Matthew Yglesias (January 28, 2007)

Given that over-zealous hawkishness was a primary reason that the US is in the current mess, I'm really not impressed by Hillary Clinton's lingering determination to be seen as "tough", which manifests itself in excessive support for the seriously flawed policies of the Bush administration. Given that the Bush foreign policy is based largely on an incoherent world-view, I'm troubled by any candidate who gives that incoherent world-view any respect. And Senator Clinton has given it more than a little respect.

"Me too" toughness is not going to work for Democrats, and it's certainly not going to work for her.

Posted by RickD | January 28, 2007 1:19 PM

Well, I have a problem with the inital vote for the war (Clinton, Edwards, and Kerry all). These people were _suckered_ bigtime (and by Bigtime) when it was clear to me and to many, many other lonely voices exactly what the situation was and how it was going to go down. Being a sucker for the Radical Right, and particularly being a sucker for the Radical Right as a result of a failed triangulation, is not a good reference for being a true Democratic President.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | January 28, 2007 1:27 PM

A reflexive desire to appear tough was, pretty clearly, a major factor in the mistakes of the past . . . I'd like to see a president who's over that.

Well, HRC has the gender thing to deal with, and it's pretty much a given that the first woman president is going to have to go way overboard on the hawkishness to reassure people that she's got what it takes... it's stupid, but in an increasingly militaristic society, it's to be expected (see Glenn Greenwald's piece on the whole 'Commander-in-Chief' mythos). It's one reason that I, even as a lifelong feminist, do not want her or any woman (any woman who could actually win, anyway) in the White House just yet, until things simmer down in the ME and we've regained our collective sanity somewhat-- it's just too easy for the crowd-pleasing posturing to get out of hand right now.

Posted by latts | January 28, 2007 1:28 PM

"I don't take it as a good sign that she seems determined to position herself as the "most hawkish" of the major contenders in the race."

I do.

If HRC doesn't position herself with a reasonably hawkish persona, she's dead meat in any general election.

I hope our party is smart enough to not nominate her, but if we do, I'd prefer she win.

Nominating weak candidates has a whole constellation of adverse effects.

Posted by Petey | January 28, 2007 1:38 PM

Wow.

I am generally impressed by the thoughtfulness of your commentary on Iraq and related subjects, but this post is just absurd.

The real question is that Sen. Clinton's vote on Iraq directly led to the death, injury and displacement of well over a million people. Is dwelling on that point as "backward looking"? Perhaps, but I generally think that looking at someone's past record is a good way of predicting their future performance. Should a failure of that magnitude be rewarded with a position of greater responsibility?

I don't think that her problem is that she is a "flip flopper". Rather she made a mistake, but can't take responsibility for it. She can admit that the Iraq war vote was wrong, and she says that if she had known what she knows now she wouldn't have voted for it. That isn't taking responsibility. Some people did know better, why didn't she?

She says that she didn't view her vote as supporting a pre-emptive war. Was she paying attention to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that she voted for? If she didn't want the president to have a blank check, she shouldn't have signed one.

Was she paying attention to what the President was saying? I seem to recall preemption being the main point of the Iraqi invasion.

Suggesting that Sen Clinton's vote for the war should be an issue isn't accusing her of "flip flopping". It is holding her accountable for her failures. She is compounding her bad decision by an abject inability to assume responsibility for it, or to show that she's learned anything.

Are you seriously saying that it shouldn't be an issue?

Posted by justaguy | January 28, 2007 1:52 PM

OK, after I vented my anger in that comment, i reread your post and think I probably misinterpreted it. I'm going to go drink my second cup of coffee for the day and read it again....

Posted by justaguy | January 28, 2007 1:54 PM

I don't think that her problem is that she is a "flip flopper". Rather she made a mistake, but can't take responsibility for it. She can admit that the Iraq war vote was wrong, and she says that if she had known what she knows now she wouldn't have voted for it. That isn't taking responsibility. Some people did know better, why didn't she?

justaguy, HRC said that she "takes responsibility." Why can't you just accept that at face value?

