified to be President, and good for him.

If nothing else, however, Sanders' claim Wednesday that his opponent is not qualified should draw our attention to the specifics of the statement 

I don’t believe that she is qualified if she is through her super PAC taking tens of millions of dollars in special-interest funds.

I don’t think that you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC.

I don’t think you are qualified if you voted for the disastrous war in Iraq.

I don’t think you’re qualified if you supported almost every disastrous trade agreement.

I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed, which has gave the green light to wealthy people and corporations all over the world to avoid paying taxes owed to their countries. 

At a campaign event on January 7, 2008 on behalf of his wife, Bill Clinton stated in part

Second, it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years and never got asked one time, not once, "Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your Web site in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since."

Give me a break.


 


After applause, he continued

This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen. So you can talk about Mark Penn all you want. What did you think about the Obama thing, calling Hillary the "Senator from Punjab?" Did you like that? Or what about the Obama handout that was covered up, the press never reported on, implying that I was a crook, scouring me, scathing criticism over my financial reports.

The whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've seen. On one level, the former President's allegation was unfair.  On October 22, 2008 Illinois state senator Barack H. Obama gave a stirring, eloquent speech challenging President Bush:

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with bin Laden and al-Qaida, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure that the U.N. inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Then Obama almost made the point which in retrospect most needed to be made, arguing

Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight.

"Let's fight to make sure," Obama maintained, so "our so-called allies in the Middle East" don't encourage their youth to become "the ready recruits of terrorist cells."

Call it nitpicking, if you will, but it's not. State Senator Obama foresaw the likelihood that increased terrorism would become the product of repressive, pro-Western, Arab states.

Recognition in 2002 of the importance of terrorism as a greater threat than the Iraqi regime is impressive. However, relatively few Islamic terrorists were created by the regime in Cairo, one Obama understandably failed to recognize would better serve the interests of the West than the two which have succeeded it.  And the 9/11/01 terrorists, most of them Saudi nationals, were not individuals rebelling from the oppression and corruption from Riyadh but led by Wahhabist bin Laden. Moreover, President Obama seems to have become quite cozy with that "so-called ally," run by the fundamentalist, Wahhabist sect.

There are, further, indications that Obama's opposition to the war was, largely, "fairy tale."  However, there is an aspect which more directly links his 2002 speech to Senator Sanders' criticism of Hillary Clinton for voting in favor of authorizing military action against Baghdad.

Very few people foresaw that the primary result of the USA invasion of Iraq, as well as the major reason it has become a disaster, is the profound impact it has had on the growth of Islamic terrorism. This goes well beyond the President's current, steadfast refusal to acknowledge that the global terrorist threat is primarily of an Islamic nature.  Obama in 2002 railed againt the coming "dumb war," also a "rash war," and advocated "battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair."

That is wonderful. However, he did not foresee what was to become of Iraq, and of the region. Neither did Hillary Clinton- and several other Democratic and many more Republican Senators.  Yet, Senator Sanders cited her vote as part of the reason she is unqualified to be President and, though he now has conceded that she is qualified, likely will continue battering Mrs. Clinton's foreign policy in large measure on the basis of that vote.

Clinton has publicly expressed regret for that vote. Sanders, to his credit, voted against the resolution, very likely out of the conviction so many others lacked. One of those, it now seems, was Barack Obama who, like most of the other opponents, had little or no clue what would become of the region, the tinderbox it would become, and the threat to Europe, the USA, and elsewhere that it would ignite.

Hillary Clinton is the very essence of a neo-conservative, representing a foreign policy perspective clearly inadequate to respond to international affairs at this time.  (The somewhat paleo-conservative approach of Cruz and thoroughly paleo-conservative approach of Trump probably are even worse.) However, criticism of her Iraq vote of 2002 should be tempered by the realization that very few individuals, including Obama and probably Sanders, understood what was coming.

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Rex, Lex In D.C.

Calls by Donald Trump and other Republicans to see President Obama's birth certificate were ludicrous, almost comical, and nearly faded into obscurity once the White House released BHO's long-form birth certificate.

They should have been asking for confirmation of his law degree.  In the alternative, forensic scientists should be brought in to verify that the man occupying the White House is the individual who was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu to an American mother and an African father, lived in Indonesia from ages 6 to 10, attended Occidental College before graduating from Columbia University, and became a community organizer and civil rights attorney before a state senator, and a U.S. Senator for a week or so.

