Matthew Yglesias (January 10, 2008) - Admissions (Foreign Policy)

I don't think it's a subtle distinction at all, and is one of the key reasons an Obama victory would be ten thousand times better than a Clinton win.

Posted by right | January 10, 2008 11:50 AM

Agreeing with 'right,' it's not a subtle distinction.

She almost certainly feels she did the right thing in authorizing war with Iraq. As someone who feels that vote was a travesty, I feel she did the wrong thing.

The Iraq war and how we got there (and how we get out) is an important issue for me. Therefore I can't vote for her in the primary.

It's not subtle or trivial distinction. It's an issue that at least should be in discourse about the primary more.

Posted by riffle | January 10, 2008 11:53 AM

Or more likely it's just a prepare for November maneuver, figuring that if she is sort of ambiguous on the war it might play better than a pure antiwar position, and that voters will (correctly I think) find her more dovish than the GOP guy anyway. I hate the war as much as MY, but what are you gonna do, vote for Nader?

Posted by scott | January 10, 2008 11:57 AM

What is a subtle distinction is the difference between regretting her vote and regretting the fact that we went to war. It seems to me entirely plausible that she thinks her vote was reasonable given the information she had at the time but that what the president did with that vote was very bad.

She explains this very well here.

That said, I knew very well at the time that the vote was a vote for war and that Bush would use it as that and that he had no intention of letting the inspectors do their jobs. Could I really be that much smarter than HRC?

Posted by Rob Mac | January 10, 2008 11:58 AM

The vote was only the beginning. She was a solid war supporter for a couple of years, until the winds of public opinion shifted.( And she is simply lying about that history now.) I don't trust her foreign-policy judgment at all. She may temporarily pretend to be a dove to appease the Democratic electorate, but at heart she's a hawk.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | January 10, 2008 12:02 PM

So, in other words, if the anti-war left in the Democratic Party--to which I belong, by the way--could get Hillary to agree that she was wrong and they were right, then they might like her?

Posted by John Petty | January 10, 2008 12:06 PM

The support for the Clintons in the Democratic Party is a good reminder that stupid and irrational behavior isn't only confined to the GOP.

For all his supposed political genius, Bill Clinton never got 50% of the American people to vote for him and spent more of his Administration undermining the Democratic Party than he did advancing anything like a liberal agenda. Yet because they hate how the conservatives attacked him, a lot of Dems are lining up to vote for his wife because....well, just because. It can't be because she's the most liberal candidate. It can't be because she's the most experienced or qualified (Biden and Dodd were both infinitely more experienced and qualified and no one cared). It also can't be because she's the most electible, because NO ONE would do more to rally a fractured and dispirited Republican Party than Hillary.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | January 10, 2008 12:07 PM

I think a lot of politicians heavily weigh their position on the war as a political issue, and don't really care much whether their stances were right or wrong in any fundamentally moral sense.

I think she felt it was the politically wise thing to do at the time, and unlike Edwards, sticks with that. That, and the other argument that in American politics you're always admired for being hawkish and only rarely for opposing hawkish moves.

The question of "right" and "wrong" probably sound to a lot of major politicians like nutty things that we crazy fringe extremist types obsess about but which strong bold mature experienced leader types ignore.

I mean, c'mon, if somehow the occupation had somehow magically gone "well" and was politically popular in the country, how many of these major Democratic politicians would care whether it was "right" or "wrong"?

Posted by El Cid | January 10, 2008 12:07 PM

She doesn't feel she was wrong and doesn't feel she was really authorizing war with Iraq.

I think it was stupid not knowing that Bush would take that fig leaf, ignore the UN, and run with it.

Posted by Gary Denton | January 10, 2008 12:09 PM

One also has to make the distinction between people who think they made the right decision given the information they had at the time (ie, they followed a correct decision-making process) versus those tho think, even in hind-sight, that it was the correct decision.

In Hillary's defense, she doesn't believe it was the correct decision in hindsight, as most nutty neocons still do.

