Vote Hillary - the Republican candidate you can trust. Now endorsed by George Bush and Karl Rove!

All roads lead to Iraq.

It's not the only thing, but it is a significant driving force

Although supported AUMF, he did a mea culpa. Obama at least was on the record as against, even though political fall-out was minimal in his state Senatorial position.

Hillary, OTOH, has learned nothing from her husband's
denialism. She would be in much better shape if she just said she made a mistake.

You could continue and mention that since his being elected they have exactly the same exact Iraq votes. Trying to make policy distinctions between the 2 is futile for both sides.

Back into 2002 what did we all want? It seems that some people wanted to simply do nothing about Saddam. Some wanted to be able to force him to let inspectors in so we could determine if he was a threat. Some wanted to fight a war against him no matter what. I personally believe that the second option was the correct one. That option required the credible threat of force which is what the resolution provided. To have voted for it was not to have endorsed the thrid option and to claim it was is grossly misleading. You may claim that people should have known that the second option wouldn't work, and that may be true; but that was not the argument being made at the time. Obama and others did not say in 2002 that George Bush can't be trusted with authority because he is a liar and his promises to not abuse that authority are meaningless. He and the left framed it as a debate between going to war or not going to war, rather than a debate about giving the authority to go to war or not. (There is a difference.) If they had made the argument that as much as we all may want to do something about Saddam we simply cannot trust Bush to be responsible with any power he is given, then the outcome might have been much different. Given Bush's popularity at the time no one wanted to do that. We couldn't have a debate about the wisdom of giving Bush authority because that would have turned into a debate about Bush's honesty and integrity, and no one was willing to take that on. Instead it became a debate about war or no war, in a sense giving Bush the ability to just ignore all the promises he made because all the noise from the left helped to create the percpetion that the war was a forgone conclusion. This may have been a good way to get votes if you were running from a very liberal district, but it did not have good consequences at all. Bush was able to pretend he had never made promises to not rush to war or to allow the inspectors time to do their jobs because that was the narrative created by the media and sold to the public. Furthermore, by denying that option 2 even existed the left was stuck with being labeled as in support of the first option of doing nothing, as being unwilling to use force or even the threat of force to protect ourselves. This is what allowed Bush and the Republicans to win in 2004 because they were able to convince people that even though they may not be perfect, that at least they could be trusted to do what was needed to protect America. They may go too far at times, but at least you didn't have to worry about them not going far enough. People did have that concern about Democrats. I think that was unfair and wrong, but in part it was a result of the unwillingness to attack Bush's honesty and integrity as oppossed to attacking the very of idea of using force or the threat of force. The argument that needed to be made was that as much as one could see the need for this authority and the utility it could serve, that we simply cannot trust George W Bush to use that authority responsibly. Claiming that we weren't against all wars, just this one, rung hollow because no viable alternative course of action was presented. We were right but we wound up on the losing side of the debate because we made the wrong argument.

I don't blame anyone for not going after Bush's honesty and integrity at that time, but nor do I blame those who supported the resolution in good faith hoping Bush would live up to his word. The villian in this is Bush and while everyone will say that now, the problem was no one would say it then for fear of the fallout; even those who oppossed the resolution.

Hillary will probably win, because like her husband, she's immune to shame. She refuses even to admit she was wrong to support the war, but no matter, straight-faced and self-righteous, she'll use this issue to attack Obama, whose initial opposition to the war is his only real substantive strength. Her argument amounts to "Obama has been just as cowardly as I have been."

All that said, it was a great political and moral failing for Obama to go soft on the war when he entered the Senate. I don't know about this, Ezra, that "there really wasn't much he could do to divert the course of the war as a lone Senator." He wasn't just a "lone Senator," he was a media sensation with one of the world's loudest megaphones who could have run an antiwar campaign that altered the terms of the debate. Instead, he chose to preach unity.

Neither of these two deserves to win.

I think the point is that Obama has been running as this strident, steadfast opponent of the Iraq war, and that doesn't really fit the facts. Hillary hasn't been a strident opponent of the war either, but I think she's just saying that there's very little daylight, if any, between her and Obama on Iraq.