Between Columbia and the professional career, the man is purported to have earned a law degree from Harvard University, prompting the question:  What are they teaching at Harvard Law?  Last week, we learned from CBS News

President Obama on Wednesday met with congressional leaders at the White House (news report, below) to discuss the turmoil in Iraq and the administration's efforts to respond. According to one leader in the meeting, Mr. Obama said that any actions the administration may take in response to Iraq's deteriorating security situation won't require congressional authority.

"We had a good discussion," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. "The president basically just briefed us on the situation in Iraq. And indicated he didn't feel he had the need for authority from us for the steps that he might take and indicated he would keep us posted."

Apparently, no one at the meeting objected. This includes Nancy Pelosi, who at a news conferenceT after the gathering (video, below) advised that she had stated "I believe the President does not need any additional congressional authority to act upon measures to protect our national security."  "I didn't want," the House Minority Leader added, "that to be misunderstood as support for boots on the ground." That was helpful because, as we all know, advisers never, ever lead to combat operations.

Pelosi is placing her faith in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002," which authorized the President to use the Armed Forces to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

Inconveniently, the Resolution authorized the President to act against a "threat posed by Iraq," whereas Tehran is now ostensibly an ally, with the President currently acting against the terrorists (ISIL) aiming to bring down the government.  Also inconveniently, the Resolution in the following section included "Nothing in this joint resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution."

Clearly, military action extending beyond two months would violate the War Powers Resolution, which  "requires the President to terminate the use of U.S. Armed Forces after 60 days unless Congress (1) has declared war or authorized the action; (2) has extended the period by law; or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack on the United States."

At least one Democrat isn't buying President Obama's bill of goods. Speaking on Morning Joe on Thursday, junior senator Tim Kaine of Virginia disagreed with Representative Pelosi, asserting

Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, I don't care what the politics are. The most sober power that we have in government and the mosti mportant power that Congress has is that power to determine whether we initiate military action or not...

I'm actually seeing colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the Senate say, 'No, the president has all the authority he needs.' You know,the issue isn't what I'd like, the issue is what the law is. It's very, very plain that Congress is the body that gets to declare war. The president, once declared, the president manages it, but Congress has to get involved. 

Don't expect much disagreement with the President by congressional Democrats, who generally are loathe even to question their own.  And don't expect much disagreement by Repubs because they are intent on a future GOP president having all the power he or she can claim short of declaring martial law on a whim. Further, this is a matter not primarily of the Constitution, though the power to declare war is vested in Congress.  It is largely a matter of law- lex, rex- and with all the bleating and braying about impeaching President Obama, the law is not something of the highest priority among Republicans.











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The Profile In Courage We Are Required To Support For The Democratic Nomination

President Obama has been served loyally by Joe Biden, who as a veteran Washington hand helped balance the public perception of the freshman senator as charismatic and enervating, yet inexperienced. It lent gravitas to the ticket, and possibly to the presidential nominee himself.  In 2008, Biden did Obama another favor, this time coming out in favor of same-sex marriage, paving the way for the President to do the same.

So of course the President has fallen all over himself praising Hillary Clinton, who is blocking Biden's path to the 2016 nomination.  A book recently published has the anti-HRC author Edward Klein claiming (according to the New York Post)

... Obama wasn’t interested in Bill Clinton upstaging him during the presidential campaign. He resisted giving him any role at the convention.

But as last summer wore on, and Democrat enthusiasm waned, chief political strategist David Axelrod convinced the president that he needed Bill Clinton’s mojo.

A deal was struck: Clinton would give the key nominating speech at the convention, and a full-throated endorsement of Obama. In exchange, Obama would endorse Hillary Clinton as his successor.

Maybe yes, maybe no. But Barack Obama was clever enough, principled enough, or something enough to have given a dynamic and unequivocal speech against the war in 2002. However, Hillary Clinton, who as a US Senator voted for the war and later admitted it was a mistake, is now having third thoughts.  Dylan Scott of Talking Points Memo reports

Explaining her hesitation to renounce her vote in favor of the Iraq War, Hillary Clinton said Monday that she didn't want to "break faith with" the U.S. military.

The remarks gave a little more context to Clinton's admission in her new book that voting for the Iraq War in 2002 was "wrong. Plain and simple."

Backtracking on the vote earlier would have been the "smart political decision," Clinton told a Toronto business group on Monday during her ongoing book tour. But she explained why she felt she couldn't.

The Nation published a video and transcript of her statement in front of the Toronto Board of Trade.