Posted by Jim W | January 10, 2008 12:10 PM

One also has to make the distinction between people who think they made the right decision given the information they had at the time (ie, they followed a correct decision-making process)

I think Yglesias's complaint is that she thinks she followed the correct decision-making process, which in turn suggests similar results in similar future circs.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 10, 2008 12:14 PM

Of course, it's usually Clinton opponents who argue she won't admit she was wrong. But obviously, continuing to be wrong is much worse than refusing to admit you were wrong in the past (and therefore hold the right view in the present). It also has the added benefit of not resorting to the "I know what's in her heart" argument. I think the inability of her opponents to make the more devastating case is a combination of a) thinking it's impossible for a rational person (i.e., one who, contra McCain, O'Hanlon, et al, thinks the war has gone badly) to think voting for the war in the first place was a good idea, and b) Clinton is so calculating that she is likely to be acting dishonestly in this case. Personally, I think neither a nor b is necessarily true. It would be much more effective to point out that her current position, regardless of what is actually "in her heart", is that giving Bush authorization was a good idea.

Posted by ibid | January 10, 2008 12:14 PM

History will be the judge of whether the decision to invade Iraq was "right" or "wrong." It will be a decade at least before the question can be given a serious answer, and there will never be a definitive one.

Posted by Mixner | January 10, 2008 12:18 PM

This is one of the reasons why McCain could beat Hilary in the general -- her position on Iraq does not provide a clear enough contrast with his. If the debate is between two candidates who approve, in some broad sense, of our decision to go to war, but think the war was badly managed, then McCain wins basically on characterological grounds. It will be 2004 all over again, but with a more appealing messenger on the Republican side. Only someone who steadfastly opposed the war from the start can hang Bush's war around McCain's neck.

Posted by pjs | January 10, 2008 12:19 PM

I have no idea what Hillary Clinton or any politician really believes. I do know that she voted for and gave every possble support for an illegal, unprovoked war based on obvious lies. She now says she believed the obvious lies. Whatever. The lies still didn't justify an aggressive war. In my opinion, she shouldn't even be re-elected to the Senate.

Posted by Gary Sugar | January 10, 2008 12:19 PM

I think it was stupid not knowing that Bush would take that fig leaf, ignore the UN, and run with it.

Posted by Gary Denton | January 10, 2008 12:09 PM

If you remember back to 2002-03, everyone opaying the least bit of attention knew that war with Iraq was a done deal. The build-up had already begun. Clinton's claim that she trusted Bush/Cheney to let the UN inspectors do their work is frankly hilarious.

Posted by goethean | January 10, 2008 12:22 PM

I'm with those that don't think this is a subtle distinction at all. What really makes me so anti-Hillary is the way she has been so dishonest about that position.

I'm sorry, but "I wouldn't have voted that way if I knew then what I know now" just insults my intelligence.

And, given her history & AIPAC ties, anybody who thinks Hillary has any intention of getting us out of Iraq is being wilfully ignorant - again.

Posted by Brautigan | January 10, 2008 12:26 PM

"I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done [on the vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq]? I don’t know."

"There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage."

"I think" there’s “some room for disagreement in that initial decision to vote for authorization of the war."

--Barack Obama, July '04

Posted by Mixner | January 10, 2008 12:30 PM

I got roped in to watching a biography of Queen Elizabeth II. During WWII she turned 18, and she enlisted.

So my question to Hillary, who voted for the AUMF, who voted and verbally supported the war until it was time to campaign in early 2006:

"If you can't convince your own daughter to serve, how could you continue to send money/approval for other people's children to fight? Why is Chelsea too good to fight alongside the men and women Hillary's votes sent into harms way?"

I marched with the largest protest in human history, and then was called a "Saddam lover" and a traitor by an acquaintance who was fresh from an airforce posting in Saudi.

The BS of Mrs. Clinton's "everybody thought the WMD's were a threat"- the millions of protest marchers, along with a 1/3 of her fellow democrats were right, but when do we see the "right" people elevated to leadership?

