Some perspective: there were former Clinton admin officials who urged Congress to vote no on the IWR

For those who don't remember, the most senior one who did so was Al Gore. (Part of his job as Vice President was being the number two member of the National Security Council.)

Gore gave his first, major speech opposing the invasion of Iraq on September 23, 2002 - - about three weeks before the Congress voted to authorize the IWR. The speech got a great deal of press, because Gore was the front runner for the 2004 Democratic nomination when he gave it. The transcript can be found here:

http://www.algore.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=84

People will think you're still a Clarkie ;)

He told us who he spoke to. He spoke to people in the former Clinton administration. We should all remember that the Clinton administration -- and many other countries -- did believe Saddam had the bad stuff. So that's probably what they told Edwards when he asked about it.

The difference is what you do with the information. Everybody thought Saddam had WMD. But the world, including the Clinton adminstration, didn't see that war was necessary to contain him, so they didn't start a war over it. The Bush administration did.

The people in the Clinton administration gave Edwards the info they had received when they were in office. Edwards made a decision based on that info couple with the other info he was getting from the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the Bush administration left out all the recent stuff from our intel agencies that said this stuff may not be true.

And just to be clear.. Edwards never blamed the Clinton administration for his vote. He simply stated that he didn't just rely on info from Bush. He seeked out others for information, too. Those others were people who had been in the Clinton administration. Saying that he asked them for info is NOT the same as blaming them for his vote.

It boggles my mind how people can take a simple statement and twist it around to mean something entirely different from what was actually said.

Not Scott Ritter. Not a lot of dissenting analysts in the CIA. Even the term "weapons of mass destruction" is misleading, because it lumps Iran/Iraq war-era mustard gas and depleted sarin rounds with everything from weaponized anthrax to nuclear weapons, as if they were all equally lethal and equally threatening to regional stability.

And, in fact, Edwards is AGAIN trying to split the difference in order to justify his co-sponshorship of the IWR; he's using the same line Bush used in the '04 election: i.e., even Clinton thought Saddam was a threat, therefore I may have been wrong but I wasn't any more wrong than Mr. Smartypants, Bill Clinton. Of course that's nonsense--what Clinton said in '03 was that he believed Saddam was unstable and dangerous, but that he would not have invaded had he been in Bush's shoes, because to do so was a distraction from the real war against al Qaeda. Edwards is a parser and a triangulator, and seems to me to be having trouble keeping his own damn story straight. "I was wrong, but so was everyone else" is not only no excuse, it's also patently false. Lots of people with more sense than John Edwards voted against the IWR. Is he saying they were wrong to do so, based on the available information?

"I was wrong, but so was everyone else" is not only no excuse, it's also patently false. Lots of people with more sense than John Edwards voted against the IWR. Is he saying they were wrong to do so, based on the available information?"

No. Did you hear him say that? Don't try to put words in his mouth. Just take what he said at face value and don't try to spin it.

He's saying that lots of people looked at the same information and came up with different conclusions, as always happens in Congress and in life. Some voted for the resolution and some voted against it... based on the same information.

I'm not saying anyone was right to vote for the resolution. I'm saying that a lot of people -- here and elsewhere -- seem to twist things around an awful lot just to make a candidate look bad. Edwards isn't the only one this has happened to, and I'm sure he won't be the last.

Gawd but this is going to be the longest presidential campaign season in history. We really should stop eating our own.

It didn't "happen" to Edwards. It "happened" to a couple of hundred thousand Iraqis and 25,000 dead and wounded U.S. military personnel. Edwards made the wrong call at a crucial moment, and he is now partly responsible for the mess in Iraq, and for all the carnage there. It's inexcusable, IMO. He should't be running for president--he should be tarred and feathered along with the rest of the idiots who voted for this disaster.

It's good that Edwards and Clinton and the others have apologized for their votes for the IWR. It's good that they have realized that the war was a mistake. But the vote on the IWR was not some insignificant little law that hurt nobody - - it wasn't like these folks voted for a change in the 1948 interstate weights and measures act and then discovered that they'd accidentally made it illegal to use the word "baker's dozen" in print advertisement which is seen in more than one state. They voted for a policy which has killed tens of thousands of people, ruined America's reputation and still has the Middle East on the brink of a civil war. Even if "everybody else did it", "everybody else did it" should not be an acceptable excuse.

Especially since "everybody else" did NOT do it. Gore was just the highest profile politician to oppose the war from the moment it was suggested. There was a significant segment of Congress who voted against the IWR. 133 members of the House voted against it. 23 members of the Senate voted against it. And not all of them were Democrats. These members of Congress were able to figure out that the war was a mistake before the mistake was made. They don't have to apologize now, because they got it right to begin with.

Arianna Huffington is spot on today - - if we are foolish enough to pick a nominee who voted for the IWR, the entire 2008 campaign is going to consist of the media and the GOP comparing the nominee's 2007/8 statements about Iraq to their statements from 2002/3. The Republicans won't have to swiftboat us - - they're just use the truth.

And I'm sorry, but the fact that Edwards was one of the original co-sponsors of the resolution is even more damaging than just voting for it. The minute that one of the primary rivals feels that he's gaining too much traction, that fact will be spoon fed to the media echo chamber and you'll hear it over and over and over again.

It is probably the list I have called Dems for Joe. Most likely.

With links and source material to back it up.

:dem:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/vegetarians-between-meals_b_10889.html

Jeremy Scahill

11.18.2005
Vegetarians Between Meals: This War Cannot Be Stopped by a Loyal Opposition (

SNIP

What is DNC Chair Howard Dean's excuse? He wasn't in Congress and didn't have any access to Senate intelligence. Still, on March 9, 2003, just days before the invasion began, Dean told Tim Russert, on NBC's Meet the Press, "I don't want Saddam staying in power with control over those weapons of mass destruction. I want him to be disarmed."

During the New Hampshire primary in January 2004, which I covered for Democracy Now!, I confronted Dean about that statement. I asked him on what intelligence he based that allegation. "Talks with people who were knowledgeable," Dean told me. "Including a series of folks that work in the Clinton administration."

A series of folks that work in the Clinton administration.

How does that jibe with the official Democratic line that they were misled by the Bush administration? Sounds like Howard Dean, head of the Democratic Party, was misled by....the Democrats. Dean's candor offers us a rare glimpse into the painful truth of the matter. As unpopular as this is to say, when President Bush accuses the Democrats of "rewriting history" on Iraq, he is right.

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