Posted by Clark | January 28, 2007 1:55 PM

To be fair to Hillary though before the Senate vote she gave a speech in which she said she did not support the doctrine of preemptive war and that she expected Bush to use the authority to go to war as a last resort after all other options had failed. At the time Bush was saying he did not want to go to war but that he needed the congressional vote to pressure Saddam to let the inspectors in. He clearly lied.

Posted by DonB | January 28, 2007 1:56 PM

Do you really believe that, Don?

Because I'm not a congressman and I knew Bush was going to invade Iraq way, way, before the AUMF vote. I think everyone else in the country pretty much understood what signing onto that thing meant.

Posted by Ed Marshall | January 28, 2007 2:03 PM

One of the problems with the whole discussion about the congressional vote is that people seem to have no memory of the context.

Bush was going around the country saying he was praying to Jesus that war would be unnecessary. If only that evil man Saddam would let the inspectors do their job, find and destroy the WMDs we wouldn't have to go to war. He portrayed himself as reluctant to go to war but if Saddam did not destroy his WMD's he would have no choice but to go to war to protect America. He said he needed the congressional authorization so Saddam would know we meant business. He said congressional authorization would pressure Saddam into cooperating and war would become unnecessary.

It was in this context that a lot of people went along with it, including Matt Yglesias.

Even Wesley Clark who was opposed to the war later said that he would have voted in favor of the congressional authoritzation as a way to put the squeeze on Saddam, as a bargaining chip with Saddam.

Bush clearly lied.

Unfortunately today, 4 years later people look at it as if it was a black and white issue. For the war or against it? It was never presented to the country or the congress that way.

Posted by DonB | January 28, 2007 2:03 PM

"At the time Bush was saying he did not want to go to war but that he needed the congressional vote to pressure Saddam to let the inspectors in. He clearly lied."

Yup. I've always thought that there was a pretty convincing case that in the absence of a lying executive, voting yes was the correct vote.

In part for that reason, I loved that Edwards' rationale for disavowing his vote was that he was mistaken in trusting Bush.

Posted by Petey | January 28, 2007 2:04 PM

"At the time Bush was saying he did not want to go to war but that he needed the congressional vote to pressure Saddam to let the inspectors in. He clearly lied."

Who actually believed him? Thinking the Iraq war would be successful while voting for the resolution is an error in judgment. Thinking that the Iraq war would not occur while voting for the resolution is utter obliviousness. It may be important to have a candidate that can attack the Iraq war with clean hands. As I recall, we ran into problems with that in 2004.

Posted by Shochu John | January 28, 2007 2:17 PM

> ustaguy, HRC said that she "takes
> responsibility." Why can't you just accept
> that at face value?

Because "I take responsibility for" is just a way of triangulating past "I was suckered. I was wrong".

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | January 28, 2007 2:21 PM

While I have no plans to vote for Hillary, and while the Iraqi War Resolution did in fact give a blank check to Bush, if you didn't know the back history and just went with the paper you would see that the Resolution worked.

On the surface it authorized the President to use military force if Saddam refused to disarm and prove that by admitting Inspectors. Against all expectations Saddam blinked, admitted UN Inspectors and didn't put serious roadblocks in their way.

The moral calculus changed the day UN Inspectors hit the ground. However supine the Congress was initially, however foolish they were to entrust Bush with the ultimate "Decider" role, they voted to force Inspectors in or else. And Inspectors went in. The decision to pull the Inspectors out was totally and openly one by Bush, and one that he in fact bragged about at the time.

"The decision to go to war has not been made." "I am the decider."

I am not going to give a free pass to those who voted to authorize this war, but in point of fact that vote allowed us to disprove the widespread belief that Iraq had WMD. If Inspectors had not been admitted (most people's expectation) and/or even a rudimentary arsenal of WMD been discovered after invasion (pretty much a universal expectation) then there would be some moral opacity around all this, the defence "who knew?" would have some force.

But as it is and given that Inspectors were on the ground the moral clarity is crystilline. This is Bush's War. He demanded that we acknowledge that the decision was his and his alone. Just as he is this week with surge.

Hey Georgie Boy you got it. You wanted 100% of the historical credit, too bad it all ended up on the opposite side of the ledger.

(For the record going from being for the war to opposing it is not 'flip-flopping. It is more like 'coming to Jesus'.)