Obama and his supporters seem to be vastly overestimating the importance of a single speech he gave. There are Obama fanatics around here who relentlessly refer to the speech - even cutting and pasting it in the comments! - as if it were the answer to all questions about Obama. But when I read that speech, what strikes me is how different the Obama of 2002 sounds from the Obama of 2008. Here's a relevant excerpt:

"I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors ... to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us ..."

Can you imagine the Obama of today speaking like this? Calling his opponents "dumb" and "hacks"? No, that wouldn't be "unifying."

So Clinton goes on MTP this morning and does two things:

Accuses the Obama camp of distorting her comments on Johnson/MLK

Repeats Bill Clinton's charge that, essentially, Obama has "flip-flopped" on the war in Iraq.

The first charge is getting a lot of attention. It's somewhat misleading -- her actual comment was that the response to her comments "clearly came from Senator Obama's campaign," when in fact the Obama campaign didn't say much about it until a lot of other prominent people had -- but not entirely false, in that the Obama campaign DID eventually inject itself into the to-do.

In any case, I find the implications of the second charge more significant. When Bill Clinton leveled it a couple of days ago, I assumed he was off the reservation. It's a distortion bordering on an outright lie -- there's no way anyone involved doesn't understand the context of Obama's 2004 remark -- and the kind of attack with which the candidates have all avoided associating themselves until today. This morning, Hillary decided to change her approach, to level a charge that she pretty much had to know was false but that she must have thought might stick.

Some will call it sleazy and others will call it hardball, but it certainly seems to change the tenor of the race. On one level it squares with her whole "readiness" argument, in that if Obama gets the nomination he'll have to deal with this sort of thing many times over from the Republicans, so he'd better be able to handle it. On another level, though, she seems to be living up to some of the worst (and largely untrue) stereotypes her detractors propogate: that she's a vicious politician who will do anthing to win.

Hi Ezra...refering again to your post on Andy Sullivan the other day...

There he goes again this morning, with a really nasty, stupid attack on Hillary's "tears" called Tears of a Martyr...

He can be right on some time, but his incredible bias agains Hillary shows in almost all of his posts on her or Bill.

Adam, Clinton knows it'll scare more white voters if they think Obama is the one calling her out on this. That's probably why she made the remarks in the first place. I can't help but think that was a stupid, short sighted, and desperate move.

It seems that some people wanted to simply do nothing about Saddam. Some wanted to be able to force him to let inspectors in so we could determine if he was a threat. Some wanted to fight a war against him no matter what.

Care to name any names here?

I don't blame anyone for not going after Bush's honesty and integrity at that time, but nor do I blame those who supported the resolution in good faith hoping Bush would live up to his word. The villian in this is Bush and while everyone will say that now, the problem was no one would say it then for fear of the fallout; even those who oppossed the resolution.

This is all true, but I would expect my president to be someone better than average. If a senator or congressmen wants to putter along with his career, following a "go along to get along" mindset, then that's great. If he or she wants to be my president, I'm going to expect something more out of him or her. So obviously Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are going to be held to a higher standard.

I wanted to do nothing about Saddam. There was really no reason to. He wasn't a threat. He wasn't engaged in any ongoing ethnic cleansing. He was just your average dictatorial scumbag and someday the Iraqi's would have gotten their shit together on their own accord. The best way to enable that was for us to have gotten the fuck out of their way and stopped dicking around in the middle east.

So obviously Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are going to be held to a higher standard.

And as for Obama?

He's not innocent in all of this. For the last three years, he's been in as much of a position to do something about Iraq as John Edwards or Hillary Clinton were.

Obama supporters make much of his rhetorical opposition to the AUMF. But the equivalent of the AUMF, the votes to continue funding the war, has come up repeatedly in the Senate since Obama was elected, and he's voted exactly the same way he's criticizing HRC & JE for voting initially.