"I had this sense that I had voted for it, and we had all these young men and women over there, and it was a terrible battle environment," Clinton said. "I knew some of the young people who were there and I was very close to one Marine lieutenant who lead a mixed platoon of Americans and Iraqis in the first battle for Fallujah."

"So I felt like I couldn’t break faith with them," she continued. "Maybe that doesn’t make sense to anybody else but me, but that’s how I felt about it. So I kept temporizing and I kept avoiding saying it because I didn’t want there to be any feeling that I was backing off or undercutting my support for this very difficult mission in Iraq."

Clinton wrote in her new book that she "got it wrong" on Iraq with her 2002 vote. But she said on Monday that her apparent hesitation to recant the vote was not a political calculation.

She was for the war. Then she realized it had been a mistake. Wrapping herself firmly in the flag, she now couches her earlier support  in patriotic terms: "I knew some of the young people there (and) felt like I couldn't break faith with them," she most cowardly rationalizes.

And she doesn't even credit the Democrats who voted against the Bush Administration's war with common sense, prescience, nor (especially this) courage.  Scott continues

"I kept trying to say, 'Well if we knew then what we know now it would not have ever come for a vote,' all of which was true, but just sort of avoided the fact of my saying, 'You know I just got it wrong, plain and simple. I made a mistake,'” she said. 'I thought a lot about that, because people said well -- 'You’re not saying you made a mistake for political reasons.'"

"Well, in fact, in the Democratic Party at that time, the smart political decision, as so many of my colleagues did, was to come out and say 'Terrible mistake, shouldn’t have done it,' and you know blame the Bush administration," she said.

No, the "smart political decision" for Democrats then was considered to be an "aye" vote on the Iraq War Resolution, in order to eliminate the possibility of being tarred as unpatriotic or "hating the troops."  Instead, Clinton casts her vote as one of political courage and suggests individuals who criticized the policy made an unprincipled, political calculation.  She castigates those who chose to "blame the Bush Administration."  That would, presumably, include a State Senator from Chicago who at the time declared

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with bin Laden and al-Qaida, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure that the U.N. inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Obama enjoyed the luxury of not having to cast a vote.  Still, he was right, and his words were, literally and figuratively, fighting words of exactly the sort Hillary Clinton has chosen to condemn.   Her words (video of relevant portion interview, below; The Nation article, here) were carefully chosen.  The former New York senator probably realizes that now she has made clear that she thinks Democrats of that sort were unpatriotic opportunists, President Obama will gravitate, however gradually...  even closer to her.  That is, we've learned,  how the once-bold State Senator now rolls.

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Bring It To A Vote

Five days ago, former Vice-President Dick Cheney joined the chorus of Republicans urging President Obama to accept uncritically the recommendation of General Stanley McChrystal and commit 40,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan. Or, rather, to accept uncritically the recommendation of General Stanley McChrystal, Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A). Most of the GOP would rather wrap itself in the flag of the American military than to muster the courage to call for more American servicemen to be placed in "harm's way" in central Asia.

Accepting an award from the Center for Security Policy, Cheney said "Make no mistake. Signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries.... The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger." He blustered "It's time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity."

Carefully avoiding taking a position on the possible escalation, I have a suggestion (assuming the President is amenable to increasing the numbers): submit an increase in American troop strength to Congressional approval. In his fine speech at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station today, the President stated:

I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way. I won’t risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary. And if it is necessary, we will back you up. Because you deserve the strategy, the clear mission, the defined goals and the equipment and support you need to get the job done. That’s the promise I make to you.

In a representative democracy (aka a republic), there is no more appropriate way to demonstrate the support of the American people for military action than to garner the endorsement of the people's representatives in the lower and upper chambers of the national legislature.

There is obvious, recent, precedence to this strategy. On October 11, 2002 the House of Representatives voted 296-133, and the Senate 77-23, to authorize President Bush

to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to--
1.defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq ; and
2.enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

Although the war itself has not turned out so well, the politics of military action helped enable Mr. Bush to be elected re-elected President as his opponent was stuck with trying to explain why he was so critical of an effort he appeared, with his "aye" vote in 2002, to have supported only two years earlier.

Similarly, on Afghanistan the GOP would be squeezed into a tight position: support the President of the United States or renege on its rhetorical support for the increase in soldiers urged by McChrystal. If instead no authorization is requested, and the President decides to embark on this course in Afghanistan and our effort backfires, Repubs will in all likelihood desert him, denounce him, and pretend they had never pushed the increase at all. (This strategy would pose a challenge for Democrats also, but not as great a one: support the President of their party or be more attuned to the interests of their base. And in either case, they, too, should not be held immune from taking a stand.)