Posted by Bruce Webb | January 28, 2007 2:22 PM

Deja vu trivia from the ancient past:

Mitt's dad George was a Republican Presidential contender in 1968, but he turned against the Vietnam war after having supported it. At one point he said that he had been "brainwashed" by military spokesmen during a visit to Vietnam. Altogether, his "flipflopping" destroyed his chances, and the word "brainwashing" was taken to mean that a.) he was anti-military and b.) he was confessing to weak-mindedness.

Even more trivial: Hugh Romney was Ken Kesey's friend Wavy Gravy.

Posted by John Emerson | January 28, 2007 2:26 PM

DonB:

Yes, the Bush Administration lied, but Congress and Clinton failed at their job of oversight. If Hillary Clinton and her staffers had done their homework and read the actual National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and not the cherrypicked whitepaper, they would not have authorized the use of force on the basis that the case was misrepresented. The CIA presented dissenting reports to Congress. The information was available, but it was NEGLECTED.

Posted by ponte | January 28, 2007 2:29 PM

To me, it's less important what the candidates said in 2003 about Iraq than what they say, or don't say, about Iran now. Who isn't on board for our next excellent adventure?

Posted by Dick Durata | January 28, 2007 2:36 PM

As far as trusting Bush when he said that he would only invade as a matter of last resort goes - the AUMF gave him a blank check to invade as he saw fit. Would it have been impossible to make the invasion conditional on any number of things that would have insured that it would, indeed, have been a last resort?

"justaguy, HRC said that she "takes responsibility." Why can't you just accept that at face value? "

What does HRC mean by saying "I take responsibility for my vote". Is she saying that it was a mistake, and I own up to my mistake? She clearly is not saying that - she is saing that "we" didn't know that it was a bad idea but if "we" did it wouldn't have been brought up for a vote. She is talking about it in a passive voice that doesn't actually admit to making any mistakes. Some people did know that it was a bad idea. A lot, actually - why didn't she?

An admission of responsibility would, in my view, have to actually be phrased in the active voice - "My vote for the Iraq war was wrong because I x" You take responsibility for things that you did, not things that happened to you.

Posted by justaguy | January 28, 2007 2:36 PM

Petey wrote, "I loved that Edwards' rationale for disavowing his vote was that he was mistaken in trusting Bush."

Again, it's not the job of Congress to trust the president. Like many other high profile Democrats, Edwards simply failed at his job of oversight. His failure is less heinous than the Bush Administration's but it is still a failure.

Posted by ponte | January 28, 2007 2:39 PM

"If Hillary Clinton and her staffers had done their homework and read the actual National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and not the cherrypicked whitepaper, they would not have authorized the use of force on the basis that the case was misrepresented."

You mean the actual Oct '02 NIE that begins:

We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.

"The CIA presented dissenting reports to Congress."

While State had dissents about the nuclear area, pretty much no one in the government was dissenting on the chemical and biological areas.

Posted by Petey | January 28, 2007 2:45 PM

"Again, it's not the job of Congress to trust the president. Like many other high profile Democrats, Edwards simply failed at his job of oversight. His failure is less heinous than the Bush Administration's but it is still a failure."

Seriously. Chuck Schumer was on Meet the Nation and he said that his mistake was giving the President the benifit of the doubt, and that he will no longer do that. I'm really glad that killing several hundred thousand people could be a learning experience for him.

Why were the war powers split between the Legislative and Executive branches in the constitution? Presumably so that the President couldn't bring us into war by executive fiat. That doesn't really work if Congress views their role as rubber stamping his decisions.

Posted by justaguy | January 28, 2007 2:46 PM

"His failure is less heinous than the Bush Administration's but it is still a failure."

Which, of course, is why he says that his vote was a mistake...

Posted by Petey | January 28, 2007 2:47 PM

Dick Durata wrote: "To me, it's less important what the candidates said in 2003 about Iraq than what they say, or don't say, about Iran now. Who isn't on board for our next excellent adventure?"

You can bet that there's a strong correspondence between the two.

Posted by ponte | January 28, 2007 2:49 PM

Petey,

"in the absence of a lying executive, voting yes was the correct vote."

Unfortunately it is very difficult for politicians to make that argument.