There are no Iraq purists in this campaign. None of the candidates has been a consistent, full-throated opponent of the war. The notion that Obama has been an anti-war crusader for the last five years is indeed a fairy tale. He's just as compromised on this issue as the other two candidates are.

Excellent post, Ezra. You can line up Hillary and Barack, issue by issue, or maybe you care about experience vs change, or maybe you want uber-wonkage vs uplift.

Wherever you come out on the above, I cannot imagine how Hillary's war vote - and more importantly, her finessing of this issue - doesn't cut right to the core of her whole reason-for-being as a presidential candidate.

A vote for Hillary means you think either:

a) Iraq was actually a good idea, or

b) it's ok to totally fuck up a vote on the most important issue that could possibly face a president AND THEN STAND BY IT FOR 5 YEARS, or

c) you actually buy her finessing of her vote, which even in 2002, was transparent political hedging bullshit.

Your other choice is Barack, who said the following, when the political risk of saying what he said was at its maximum:

"I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Barack_Obama's_Iraq_Speech

The other issue is Hillary lying about her vote to her constituents. According to Sen. Clinton:

A) it was a vote for inspections
B) it was based on the best intelligence available

Both reasons are lies per Sen. Clinton's own words.

A) Sen. Clinton's says her vote against the Levin substitute gave too much authority to the UN. From the Levin amendment:

"(3) affirms that, under international law and the United Nations Charter, the United States has at all times the inherent right to use military force in self-defense."

So the only power it gave the UN was veto power over the doctrine of pre-emption, not self-defense. Also, how does HRC square her "vote for inspections" logic with this statement in her '02 Iraq floor speech: "Because bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely, and therefore, war less likely, and because a good faith effort by the United States, EVEN IF IT FAILS, will bring more allies and legitimacy to our cause..."

So "the cause" was going forward even if the efforts in the UN were to fail. Sen. Clinton knew the stakes.

B) She voted based on the best intelligence at the time. Here's Sen. Clinton speaking to constituents in March 2003: "I ended up voting for the resolution AFTER CAREFULLY REVIEWING THE INFORMATION AND INTELLIGENCE THAT I HAD AVAILABLE, talking with people whose opinions I trusted, trying to discount political or other factors that I didn't believe should be in any way a part of this decision."

Carefully?!? She didn't even read the Iraq NIE!!

Here's Obama in his statement responding to Clinton's MTP appearance today.

"I stood up against the war when she was voting for it, at a time when she didn’t read the intelligence reports or give diplomacy a chance."

Obama isn't stupid. He's just waiting for the chance to counterpunch on Clinton's record. That chance may be here.

Obama has the best "record" on the Iraq war in that he was against it. My problem with Obama is that in 2003 he was saying he would have voted against the $87 billion supplemental funding and all other funding because 'you need to stand up to Bush at sometime or you are going to keep getting rolled.'
Once he was in a position to actually vote no though he got rolled.

What I take from all of this is that it is much easier to make promises/criticisms when you are not a US Senator (Obama pre-2004 and Edwards post-2004) but Democratic Senators make very poor decisions.

Please don't make the mistake of accepting Clinton's framing at face value. As I just wrote on Ambinder's blog, I think there's something else going on here, and it's a bigger danger to Obama:
Clinton is trying, and partially succeeding, at defining his campaign, and him.

"...story of Sen. Obama's campaign, being premised on a speech he gave in 2002..."

"The story of his campaign is really the story of that speech and his opposition to Iraq."

Those assertions are not true. His campaign is about much more than that, as you have written about at length. But Obama and his strategists need to recognize this attack and rebut it forcefully, or it will seep in to the CW.

Also: the repeated use of the word "story," as if his campaign is really just a great yarn, a fiction. Or, if you will, a fairy tale.

