Obama Launches Judgement and Experience Tour

Tomorrow is the five-year anniversary of Democrat Barack Obama's fiery speech against the Iraq war, and he's not going to let that go unnnoticed.

The freshman Illinois senator will deliver a foreign policy speech at DePaul University in Chicago and follow it up with foreign policy speeches in Des Moines and Coralville, Iowa. Obama supporters will also gather in 18 cities across the country to hold "Rallies to Turn the Page in Iraq."

The Iowa speeches kick off a four-day, all-Iowa, all-Iraq "Judgment and Experience Tour" during which, his campaign says, Obama will highlight "the experience and judgment he used to oppose the war before it started and his vision to restore America’s security and standing in the world."

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been stressing her experience and polls show that's a major reason she's leading Obama in the Democratic nomination race.

In that 2002 speech, given when he was a state senator, Obama called Saddam Hussein ruthless and brutal but said he posed no direct or imminent threat to America and could be contained until he "falls away into the dustbin of history."

In his words: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. 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. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars."
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/10/obama-launches-.html

It's go time.