I remember Wesley Clark making that argument when he ran for president. He said that if he had been in Congress he would have voted yes for the resolution so that the president could use the vote as a bargaining chip with the UN and Saddam and he could bargain from a position of strength and that would make the war unnecessary. He said he wanted to strenghten the president's hand negotiating. Which is how it was framed when Bush was asking for the authorization.

Clark also said he opposed the war. Of course the press immediately started chanting FLIP FLOP, FLIP FLOP, FLIP FLOP...........How can he be for the resolution but against the war?

It is really difficult to have a rational argument with people about these things because the MSM reduces everything to the most simplistic, juvenile debate. Clark was portrayed as a wishy washy flip flopper.

Posted by DonB | January 28, 2007 2:51 PM

Well, HRC has the gender thing to deal with, and it's pretty much a given that the first woman president is going to have to go way overboard on the hawkishness to reassure people that she's got what it takes

I think this is wrong. Women in general don't need to sack up to prove themselves to the voters. We have, far and away, the strongest military in the world. We're in the midst of a war that shows that overvaluing that strength as a foreign policy tool is harmful to the US. I suspect this is less of an issue than people think. It's not like every woman the voters know is meek and mild, and unwilling to do damage to someone else. It's not like we require military service as a requirement to taken seriously as "strong" on military issues.

I think the problem is that HRC's referents are DLC, the DLC's referents are ex-Dixiecrat, and the the Dixiecrats have/had a romantic fantasy that mixes honor (whatever that means), the military, and a martial outlook in some confounding mess about what it means to be a leader (and therefore, it is assumed, a man). If you're the sort of person who thinks that Marshall Whitman is a sane, normal person of the sort whose vote you need to win, you're going to feel you need to do whatever you can to show that you're willing to go to war in the face of any provocation whatsoever, and however minor. That's going to be true whether you're a man or woman. The trick is to realize that those are not your voters.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 28, 2007 2:52 PM

If Hillary Clinton and her staffers had done their homework and read the actual National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and not the cherrypicked whitepaper, they would not have authorized the use of force on the basis that the case was misrepresented.

I guess I'm cynical and/or shrill, but I just don't buy that Clinton or most other lawmakers actually judged the resolution on the merits; they understood the arguments against it perfectly well. The calculus was not necessarily whether the intelligence was good, but whether it was good enough to be convincing and whether the Bushies could pull the whole thing off well enough to look like conquering heroes... IOW, the question was whether voting against it would end up making them look weak in the long run. My guess is that most figured it would be a pretty painless (for the US) event and that supporting it would put them on the side of a 'victory' that made Americans feel better after 9/11. Maybe they figured that the administration would make sure that something was found to justify the whole thing after the fact, which would bring additional assistance in for reconstruction. Maybe they assumed that occupation plans would be adequate. But either way, I don't think they were as completely suckered as they're now pretending they were; it's more that they didn't think the administration was so arrogant & clueless that they wouldn't at least provide some sort of acceptable PR cover.

Posted by latts | January 28, 2007 2:59 PM

Petey wrote: "While State had dissents about the nuclear area, pretty much no one in the government was dissenting on the chemical and biological areas."

That is both wrong and misguided. Wrong, because there was plenty of disagreement about the bioweapons trailers and unmanned aerial vehicles. Misguided, because only a nuclear threat would warrant strong preemptive military action.

"But all this aside, you evade DonB's point, which was that the WH was both publicly and privately presenting the vote to Senators as being about getting the inspectors back in country to find out for sure."

Then you would think that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards would have made a much bigger deal about the complaints of Hans Blix against the Bush Administration.

Posted by ponte | January 28, 2007 3:00 PM

"Unfortunately it is very difficult for politicians to make that argument."

No doubt.

"It is really difficult to have a rational argument with people about these things because the MSM reduces everything to the most simplistic, juvenile debate."

It's not just the mainstream media at fault. If you read Dem blogs, you'll conclude that someone like Tom Daschle was "pro-war" because he voted for the IWR, despite the fact that Daschle blasted the war in March 2003 on the eve of the troops actually going in - something that played no small part in Daschle's '04 Senate loss.