Obama's speech isn't the "story" of his campaign, but plays a major role in it. The fact that his anti-war credentials aren't quite what they're cracked up to be should be pointed out, and it's not illegitimate for Hillary to do so.

i just came from the opening of an obama office in a very conservative area, and the room was filled to the rafters!
...not wealthy people by any means, and not even a preponderance of college students. but every kind of person, of every kind of age. and i would in no way characterize the large number of people as being upscale...or the meeting looking like a group of wealthy eco-tourists off to costa rico to trample the rain forests or off to sonoma for twenty year old bottles of wine.
hardly.
no-one saying unkind things...everyone excited to be there. not reminiscent of the headquarters filled to the brim with college students in the days of mccarthy and mcgovern. this was not like that at all.
there were latino community leaders and politicians speaking out that he is their best hope.
there were young families with babies on their laps, older people in wheelchairs, college students, many women, many men... everyone agreeing that obama represents the best spirit of what they see for their community and the world.
and this was a crowd of all kinds of regular people, mostly working people.
and i see that this is not even just about politics, this is a movement and a sea-change, of people wanting to find a way to come together and solve problems.
tired of the cruelty and machinations.
we all know the truth about the decisions in iraq. all of the spinnings in the world will not change that. it will only call into question the credibility of those staging assaults.
this is at its heart, a philosophical and transformative campaign.
as the ba'hai say, "it is time to see the world and solve our problems as leaves on the same tree, flowers in the same garden."
this is for so many of us, not a fairy tale...and it was a great mis-step for an ex-president to characterize it as such. that is an insult to the intensity and commitment of those that are dedicating themselves to the campaign of barack obama. these attacks will inspire even harder work.
those kinds of words so totally show how out of touch clinton is with what is at the heart of the people building the obama campaign.
even without attaching to outcome, there is something really wonderful happening.
this campaign honestly is not about sound-bytes, or staged attacks, or misleading cruelties spun out of control.
it is about much more.
and it is something that everyone in that room felt.
obama represents this. he has become for many people, the face upon which these hopes and absolute desire for change have been cast
people see him as a person of character. someone who truly makes the effort to stay above the fray.someone who can take us to a higher place, rather than a lower place.
experience means nothing without wisdom and a heart to temper judgement.
and all of the people that were in that room today, were there for that reason.
that was what i saw, heard and felt today.

Along is so right. She has injected the word "story" so many times and it absolutely resonates with "fairy tale." I found the most interesting element of this post to be the first one: "just got an email...." Kudos for not going along with the Clinton line. Have your taxes in order. Have you gotten similar promptings from the Obama campaign? My bet is that they are less hectoring of the press.

i disagree that the clintons will be able to keep on mischaractering and slandering barack obama.
this is not a campaign, it is a movement.
the support for obama feels like it is a mile wide and a mile deep.
it is about much more than politics. i think it is a paradigm shift.
i dont think it is because obama is iconic, it is because people feel their voice will be heard again after so long, and that it will not be the politics of destruction and narcissism, but of hopefulness and humility.
one candle can light up a whole lot of darkness.
and obama's campaign is creating a whole lot of light!!

I think this is a very good point, and it's one that's been really overlooked.

In 2002, Barack Obama was an up-and-comer with a lot of potential, but with very few people who had hitched their wagons to him.

In 2002, Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was an extremely powerful establishment figure. She was someone who everyone expected to run for President--as the frontrunner. A lot of people had already hitched their wagons to her success.

In addition, to the Villagers in the media she was an establishment figure who, conservative caricatures aside, they saw as a moderate-liberal.

As a result, her position on the war had immense political impact. Whatever position she took on this issue would force other politicians nationwide of less standing who were part of the Clinton coterie to either support her position, or to have a significant and dangerous public break with her that would not be forgotten when it was time to divide the spoils of her future successes. It would also for the villagers define the "moderate left" position in the debate.

If she had done in 2002 what Barack Obama & Al Gore did--stood up and publicly said why invading Iraq was a bad idea--then it's arguable we would not have ended up in Iraq. If she'd pointed out the danger of taking our eye off of Osama bin Laden, then it's far more likely we would not have done it. Because she had, even absent the Presidency, incredible institutional power among the Villagers and in the Democratic Party.