We have to rally behind the person who's instincts failed her on the most important question of our time: whether to trust W.

The problem with politics in America is there is no meritocracy, especially in the pundit class but among politicians too.

Lindbergh was wrong about the germans in 1938, and after 1941 noone ever heard from him again. He'd staked his reputation, and gracefully bowed out to look for his baby.

Posted by feckles | January 10, 2008 12:31 PM

History will be the judge of whether the decision to invade Iraq was "right" or "wrong."

Where have you been for the last five years?

Posted by Mr. Nice Guy | January 10, 2008 12:36 PM

History will be the judge (...)

Erm, no. The hundreds of thousands dead people and non-existent WMD aside for a moment, cough cough, "history" is always a crappy judge because it has only the de facto chain of events as a basis, at least when done seriously, and thus cannot judge anything at all.

Posted by novakant | January 10, 2008 12:36 PM

I generally agree with MBunge's analysis. I actually find myself wanting to support Hillary when I hear media figures (and, frankly, some of Obama supporters) spewing old tall tales of Clinton "scandals". But his thumbnail sketch of the Clinton years is fairly accurate. And Hillary's vote on the war was terrible and there are only two possible explanations for it (just like Kerry's, btw), both of them bad: 1) she actually thought invading Iraq was a good idea, and 2) she feared that voting against the war would cost her politically.

goethean is correct that anyone who was awake at that time knew that Bush would use the Congressional authorization to go to war, no matter what.

But MBunge is wrong when he says "NO ONE would do more to rally a fractured and dispirited Republican Party than Hillary." No matter who the Democratic candidate is that candidate will be turned (in the media echo chamber and the right-wing noise machine) into either evil incarnate or a pathetic, probably insane, joke of a human being. Obama will not be immune.

The Republican party is essentially the party of institutional racism. Don't you think having a black guy (rumored to be a Muslim!) on the ticket is going to rally the base just fine?

We should not pick our candidate based on who we think the Republicans will be nicer to. We should pick a candidate based on whose policy positions we like and who we think will fight the hardest both to gain the White House and to get those policy positions enacted once in power.

And Mixner, history has already rendered its judgment. The invasion of Iraq (and nearly as much, the way that invasion and occupation was handled) is the worst foreign policy decision the US government has ever made.

Posted by Rob Mac | January 10, 2008 12:36 PM

You know, the people who want everyone to "admit" the were wrong on the war really kind of make we want to puke. Seriously. And I don't support the war. It's just fucking inane.

So maybe Hillary feels the same way.

Posted by Jim | January 10, 2008 12:48 PM

Hillary will never admit she was wrong because in her mind, voting for the AUMF was the correct political move at the time. And she continues to believe this. If anything, I feel like she is irritated with the people who are insisting that she apologize for something that, in her view, was obviously the correct thing to do. This is also why nominating Hillary is an incredibly stupid thing to do. We just get more of Bill Clinton style politicking, without the Bill Clinton charm, and in an era where much more progressive politics are possible.

Posted by mpowell | January 10, 2008 12:51 PM

Have to agree with above comments: She believes in her votes and it's NOT SUBTLE. It is disingenuous to suggest her votes were based on false information. There was enough information in the public sphere at the time for many of us to understand the folly of war with Iraq, and there was much more than enough information available on the mendacity and incompetence of the Bush administration to know that he would misuse the support of Congress to whatever he damn well wanted to do. She didn't even read the intelligence reports available to her before the AUMF vote.

Hillary voted for the war, and KYL-LIEBERMAN because she's a villager and a Very Serious Person on foreign (if not domestic) policy. "It Takes a Village" to execute an agressive, military-based, interventionist foreign policy against the expressed will of the American people.

If elected, she can send Tom Friedman and David Brooks to our "allies" around the world to explain that members of her FP team, like Michael O'Hanlon, are really smart despite being wrong about almost everything, and lying about it.

You can cry Hillary, but never let them see you sweat a gross misjudgment that cost tens of thousands of lives.