At the end of the day, it is in the interests of none of the various partisan factions to achieve clarity on the issues around the IWR vote, so clarity never happens.

Posted by Petey | January 28, 2007 3:02 PM

While State had dissents about the nuclear area, pretty much no one in the government was dissenting on the chemical and biological areas."

This always gets lost somehow because of the use of the term "WMD," but we have more or less no reason to worry about chem and bio weapons as methods to attack us here. The WP did a brief story about this prior to the war in which it surveyed some set of expert opinion. It wasn't, of course, featured prominently, but it was pretty convincing. I had thought that everyone understood this now.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 28, 2007 3:06 PM

"the DLC's referents are ex-Dixiecrat"

That's certainly an unusual reading of history, SCMT...

Posted by Petey | January 28, 2007 3:06 PM

latts, I agree with you. It is especially telling that many Democrats and Republicans complain of Bush's "botched" execution of the war. In saner times, the controversy would not be over the Bush Administration's incompetence but their conspiracy to commit an unprovoked war of aggression.

Posted by ponte | January 28, 2007 3:07 PM

That's going to be true whether you're a man or woman. The trick is to realize that those are not your voters.

Well, it's going to be true if you're a Democrat, anyway, but we're the party that is feminized even by our own side (i.e., Lakoff's 'nurturing parent' model), so I think the DLC is just responding [excessively] to the liberals-are-weak slur. I disagree, but I also think that a Dem woman candidate who had a history of being against the most recent war would have about as much credibility as Dennis Kucinich (who I basically like) and his 'Department of Peace' proposal. Women just face a more obvious obstacle when it comes to militarism, but it's there for all liberals.

We can disagree, of course, but I don't think it's an accident conventional wisdom has always held that the first woman or minority POTUS would be conservative, because conservatism itself inoculates them somewhat against the stereotypes.

Posted by latts | January 28, 2007 3:07 PM

Gene McCarthy had a great line about pere Romney's "I was brainwashed" statement-

"A light rinse would have been sufficient."

Posted by Trevor | January 28, 2007 3:08 PM

"Chuck Schumer was on Meet the Nation and he said that his mistake was giving the President the benifit of the doubt, and that he will no longer do that."

Schumer is right.

My God, in 2002 they were still digging up bodies from Ground Zero. How can a senator representing the state of NY ignore evidence that says Saddam is shopping around for uranium to build a nuclear bomb. And the president is going around the country saying I have no desire to go to war, I just want the congressional authorization to disarm Saddam, to tell him that we mean business. We now know that this was a lie. Bush already had war plans on his desk.

I also disagree with Matt about this war being unwinnable from the beginning. I think it was winnable, provided we did everything right. There was no room for error. Under another president something good might have come out of this.

Scenario; we take our time and build a real coalition, like the one Bush Sr built. We make deals with other countries in the region, including Iran and Syria and get them to help us. Bribe them in necessary. We build a real coalition army including soldiers from moslem countries like Turkey and Egypt. We make post invasion plans about security, what to do with the Iraqi army etc. We isolate Saddam. Remember there was even talk about Saddam going into exile to Russia. We could have made it happen. And then we go in under a UN mandate and take over Iraq with over 500K troops from all over the world. We immediately establish security, etc. etc.

As I said there was zero margin of error for this to succeed. But it was doable.

Posted by DonB | January 28, 2007 3:09 PM

Fair enough. Maybe "sons of the Dixiecrats" is better. They do seem to have an unusual ardor for proving that (a) they are not the tool of black people (Sister Souljah, the executed retarded guy), (b) they're pro-war, and (c) the hippies are the greatest persistent threat to America. Go back and read Whitman's blog, if it's still around. Terrifying, and yet consistent with things said by Will Marshall, etc.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 28, 2007 3:11 PM

DonB wrote, "As I said there was zero margin of error for this to succeed. But it was doable."

Based on what historical precedent exactly?

Posted by ponte | January 28, 2007 3:15 PM

"Maybe "sons of the Dixiecrats" is better."

You're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you, SCMT?

Posted by Petey | January 28, 2007 3:17 PM

Given a drawer of 300 million people, it seems unlikely that I am.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 28, 2007 3:22 PM

DonB: to clarify, the Gulf War was deliberately not predicated on regime change and does not serve as a historical precedent for the highly improbable scenario that you desired.