In the great health care debate, President Obama has raised the pursuit of bipartisanship to a fetish, elevating the profile, prestige, and power of a single Repub Senator, Olympia Snowe, to nearly unfathomable heights. Partisanship, once said to "stop at the water's edge," is surely more important when facing a foreign enemy, the Taliban or Al Qaeda. And the GOP already has urged the President to ramp up the war in Afghanistan. Now is the time to demand that it show its cards.

On Divisiveness

Mickey Kaus in his blog on slate.com has an interesting take on what was otherwise a commendable denunciation by Barack Obama of Jeremiah Wright in the senator's 3/18/08 speech in Philadelphia, Pa.of 3/18/08. Obama stated, definitively and forthrightly:

As such, Rev. Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive.

Kaus intriguingly wrote:

Doesn't Obama mean Rev. Wright's comments were 'not only divisive but wrong,' rather than the other way around? Isn't it worse to be wrong than "divisive"? Is unity the overriding virtue for Obama?

Given one of the overarching themes- post-partisanship- of the Obama campaign, perhaps this was a rhetorical question. Still, it is insightful and brings to mind (at least, my mind) the vote on the Iraq war resolution of 2002.

Obama boasts, understandably, that while Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the resolution authorizing President Bush to take military action he might deem warranted against Iraq, Obama spoke out against the vote. His was the right stance, as he, his surrogates, and campaign officials repeatedly have reminded us.

But was it unifying? Or was it divisive? Voting in favor of the resolution supported by the White House- the wrong move on policy and now, it appears, politically- was in fact unifying. It was a vote to support our President if he decided to take action, even rash action. Voting against the resolution, some Democrats feared, would be exploited by Republicans in the succeeding couple of election cycles as being traitorous- or at least divisive.

Given that- and Obama's emphasis both in his impressive and inspiring speech this month and in his campaign- one can reasonably ask how the Illinois Senator would have voted on the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resoulution of 2002 had he then been a member of the United States Senate. It is only a hypothetical question, but one I think without an obvious answer.

Obama On Clinton On The War

One of the major themes of the Obama campaign has been the superior judgement State Senator Obama, who spoke out against the forthcoming war in Iraq, has shown to that of United States Senator Hillary Clinton (D.- NY), who gave a floor speech in support of the resolution, then voted for it. Now, Hotline On Call reports that the Obama campaign is circulating a new video emphasizing Clinton's vote for S.J. Res 45, with the words "It's a question of judgment. It's a question of preparation. It's a question of accountability. Was it a vote for "inspectors" ... or a vote for war?" flashing on the screen. This is a point consistently emphasized by the Obama campaign- that everyone knew that war was coming and Clinton's vote authorizing force by President Bush was tantamount to a vote for war. Clinton, meanwhile, steadfastly has maintained that hers was a vote not for war, but for inspections.

So who's right? There are a few interesting, and salient, passages in the New York Senator's speech on that unfortunate day, October 10, 2002. She stated "some people are in favor of attacking Saddam Hussein now (but) this course is fraught with danger (and) a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out, on the present facts is not a good option." She argued "I believe the best course is to go to the UN for a strong resolution that scraps the 1998 restrictions on inspections and calls for complete, unlimited inspections with cooperation expected and demanded from Iraq." She worried "if we were to defeat this resolution or pass it with only a few Democrats, I am concerned that those who want to pretend this problem will go way with delay will oppose any UN resolution calling for unrestricted inspections."

Finally, Clinton explained, "my vote is not,however, a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for unilateralism, or for the arrogance of American power or purpose-all of which carry grave dangers for our nation, for the rule of international law and for the peace and security of people throughout the world.... A vote for (the resolution) is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him- use these poweres wisely and a last resort."

Hillary Clinton, then stating "I will take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible" (emphasis mine) was fooled by George W. Bush. She used bad judgement, which she appears finally to have conceded when at the 2/26/08 debate in Cleveland, Ohio, Tim Russert asked "But to be clear, you'd like to have your vote back?" and Clinton responded "absolutely. I've said that many times." (O.K., she has not.)

This is true: Hillary Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to use military force if he found it wise; Barack Obama demonstrated wise judgement in his speech opposing military action. But the Obama campaign, aided by a lazy media, has contended all along that Clinton's vote was a vote for war. And, as the evidence demonstrates, they have been wrong, and continue to be wrong.