Posted by Adams | January 10, 2008 12:52 PM

And Mixner, history has already rendered its judgment. The invasion of Iraq (and nearly as much, the way that invasion and occupation was handled) is the worst foreign policy decision the US government has ever made.

Ah, right. Do please show me this judgment of history. Dogmatic rantings by the far left don't count as the judgment of history, I'm afraid.

Posted by Mixner | January 10, 2008 12:55 PM

Mixner,

The "judgment of history" that you require does not and cannot exist. People will forever revisit history and try to say something new or come up with some radical new judgment. (See Jonah Goldberg's new book for a particularly putrid example.) There is no final judgment, because time does not stand still and the judgmental species that is Homo sapiens continues to reproduce and read and write and ponder the past. If you want to wait around for some final judgment of the Iraq invasion, go ahead. But you will be waiting forever. In this way, reviewing history only after X number of years have past is particularly worthless, because you rob yourself of the opportunity to learn something from the present or the recent past. Bush clearly has neither the liability issues or the personal fortitude to actually reflect on what he's done, so we can expect him to kick the can down the road as you would apparently encourage us to do. Meanwhile, Iraq essentially no longer exists, and we are all pouring the blood of our fellow Americans and the wealth of our nation into the smoldering hole left behind.

Some of us are willing and able to acknowledge that by no reasonable or sane metric is the Iraq occupation a success of any kind. The bar has been continually lowered by the war's cheerleaders, of course. Now we have John McCain giving an obscenely nonchalant green light for another century of occupation, with his goal being the end of U.S. military deaths in Iraq——a goal that would be swiftly accomplished if we simply withdrew from the quagmire, of course.

Posted by tinisoli | January 10, 2008 1:17 PM

I agree with those who say Clinton doesn't think her vote was wrong and it says a lot about her. Last night, I was reading a comment thread where someone said that Clinton won New York by being an A student and learning all she could about New York and it just made me seethe with anger.

This A student is as blithely, contentedly ignorant about the Middle East and makes virtually no effort to inform herself. She did not bother to inform herself on Iraq before her vote; she's admitted and given every indication that she's willing to accept whatever nonsense the administration wants to spew about Iran. While the same can be said of a lot of Senators it speaks well for none of them.

Posted by idabw | January 10, 2008 1:40 PM

History will be the judge of whether the decision to invade Iraq was "right" or "wrong."

No. Aggressive war is always wrong. History has never judged otherwise. American text books might rationalize this crime for hundreds of years. But in the end, history will call it wrong.

Posted by Gary Sugar | January 10, 2008 1:58 PM

Mixner is taking Obama's statements out of context. This is the full context:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/obama_and_iraq.html

Posted by Peter H | January 10, 2008 1:59 PM

The "judgment of history" that you require does not and cannot exist. People will forever revisit history and try to say something new or come up with some radical new judgment. (See Jonah Goldberg's new book for a particularly putrid example.) There is no final judgment, because time does not stand still and the judgmental species that is Homo sapiens continues to reproduce and read and write and ponder the past.

Right. That's why I said there will never be a "definitive" answer about whether the Iraq War was the right thing to do or not. But right now, no one is even in a position to offer a provisional answer. We don't know how things are going to play out in Iraq and the middle-east in the years and decades ahead. We don't even have anything remotely like a consensus on the issue of how many "excess" deaths the war has caused in Iraq.

Some of us are willing and able to acknowledge that by no reasonable or sane metric is the Iraq occupation a success of any kind.

You're not "acknowledging" that, you're asserting it, and if you're not even sufficiently honest to distinguish between a political judgment and an established fact, I don't consider your opinion on the issue to be worth taking seriously.

Mixner is taking Obama's statements out of context.

Perhaps you could explain how whatever additional "context" you're referring to changes the meaning of the statements of Obama I quoted. He has repeatedly said that the decision to invade was a difficult call, that reasonable people can disagree about whether it was the right decision, and that he himself might have supported the decision if he had had access to classified Senate intelligence at the time.