This is why it's unfair to compare Obama & Edwards' positions to hers. They've never had anything like the raw political power she currently has, and has had for the past 8 years as the heir apparent to Bill Clinton.

Unlike Obama and Edwards, who have generated their own bully pulpit, she inherited one ready-made. And it is absolutely fair to say "well, as one of the nation's most powerful Democrats in 2002-2006, what did you do on the most important issue of the day?"

This entire argument is an insult to the intelligence of journalists and the American people. It's ridiculous to pretend that because Clinton, Obama, and Edwards didn't vote to de-fund the war--a position universally perceived as radical, and which would unquestionably lead to a massive constitutional and potentially violent domestic crisis--that the three have had the same political impact on whether we move out of Iraq or we dig ourselves in deeper.

Hillary Clinton has, from 2002 until Iowa, had a much more powerful bully pulpit than Barack Obama has had, and it's totally fair to look at what kind of impact their voices have had on the larger political debate over Iraq.

Barack Obama's critique of Iraq has been more on point than Clinton's. While she has been arguing that we're safer now than we were in 2000, he's pointing out that because of Iraq, we're in greater danger from Al Quaeda and bin Laden. She has been reinforcing Republican talking points, and he's been aggressively challenging them with a different view of foreign policy. One that says "yeah, we sit down with Iran & we don't let anyone stand in our way when it comes to bin Laden."

Since Iowa, Barack Obama has increased his public profile to the point where it's only slightly less powerful than Hillary Clinton's. But just because that's true today doesn't mean it's been true since 2002. The Clintons want to obfuscate that. They want to claim Hillary Clinton has "experience" without being held accountable for how she used the actual power she--and she alone--held from 2002-2006.

They also want to pretend that she and Obama were saying the same thing in 2002 and are saying the same thing now. They weren't, and they aren't.

Thank you for pointing this out--that Hillary Clinton, alone among those running, had significant political power from 2002-2006, and it's very important to examine how she used her power to get results before we agree to give her any more power.

"But the equivalent of the AUMF, the votes to continue funding the war, has come up repeatedly in the Senate since Obama was elected, and he's voted exactly the same way he's criticizing HRC & JE for voting initially."

Explain, exactly, how voting to start a war is the same as voting to continue funding a war you don't agree with. Because I think one might actually prevent the war, and the other clearly won't.

I just don't see your logic, and I'm forced to presume that you and every other anti-Obama person on the web is completely full of shit.

david mizner: "All that said, it was a great political and moral failing for Obama to go soft on the war when he entered the Senate."

Obama thought the war was a bad idea in the first place, but that once we were there we had an obligation to try to make things work out as best we could. This is why he said in 2004 that there wasn't that much difference between his position and the administration's position: because they both wanted the same thing, a stable Iraq. And that's why he voted against timelines for withdrawal and voted for funding in his first years in the Senate. I fully agree with every part of this reasoning and it described my own position at the time. Now you might not agree with it--but there's nothing inconsistent about the position. Obama always opposed the war, and for that matter always opposed the Bush Admistration's conduct of the war, but he didn't think we should legislate timetables for withdrawal until it became clear that Iraq was truly unsalvegable.

Clinton is shamlessly stealing from the Rove playbook: attacking Obama's strength even though it happens to be her own weakness. Unfortunately, judging by some of the comments on this thread, it appears to be working. She is not an uneffective politician.

Jason C: "Hillary hasn't been a strident opponent of the war either, but I think she's just saying that there's very little daylight, if any, between her and Obama on Iraq."

Now, yes, and thankfully so. The real difference has always been a) that Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq and she did not and b) Obama was opposed to the AUMF and called it a blank check while she voted for it. What does that mean? First, Clinton is just a geniunely more hawkish person than Obama and also has poorer judgement. Second, she geniunely thinks her AUMF vote was not a mistake because the President deserves to have that discertionary authority. Those differences are highly revealing.

I think we all are disappointed in the performance of the Senate and the House...I look to both Obama and Hillary as being a large part of the problem.