Posted by ponte | January 28, 2007 3:24 PM

"Given a drawer of 300 million people, it seems unlikely that I am."

There are significant problems with the DLC, but a legacy of Strom Thurmond-ism is not one of them.

And in a more sophistical vein, it's a wee bit odd to accuse a group that just selected an African-American leader as having "unusual ardor for proving that they are not the tool of black people"

Posted by Petey | January 28, 2007 3:29 PM

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0919-01.htm

Clark Says He Would Have Voted for War
by Adam Nagourney

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Sept. 18 — Gen. Wesley K. Clark said today that he would have supported the Congressional resolution that authorized the United States to invade Iraq, even as he presented himself as one of the sharpest critics of the war effort in the Democratic presidential race.

-----------------------------------

General Clark said that he would have advised members of Congress to support the authorization of war but that he thought it should have had a provision requiring President Bush to return to Congress before actually invading. Democrats sought that provision without success.

"At the time, I probably would have voted for it, but I think that's too simple a question," General Clark said.

A moment later, he said: "I don't know if I would have or not. I've said it both ways because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position — on balance, I probably would have voted for it."

----------------------------------

I never would have voted for war . . . What I would have voted for is leverage. Leverage for the United States to avoid a war. That's what we needed to avoid a war.

------------------------------------------------

October 22, Boston Globe

The thing was, I would have voted for it for leverage, but had I been there and been part of that process, I would never have voted for it for war. The resolution I wanted was a resolution that would have brought them back to the United States Congress and showed cause before you went to war.

-----------------------------

I understood exactly what he was trying to say but the press portrayed him as a waffler. I am not sure it is possible to have a real debate about these things in the age of sound bites. For/against? That is how things are framed.

Posted by DonB | January 28, 2007 4:49 PM

"Based on what historical precedent exactly?"

Bush Sr was able to put together a real coalition, obtain UN authorization. He was able to get the support of Iran and Syria.

I remember a piece by Wesley Clark where he said he was opposed to the war but if he was running it he would have gotten the cooperation of Iran and Syria because they had the power to sabotage our efforts by virtue of geography.

We did not have to be in the disaster we find ourselves in. If we had a meaningful coalition they would have a stake in the outcome and would be helping us in all kinds of ways. We find ourselves isolated in the international community.

I'm just not buying the argument that this was all inevitable.

Posted by DonB | January 28, 2007 4:59 PM

"the Gulf War was deliberately not predicated on regime change and does not serve as a historical precedent for the highly improbable scenario that you desired."

I am not arguing that Gulf War I was a precedent to successful regime change. I am arguing that if we had done things differently we might have been in a much better position today. Imagine having 200,000 soldiers from Turkey assigned to secure the Sunni areas. Imagine not threatening Iran and Syria with regime change and getting their cooperation. These things were all doable with successful diplomacy/bribes.

Posted by DonB | January 28, 2007 5:08 PM

DonB: The deployment of 200K Turks to Iraq to prevent sectarian violence strikes me as both implausible and hopelessly naive.

Posted by ponte | January 28, 2007 5:54 PM

I read blogs constantly but rarely comment--but "Hillary" as she likes to be called, drives me to distraction. The problems I have with her are many, but her political calculation for the good of self is my biggest problem. Now she says that Bush must take the troops out of Iraq by January 2009. In other words--when she's president she doesn't want to be bothered with the soldiers who may die on her watch, but it's ok with her if they die now--so she's sorry for being bamboozled, but not too sorry to make a firm stand.

I am a woman (Independent) and would very much like to see a woman president--but not this woman. Her husband was all about himself and his power; she's no different. There are many interesting candidates, on both sides of the aisle. We as a nation need not settle for this power hungry, disingenuous "Hillary", who seems to think that promising to "deck" her opponents is the way to uplift a beleaguered nation.

Posted by Lucy | January 28, 2007 6:47 PM

My vantage point is from having been opposed to the Bush/neocon/far-right policy on Iraq from the beginning. I do not have a problem with people (Senators, congressmen, commentators) having been for the Iraq war at the start; the problem with Hillary is she has defended the Bush point of view on this war from day one until day 1300: she still tries to peddle her revised opinion of this disaster as Bush incompetence. Why is this a problem? Because we are being sold the same bill of goods in Iran and North Korea. If we want a sane foreign policy, we will not get it from Clinton.