Posted by Mixner | January 10, 2008 2:13 PM

Perhaps you could explain how whatever additional "context" you're referring to changes the meaning of the statements of Obama

(1)You quoted his statement, "I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done [on the vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq]? I don’t know." while omitting the last sentence, "What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made."

(2) You quoted his 2004 statement, "There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage.", without noting that he was referring to the decision to keep troops in Iraq, not to send them in the first place.

(3) You left out the fact that he made those statements when trying to be loyal to the 2 Democratic nominees, Kerry & Edwards, both of whom supported the authorization of war in Iraq.

Posted by Peter H | January 10, 2008 2:23 PM

We don't even have anything remotely like a consensus on the issue of how many "excess" deaths the war has caused in Iraq.

We know for sure the number is greater than zero.

Posted by Peter H | January 10, 2008 2:27 PM

'Hillary voted for the war, and KYL-LIEBERMAN because she's a villager and a Very Serious Person on foreign (if not domestic) policy. "It Takes a Village" to execute an agressive, military-based, interventionist foreign policy against the expressed will of the American people.'

Please search the THOMAS database for bill S.970.

You'll be better for it.

'there was much more than enough information available on the mendacity and incompetence of the Bush administration to know that he would misuse the support of Congress to whatever he damn well wanted to do.'

Uh...most of the information came out AFTER the vote.

Downing Street memo.
Plame.
Colin Powell's UN speech.

??

Posted by willyjsimmons | January 10, 2008 2:28 PM

I think she won't admit it because if she did she would also have to admit that it was a political decision not a moral one and that distinction is not likely to be one people will understand or forgive. I don't blame her for not doing so, but I think the damage caused by appearing intractable will be worse than the damage by caused by appearing calculating. If she is arguing for change but won't admit of changes in her own position on issues how much can we expect her to advocate for a change from the status quo. I fear she will replace one status quo with another.

Posted by JC | January 10, 2008 2:37 PM

(1)You quoted his statement, "I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done [on the vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq]? I don’t know." while omitting the last sentence, "What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made."

That's right. And your point is....what? Obama's "vantage point" lacked access to classified Senate intelligence, and he has said that if had had access to that intelligence he doesn't know how he would have voted. He has also said that reasonable people could disagree about whether the decision to invade was justified. How does the statement "what I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made" change any of that?

(3) You left out the fact that he made those statements when trying to be loyal to the 2 Democratic nominees, Kerry & Edwards, both of whom supported the authorization of war in Iraq.

Again, so what? Are you suggesting that Obama was lying about his beliefs regarding the decision to invade in order to try and protect Kerry and Edwards from criticism? Or what?

Posted by Mixner | January 10, 2008 2:38 PM

Although Hillary Clinton is not my man, I think this harping on her failure to admit is, well, harping. She was a senator from New York. As has been noted, the media's focus about the war was skewed by being headquartered in New York at 911. So was/is she. She is not similarly situated to Obama, or Edwards, in this regard.

Posted by Footloose | January 10, 2008 2:50 PM

No, I didn't say that Obama was lying, just that he didn't want to make Kerry & Edwards look bad (given that he was the 2004 DNC keynote speaker) by criticizing their position on the authorization for the use of force against Iraq too strongly.

Anyway, far more important are his words back in October 2002:

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

Posted by Peter H | January 10, 2008 2:54 PM

This is a real how many angels can fit on the head of a pin question, i.e., a question that delights those of academic bent and has no meaning in the real world.

Absent mind-reading, we DO NOT and WILL NOT know the answer EVER. Her explanations, just like any national politician's explanations of any difficult vote, are presumptively based on politics rather than on truth for truth's sake. Similarly, her decision not to admit a mistake is presumptively based on a political calculation that has little or nothing to do with whether she, in fact, believes it was a mistake.

I suspect she does so believe, at least by now, because by now it would take an idiot not to see it was a mistake. A fair number of people thought it was a mistake at the time. I'm proud to say I was one of them.