Obama & Hillary Supporters arguing over who shares greater blame... and yet they share the exact same votes since Obama's arrived...seems like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. What difference does Obama's claim to purity make when he fail to act when he could?

Jacqueline,

The Republicans I know are healthcare shills for Pharma and Insurance, both are pleased with the prospect of either Hillary or Obama...they see it as bonus that both want to keep the war going. Corrupt Republicans have already averted disaster by getting Democrats to chose between the two most rightwing candidates.

The voters in the Democratic party have been had, they voting for the two most right wing of the Dems

I would say I am only rephrasing:

"You could continue and mention that since his being elected they have exactly the same exact Iraq votes. Trying to make policy distinctions between the 2 is futile for both sides". - Posted by: Jen | January 13, 2008 2:03 PM

The underlying truth of this post—despite what the author had intended—is that Obama is just as untrustworthy as Clinton. Obama gives wonderful speeches, but when actually given the opportunity, he does nothing. A true agent of “change” (can someone please describe in detail what “change” means this year) would stand for what is right, and fight to the end to see their side through. Why didn’t Obama lead a filibuster to stop the funding? If he was worried about negative spin, he could have won that battle. The people are no longer (and were no longer earlier last year) buying the idea that cutting the funding would endanger the troops. Besides the Republicans did it Clinton and they are still perceived as strong. In the end, Obama was campaigning for President the day he was elected to the Senate (and in my opinion qualifies him as just as politically motivated and power hungry as Hillary Clinton). The difference between H. Clinton and Obama is that at least Clinton will try to do something, whereas Obama will have no clue. Ultimately I don’t understand why the Obama supporters and his constituents aren’t demanding that he start acting like a Senator and start introducing legislation to fix our problems rather than just giving speeches.

P.s. I truly believe that if Obama was in the Senate in 2002, he would have voted for Iraq. It would have been the politically safe thing to do, and he does what is politically safe—look at his voting record and when he votes, on important votes he can be counted on to see which way the wind is blowing before voting or not.

"P.s. I truly believe that if Obama was in the Senate in 2002, he would have voted for Iraq."

In other words, you're talking straight out of your ass.

For further proof that Obama is nothing more than hot air that blows where ever there is opportuninty, I'll cite an example. A few months back, he held an event that headlined an ex-gay gospel singer. Rather than remove him from the event as the gay community insisted, he kept him on. The best part of this is that a few months before even this, during the Logo forum Obama cited his talks to Southern churches on gay rights as his record on gay rights. The funny thing is that this is the group he was targeting for support with the ex-gay gospel singer. So I ask, does he care about gays if one month he says he'll work for gay rights, and then the next he allows an ex-gay to campaign for him? Tying this to Iraq is very simple: he spoke against the war before being elected, then once elected hasn't done anything to end the war. Before anyone tells me that he is not in a position to do much, I insist you look at Chris Dodd and his one man effort to stop the passage of the new FISA bill. What makes you think Obama will live up to his campaign promises? He hasn't as Senator (speaking of that, when has he worked as a Senator and not as a Presidential candidate).

If you want change, vote for Kucinich. He talks the talk and walks the walk. He may be odd, but at least he stands for something. I don't know where Obama stands, he lied to me once (as a memeber of the gay community) so why should I believe him any more?

I wish Obama had spoken out against the war more since he entered the Senate, but if you want proof that they would probably govern differently, look at their foreign policy advisers and supporters. Clinton has Iraq War hawks like Albright (who supported whole-heartedly the Iraq Liberation Act to fund Chalabi in his attempts to unseat Saddam under Clinton) and Richard Holbrooke. Meanwhile, Obama has Iraq War opponents like Samantha Power and Brzenski (sp?).

Also, for what it's worth, Krauthammer has been going ballistic lately trying to convince independents and Republicans that Obama is an ultra-liberal, hyper-partisan Democrat.

"if you want change, vote for kucinich"

i think people appreciated dennis kucinich very much, and might also have been influenced by his urging of supporters to give their support to obama.
why do you think kucinich did that. last time, didnt he suggest that his supporters endorse edwards?