Posted by della Rovere | January 28, 2007 7:27 PM

Flip-flopper? Not a problem. Americans will pick a flip-flopper over a pro-war candidate in a very healthy ratio.

Posted by cg | January 28, 2007 7:31 PM

I don't know what they actually think, but I imagine that Senators Kerry, Edwards and Clinton trusted the President of the United States. I imagine they cast the best vote they could, based on the information the President gave Congress. I imagine they never in a million years dreamed that the President of the United States would lie to Congress or present it with anything but the best and most accurate information available. I imagine they expected politics to end at the water's edge.

I imagine they feel betrayed and cheated by our President. I imagine they now realize that trusting George W. Bush was the biggest mistake they ever made. I imagine that Senator Kerry would be President today had he simply said, "I trusted our President and our President failed us. That's why I am running against him."

Posted by Jalmari | January 28, 2007 8:40 PM

I imagine they feel betrayed and cheated by our President. I imagine they now realize that trusting George W. Bush was the biggest mistake they ever made.

If they believed that, they are fucking idiots.

Posted by dj moonbat | January 28, 2007 9:51 PM

Amen.

Posted by Ed Marshall | January 28, 2007 9:52 PM

I'm not worried about who took what position on Iraq in 2003 either. That's not really the issue anymore. The litmus is how you feel about it now, with what you know now, and what you plan to do about it, both in terms of the actual situation with our troops in Iraq (including our overall strategy in the region along with optimal strategy and use of resources to defeat terrorists) and you will put under the microscope those key figures who lied, concealed, and manipulated the case for invading Iraq.

Posted by Jimm | January 28, 2007 10:07 PM

Oops.

...and you will put under the microscope those key figures who lied, concealed, and manipulated the case for invading Iraq.

and who you will put under the microscope for lying, concealing, and manipulating the bankrupt-on-arrival case for invading Iraq.

Posted by Jimm | January 28, 2007 10:09 PM

Jalmari,
Why were people like now Senator Jim Webb saying that invading Iraq was a mistake. Why did people like Senator Feingold vote against the AUMF? I could tell from the very beginning that Iraq was a vanity project. Don't tell me that you couldn't see it either. Smirk was known for a long time to be a frat boy who never grew up. You don't read Molly Ivins, do you? It wasn't plausible to you that Smirk wanted to do his daddy one better? To get revenge for daddy? If you couldn't see that, I don't know what to tell you. Many people knew that while Saddam wasn't a very nice man, the country was actually pretty secular.

Posted by Ghost of Tom Joad | January 28, 2007 10:38 PM

I don't think she really feels she is wrong about her vote. I think she knows she has to say something to keep the democrats happy in her mind and advised by her many consultants.
But, I don't think she means what she is saying. Like Bush, I think she has a very tough time admitting to being wrong.
that alone is not good.
Knowing the war is so unpopular she is pandering to those voters.

Posted by vwcat | January 28, 2007 10:58 PM

No. There's no point in verifying the inconsistencies. It's better just to repeat them over and over in an echo chamber.

I've looked. There's no real inconsistencies there.

As a Hillary supporter, I'll concede this, she has tried to avoid the issue. But the facts are pretty clear. She has always, from the day she stated what her vote did and did not mean on the floor of the Senate all the way up until today, when she has spoken out on Iraq, she has condemned the Bush Admin for betraying the intent of that vote.

So you're not going to find the thing you'd wish she'd say.

But you're not going to find any inconsistencies either.

Posted by Kevin | January 29, 2007 12:50 AM

The real question is whether we want to go through another election cycle dominated by the question of whether or not the Democratic nominee is a flip-flopper.

Well, that will happen no matter who the nominee is. As well as analyses of their inappropriate choices in clothing, flogging of completely fabricated quotes and scandals, and repeated snickering about their obvious elitist phoniness as opposed to a consistent, principled common man such as [insert corrupt, privileged, hypocritical Republican nominee here]. It's like the whole "electable" shibboleth. The other side will repeatedly lie in order to smear the Dem, aided and abetted by a squealing liberal news media. It's how one deals with this that's important. (The mea culpa of Edwards does help, for instance.)