However, I put as high a value on experience for a politician as I do for a lawyer, a doctor, or an auto mechanic. As a Democrat, I was not and am not willing to sentence to the political wasteland the bulk of my party's most experienced and capable leaders because they made a mistake under intense political pressure, even when the mistake was important and tragic.

Only the folks who got out in front of the leadership on the war support issue, like Lieberman and to a lesser extent Gephardt, really get my lasting anger on this. Those who just played along, like Hillary, get a black mark and a scowl but not the political death penalty.

(As an aside, this kind of political cowardice has unfortunately been one of the hallmarks of my party since the fatal 1980 election. Our guys and gals just don't have the intestinal fortitude to make tough choices. I'm happy to believe that we are changing that a little bit, but while I do believe a change is necessary, again, I don't think the way to get there is through a leadership genocide.)

Back to the Iraq vote, I'm particularly forgiving of individual lawmakers who at that time harbored designs to run for President in the future. At least at that point in time, it appeared that looking "tough against terror" was an absolute requirement to run for the Oval Office in the future. Obviously, the need to bolster the appearance of toughness would be doubled for a female candidate. Given the fact that Hillary's single vote, by the time she cast it, very obviously was not going to influence the outcome either way, and given the fact that she did NOT try to pressure other Democrats to vote her way, I really can't say I wouldn't have advised her to vote the way she did. It would certainly have been a very tough call.

Posted by Trickster | January 10, 2008 3:01 PM

History will be the judge of whether the decision to invade Iraq was "right" or "wrong." It will be a decade at least before the question can be given a serious answer, and there will never be a definitive one.

Let's put it like this: If we had known in October 2002 that:

-3000+ soliders would die in Iraq,
-there would be somewhere between 150,000 (New England Journal Medicine) & 600,000 (Lancet) excess violent deaths in Iraq after the invasion
-that no WMDs would be found
-that Iraq would be racked by sectarian conflict
-that Iraq's neighbors would be inundated with refugees
-that the war would provide a boost to Al Qaeda recruitment

how many people in Congress would have voted to authorize Bush to use military force against Iraq.

Posted by Peter H | January 10, 2008 3:06 PM

No, I didn't say that Obama was lying, just that he didn't want to make Kerry & Edwards look bad (given that he was the 2004 DNC keynote speaker) by criticizing their position on the authorization for the use of force against Iraq too strongly.

Well, either Obama really meant it when he said he thinks reasonable people could disagree about whether voting for the invasion was justfied, or he was lying. Either he really meant it when he said he might have voted for the war if he had had access to classified intelligence, or he was lying. What do you think?

Posted by Mixner | January 10, 2008 3:58 PM

Between October 2002 and March 2003, President Bush was saying he'd go back to the United Nations to get a second resolution authorizing the use of force. March 6, 2003: "No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote." (He actually never called for the vote because he knew he would lose.)

Posted by croatoan | January 10, 2008 4:11 PM

Trickster, there's some truth in what you say - just enough to allow me to pull the lever for Hillary should she get the nomination.

Peter H, all those things were predictable, and were, in fact, predicted - quite accurately - by many of us.

Posted by Brautigan | January 10, 2008 4:12 PM

Brautigan, that's all I would ask, and really all I would promise. I'm still a bit hung up on my primary choice myself, but I'll be there behind the nominee.

Posted by Trickster | January 10, 2008 4:34 PM

Well this would seem to demand that you answer the question yourself.

Was Matt Yglesias wrong to support the war? You are way out of line demanding that Hillary Clinton or anyone else answer this question while refusing, resolutely, to answer it yourself.

You hypocritical tool.

Posted by Cervantes | January 10, 2008 7:57 PM

Cervantes, Matt has said that he was wrong. Of course, he sugar coats it like everybody else, but he still said it.

The primary problem for both Matt and Hillary and every other war supporter is that the consensus was that a unilateral US invasion was illegal under international law.