"just like me".

If only Senator Clinton, in her more open, feeling way now, had added those three words, then there would have been nothing misleading at all.

"And when he became a senator, he didn't go to the floor of the Senate to condemn the war in Iraq for 18 months", just like me". He didn't introduce legislation against the war in Iraq", just like me". He voted against timelines and deadlines". just like me.

She is accusing Obama of having her position on Iraq, and that this means he is not fit to be President.

jacqueline,

To answer:

"...kucinich...urging supporters to give...support to obama....why do you think kucinich did that. last time, didn't he suggest that his supporters endorse edwards?"

I think you need to either aliens or X-files to fill the chasm left by the discontinuity of logic.

"even without attaching to outcome, there is something really wonderful happening.
this campaign honestly is not about sound-bytes, or staged attacks, or misleading cruelties spun out of control.
it is about much more."

Thank you jacqueline for the eloquent words. Glad to see that the spirit is alive and well.

Fired up!

I don't think many disagree that Obama is the better candidate on the Iraq War. People not invested in the Clinton campaign are just pointing out that he has come up short in the Senate and they are disappointed.

brewmn - Does an alarm go off and your computer flash when someone leaves a comment about Obama vis a vis Iraq?

Korha hit the key comment here, and it bears repeating:
Obama thought the war was a bad idea in the first place, but that once we were there we had an obligation to try to make things work out as best we could. This is why he said in 2004 that there wasn't that much difference between his position and the administration's position: because they both wanted the same thing, a stable Iraq. And that's why he voted against timelines for withdrawal and voted for funding in his first years in the Senate. I fully agree with every part of this reasoning and it described my own position at the time. Now you might not agree with it--but there's nothing inconsistent about the position. Obama always opposed the war, and for that matter always opposed the Bush Admistration's conduct of the war, but he didn't think we should legislate timetables for withdrawal until it became clear that Iraq was truly unsalvegable.

To me it's galling that people even try to create equivalence between this and the vote on the AUMF. I will never forget the day of the AUMF vote. It was a singular event in my political life. It was just inconceivable to me that Democrats could vote for it when it was so obvious that the Bush administration was trumping up the case against Iraq and inventing links to Al Qaeda where there were none, and that they clearly had no intention whatsoever to go with good faith to the UN before going to war. I've never felt more betrayed than when a couple dozen Democratic senators decided that it was in their best political interest to play along with the AUMF. It was unforgivable.

The funding votes, by contrast, are annoying, but predictable. We did break, and now we've bought it. And nobody knows what the hell to do with it. I don't like staying there, but I won't pretend that everything will get better if we leave. The time to oppose this thing was before it started. Now we're screwed regardless of what we do.

To say that Clinton and Obama have similar records on Iraq since 2005 means nothing to me. The only part of their Iraq records that means anything is where they stood in October, 2002. Barack got it right. Hillary sold us down the river. End of story.

Hillary Clinton - talks blue, shits red.

OK. Hillary is an easy target. With Matthews and Sully demonstrating time and again their visceral hatred for her I don't much bother with those two ***holes anymore.

But Obama has to answer for his stint in the Senate. No amount of wiggling can get away from the fact that he did not take a principled stand on his opposition to the War while in the Senate. He glossed over his votes. Now you want to give him a pass. OK. But don't expect me to inflate his opposition to the Iraq War, just as I am not going to over inflate Clinton's experience.

It seems that all too often the arguments go this way: I support X and oppose Y. So I will make the case accordingly.

"Does an alarm go off and your computer flash when someone leaves a comment about Obama vis a vis Iraq?"

I'm just very aware that assholes like you want to lie throught their teeth to muddy up the facts. And the facts are that, when it mattered, Obama opposed this war and Clinton abetted it.

If you don't want me responding to the constant lying from the Clinton camp and their supporters, the solution is simple: stop lying.

People who think there's some vast moral gulf between voting for the AUMF and voting to continue funding the war that the AUMF made possible cannot really consider themselves anti-war.