Personally, I'm a bit more concerned about whether Senator Clinton has actually learned enough from her Iraq vote to oppose an invasion of Iran when the chips are down. And she's not doing a bang-up job convincing me of that. Of course, I'll support her in a heartbeat over whatever Republican stands a chance of grabbing the nomination, since whoever it is will have a history of giving GWB what he wanted on everything, not just the AUMF. (Yeah, Senator Hagel, I'm looking at you.)

Posted by mds | January 29, 2007 11:19 AM

The Democrats who voted for the war all did it out of some political calculation. There were a number of good democrats who voted against the resolution, understanding that Bush did not mean what he said and that an invasion would bring us to where we are now. Clinton says she is tough and understands politics and how to deal with major problems, but here she got suckered? I don't think so. She knew what she was doing and did it with a good idea of what the consequences would be.

Posted by waldem | January 30, 2007 12:25 AM

Pols are seriously adverse to changing positions these days - for good reason.

Bill was hurt by "flip flop" allegations early and decided it was better to be stubborn later. Bush 43 has learned from his dad's costly "flip flop" on taxes. Kerry was partially sunk by the charge of being a "flip flopper". Fact is the public takes the bait all too easy. The charge of "flip flopping" hurts a candidate. It is an easy way to score points against an opponent, especially if true.

illary is tryin real real hard not to give the republican an easy weapon to yield in '08, even if she has to take some lumps from Democrats in the primary. She is being what Clintons' are - smart. Smart would be a nice change in the White House.

Posted by D. Andrews | January 30, 2007 10:17 PM

So many things to say...

It was said that in the age of sound bites, Wesley Clark's comments were taken out of context in order to portray him as a wafflin' politician hoping to avoid being pinned down. I'm not sure how he could have been perceived as consisent and principled in the age of sound without the bites (when was this by the way?). The slew of statements Clark made in regards to the AUMF was incomprehensible. Maybe he's just predisposed to placing his foot safely in his mouth, as Kerry seems to be, but I really couldn't infer his argument. He equivocated to an absurd degree because his position could not be logically supported. Thousands of lives, both American and Iraqi, should not be put on the line so that the executive can wire to Saddam "hey you there, we really mean business" (I assume this is how bush would have spoke). Although the resolution was couched in legalese, it was tantamount to a declaration of war, and not a tool to put the ol' lean on Saddam. Unlike the current situation, in which each day we risk more and more casaulties from the insurgency or sectarian attack, there was a complete lack of imminence to the threat from the Baathist regime. The situation was so urgent, in fact, that the administration went painstakingly through the steps to sell the war to the people and the congress, by hook or by crook. Mostly the latter of course.

Two final things to note: Whoever made, or agreed with, the point that enough information existed at the time of the vote to throw serious doubt on the claims of the administration regarding WMDs is right on the money. There were serious voices of dissent in the political and scientific community but they were shut out of the discourse (if you ever want to elevate the lack of discussion in the lead up to the war to that level). One leading scientist in the field of nuclear technology (sorry for the lack of references right now) said that if he or any of his colleagues were ever shown the evidence of centrifuges, now available, they would have been able to almost immediately tell the administration the equipment would not function for a nuclear centrifuge.

Also, what about all the voices of dissent in the senate itself? This is glossed over in this thread as well as in the media's retrospective coverage of the tragedy. While many of the democratic senators who voted no on the authorization framed their opposition in terms of invasion as a poor strategic choice, others, like Senator Feingold, were more straightforward. Forget all the talk about it being hard to win the peace. They said it was wrong to wage a war of aggression, albeit less polemically.

If the invasion train could have been stopped, then they should have voted no. And if the inertia made the war inevitable, they still could have taken a principled stand against the neocon vision. Yes they could take a hit in the polls, but, to invoke a cliche of the pundit world, one should not play petty politics with the fate of an entire people, their nation, or the fragile region that surrounds them.

Posted by Josh Plumridge | January 31, 2007 5:52 AM

Damaged Goods?

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