That, and the fact that the UN inspectors were on the verge of giving Saddam a clean bill of health on the nuclear issue, should have given pause to ANYONE considering the war. There was no down side to holding up while the UN inspectors did their work.

But the reality is that the war mongers didn't care about that, and the suckers like Matt were naively believing the notion that the inspectors were incompetent and that Saddam had somehow successfully hidden his nuclear program from them - despite the virtual impossibility of doing so.

It's not just the decision to give Bush the authorization that was at fault - it was the whole mindset of the people who supported the war.

And that mindset has not significantly changed for Hillary. Which should automatically disqualify her for the Presidency.

As for Obama, he has the same mindset as well on Iran. Which should automatically disqualify him for the Presidency.

And of course the Republicans are loons who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any public office.

And Matt STILL hasn't said how much it has changed for him, especially on Iran, where he STILL hasn't answered my two questions.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 10, 2008 9:28 PM

"Well this would seem to demand that you answer the question yourself.

Was Matt Yglesias wrong to support the war? You are way out of line demanding that Hillary Clinton or anyone else answer this question while refusing, resolutely, to answer it yourself.

You hypocritical tool.

Posted by Cervantes | January 10, 2008 7:57 PM"

If you ask MY or John Edwards, they would and have said yes on the merits of the war (military actions as a preventive counter-proliferation tool), unlike Clinton, who has embraced the incompetence dodge.

Posted by Reality Man | January 11, 2008 2:43 AM

Matt, I agree with you that HRC thinks she did the right thing with both her vote on Iraq as well as her vote on Iran. I'm not sure of your thoughts on why she thinks she's right.

Read all her statements about those foreign affairs votes, and many other votes she's taken. All her reasoning revolves around presidential power.

She truly believes the executive branch should have the benefit of all doubts simply because of the office. She takes exception with Bush, but only after much pressing.

It's all about power.

Check out her statements. They are very telling unto themselves.

Posted by G Davis | January 11, 2008 3:45 AM

Feckels gets the "Whatta Moron!" award.

I got roped in to watching a biography of Queen Elizabeth II. During WWII she turned 18, and she enlisted.
So my question to Hillary, who voted for the AUMF, who voted and verbally supported the war until it was time to campaign in early 2006:
"If you can't convince your own daughter to serve, how could you continue to send money/approval for other people's children to fight? Why is Chelsea too good to fight alongside the men and women Hillary's votes sent into harms way?"

So if a Lefty supports caring for AIDS patients or seek to comfort a serial killer on death row and save them - failure to force their own kids to mop up AIDS patient diarrhea or personally meet and comfort a monster who raped and killed 14 women constitutes rank Lefty hypocrisy? NO need to respond. I'm sure you are off in person changing diapers of Katrina welfare mommy's babies when you are not busy building houses for them while they party away.

I marched with the largest protest in human history, and then was called a "Saddam lover" and a traitor by an acquaintance who was fresh from an airforce posting in Saudi.

The problem when you march for the enemy, cheer for the enemy, obsess over enemy rights is that some people might think you are an enemy sympathizer. I once had someone so in the grip of loving terrorist liberties that they said it was better that a thousand infidel Westerners or Asians die than the terrorist be humiliated by a female guard that offended his sense of culture - as the slaughter was just senseless violence that did not challenge deep liberties - but the female being a source of humiliation did challenge sacred institutions of human rights and amounted to state-sanctioned torture. I had no problem calling them a tool.

The BS of Mrs. Clinton's "everybody thought the WMD's were a threat"- the millions of protest marchers, along with a 1/3 of her fellow democrats were right, but when do we see the "right" people elevated to leadership?

You and your fellow protestors and 2/3rds of Hillary's Dems had no clue whether or not WMD existed, or didn't exist. Therefore you were not right. You simply flipped a coin and speculated, because we all know the Euroweeies and other protestors were not marching because they were convinced Saddam was innocent.
Your "voice" was either eliminating WMD was not worth it if any little brown baby would be killed by evil white racist oppressors, or Saddam had as much right to WMD as the Jews did, or that "Only the Supreme Moral Authority of UN Head" Kofi allowed intervention and Kofi Himself said "give Saddam and Blix as much time as they want".