Whether or not we should have invaded Iraq is now a moot point, in some ways. The question is what we are going to do from here on out.

Every time Obama votes to continue funding the war, he's making the decision to wage war all over again. If you think that the initial invasion was wrong, but that now we need to stay there, fine -- but that's not an anti-war position.

Just because Obama jumped on the war bandwagon late doesn't mean he's not on it.

At this point, you either stand with Obama or you back a clear diziecrat candidate who has engaged in a racist campaign strategy of making provocative racial statements and then screaming 'race card!!!' whenever someone points out what they are doing. All to scare white liberals away from Obama.

One or two statements is a coincidence. 10 in 2 weeks is a pattern. I don't know, maybe you all don't care if Hillary engages in racist attacks if it means she'll win the nomination. God knows I've seen plenty of people engage in all manner of mental gymnastics to make voting for her ok, but this is too far.

This is NOT theoretical war:

IT MATTERS NOW.

You say Obama's supporting the war NOW is politically acceptable:

"funding votes...are annoying" - Obama supporter [see above]

Since Obama joined the senate his votes have been identical to Clinton's.

You say, Obama knows the war is wrong and that makes him better than her.

I say, supporting a war you know is wrong for political reasons is far worse than not knowing this war was wrong in the first place.

From what Obama'a supporters are saying, Hillary's sin is one of omission, Obama's sin, with full foreknowledge is a sin of commission. If what Obama's supporters say above is true, then Obama sins are far greater than hers.

Frankly, given their craven support of this illegal war, their unwillingness to consider impeachment, their dismissal of civil rights under the constitution...all of which are failures to uphold the oath which specifies defending the constitution...neither Senator should even be considered for the office of the presidency...period. The fact that Democrats are groveling in the mud to support the two most unfit candidates should be a clear indication that the current corruption cycle is near it's end.

I will predict this:

All those who rabidity support Hillary or Obama now, will be embarrassed [if they're honest enough to admit it] in four years time.

"Every time Obama votes to continue funding the war, he's making the decision to wage war all over again."

Are you really stupid enough to believe what you just wrote?

Jason C: "Every time Obama votes to continue funding the war, he's making the decision to wage war all over again. If you think that the initial invasion was wrong, but that now we need to stay there, fine -- but that's not an anti-war position."

Yes, obviously it's not anti-war in the sense that we're not actually ending the war. But the point here is that Clinton is trying to manufacture a nonexistent contradiction between Obama's opposition to the war before it began and his belief that once we were there we had an obligation to try to make things work out. And Obama has been perfectly honest and open about, he's not trying to hide it anything like that. Why should he? It's a perfectly reasonable position. If some guy started a fire in my friend's house and I went inside to try to put it out, that doesn't mean I didn't always oppose the starting of the fire. And once I realize the fire is going to burn up the house no matter what, then I'm going to get out of the house to save my own ass. Hillary Clinton in this little analogy is the person who enabled the starting of the fire in the first place.

S Brennan: "All those who rabidity support Hillary or Obama now, will be embarrassed [if they're honest enough to admit it] in four years time."

Yeah, if they had the same political positions you do. Guess what? Most of us don't. Don't delude yourself.

brewmn - You are a complete fraud. For weeks you have been all over the blogs highlighting your and Obama's anti-war cred. When confronted with Obama's inaction in the Senate you imply being against the war or taking actions now don't matter. I hope you are getting paid.

paging:

Your girl voted to start the war. Obama opposed the war when it mattered. Those are the facts.

If I supported Hillary, I would be having problems with those facts too.

Let me set you straight my girl is your mother not Hillary.

Obama was against the war when it didn't matter since he had no power. Once he was in a position to do something about the war he lost his nerve. You must love how he caved on the 2007 funding bill while adopting the Republican talking point of 'not wanting to play chicken with the troops.' Maybe if he wins, he can push his withdrawal date forward another year - first it was 2007 then 2008 and now it is 2009. What a hero.

You attempt to insult my mother on a blog? What a fucking pussy.