We have to rally behind the person who's instincts failed her on the most important question of our time: whether to trust W.

Her "instincts" wer not wrong. They were derived her learning that the US and the UK were among the intelligence services of 18 nations inc. Russia, Germany, China, Turkey, KSA, Egypt, and France concluding Saddam had WMD because their sources in Republican Guard High command had attended meetings where Saddam told them they had WMD and even marked a line on a map where they would be deployed.
Before he was hanged, Saddam said he and under a dozen others were in on the deception. The goal was to convince America and the "Persians" that he had them so they would not invade or mess with him. He was convinced that we stopped in the Gulf War only because the Coalition feared his gases and germs being unleashed. Saddam told his Iraqi investigating magistrate and the US debriefers that he had socked away 3 billion dollars to restart work on nuclear weapons and missiles as soon as the oil for food sanctions were voted away, which he thought would have been in 2002 before Bush meddled in it. Saddam did say he only wanted a new, medium stockpile of nerve gas and had no plans to resume bugs because nukes were far better.

The problem with politics in America is there is no meritocracy, especially in the pundit class but among politicians too.

It only takes Americans a glance at the droolers on the BBC, CBC and in Parliaments to note Britain and Canada aren't exactly festooned with a pile of rocket scientists who decided to go into politics instead and rose on the meritocracy to become new readers and Party hacks.

Lindbergh was wrong about the germans in 1938, and after 1941 noone ever heard from him again. He'd staked his reputation, and gracefully bowed out to look for his baby.

1. Lindbergh and other well-meaning Isolationists were not wrong in 1938. They just had a different opinion. The Germans did everything they could to avoid war with America. Until the undeclared war America started in the Atlantic in the Fall of 1941 forced the German hand. (They had the US cold on violating neutrality and acts of war against Germany as an undeclared belligerant. Lindbergh was in a long line of family that rejected wars of aggression and only believed in defending America and only America with American blood and treasure. His Dad lost his gubenatoral bid on rejecting involvement in the Spanish-American War and WWI as imperialist.

2. His baby was kidnapped and body found a decade before WWII started.

3. After 1941 he helped create the B-24 bomber, perfected a technique that allowed Corsairs to take off that doubled bomb load design, and discovered how to lean fuel with a new carbeurator that extended P-38 range 1/3rd. The last invention was so electric on its impact on the War that news of it was immediately sent to Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Churchill. He managed to become a civilian flying 50 combat missions against the Japanese, downing one plane and killing many on the ground.

After the war, and his enemy FDR's death, Lindbergh received the Distinguished Flying Cross to go with his Medal of Honor, restored to officer ranks and made Brigader General. He was a contributing architect in designing the 1st Air Force academy as well as technical consultant to NATO and most airlines. He received the Pulitzer Prize.
Lindbergh is also credited with contributions to rocketry, ground-breaking achievement in transplant and cardiac bypass medicine, and as one of the greats of the environmental movement. Lindbergh was a pioneer of the "ecosystems out of balance" theory, conservation work in the Philippines, and his public campaign to ban whaling and save the Humpback and Blue Whales.

One of the 10 greatest Americans who never was President, IMO.

Posted by chris ford | January 11, 2008 6:09 AM

Put the crack pipe down and go back to bed, Chris - you need the sleep.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 11, 2008 7:05 AM

I prefer 2002 Obama to Senator Obama

In 2003, candidate Obama stated he would never vote to fund the war. Senator Obama however voted to fund the war on four different occasions.

Obama was against funding, then he was for it
Obama was for timetables, but now he is against them
Obama supported a quick withdrawal but now proposes an extended occupation.

Posted by someday | January 11, 2008 8:00 AM

If Hillary believes she was right, she should say so and not say she was "tricked" by Bush. If she can be tricked by Bush, how ready can she be for the presidency.

Posted by John | January 11, 2008 1:29 PM

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