'To hear President Clinton was supportive really silenced whatever questions I had'

This quote is attributed to a career foreign service officer who had serious reservations about the invasion of Iraq. ( http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3770132 )

This quote says a lot. At the time when the nation and our party desperately needed words of wisdom from our leaders, they were busy stumbling over each other to publicly align themselves with Bush. That affected public opinion! And it moved votes.

For those few left who cling to the 'we don't have the votes' way of thinking, just consider this: the public statements of our party leadership have real meaning. Real consequences. It isn't only about votes. Its about public sentiment. In that respect, public statements of support or opposition make a huge difference. Had Clinton and others sided with us, we might have had a ghost of a chance to stop this disaster before it happened.

Regarding impeachment, FISA, torture and all the other important issues of the day, I am sick to death of hearing how many votes we don't have. Where are the public statements of support for standing up to Bush and his criminal gang? What we need immediately is for our party leaders to take a firm public stand and not waver. That will move votes and make things happen. Waiting to see how many votes we already have is not a way to move votes or change policy.

Bill Clinton took a firm stand on the invasion of Iraq - he sided with the traitors - and that had concrete, deadly consequences as we see. Where are the party leaders who will come out publicly and say Bush has committed several crimes while in office, and that he needs to be brought up on charges? Where is the damn courage?

... the same office who "didn't recall" getting warnings about bin Laden. :)

resist the temptation to play along with the spinmeisters.

That's diplomatic alright. Oh wait.

But alas, do the replies here fill you with hope?

Its election season. Everyone has an axe to grind, I suppose.

Because they do deserve to be flogged for their whole conniving and calculating approach to this issue.

Read her comments - Rice and Abrahms went to the meetings. The WH has her responding because she has more credibility, but she is likely being used. She is a career foreign service person. It says that she and her husband have been critical of Bush. It is right to be suspicious, but she MAY not be Republican. Having watched various people in the state department testify at SFRC hearings, some like Abrams and Rice are Bushies, others like Nikolas Burnes seem to be very good, honest and professional.

There is one comment here that might explain things - she refers to Eliott Abrams (who should have gone to jail for Iran/Contra) as coming out of meeting saying they had Clinton's approval. If her comment is based ONLY on second hand information - Dooes anyone here trust Abrams? Could he have lied or even just cherry picked Clinton's responses?

It may be that Clinton took neither a complete "do not go to war" position or a "I'm supporting the President" position, and people are spinning his grey position as either black or white. We KNOW he did not take a public Al Gore position in Sept/Oct 2002. The disturbing thing here is that this is 2003. (I have always thought that as a party, the Democrats should have emphasized that the decision to go to war in March 2003 was substantially worse than voting yes in 2002.) But this is an attempt to put Clinton at the decision making table in 2003 - when in reality only one person had the power to make the decision to invade.

In 2004, the left's anger with Kerry over his vote helped the Republicans in their attempt to spread responsibility. Now, doing so is more rewarding for the Republicans - in November 2004, the NYT poll showed that 48% of people thought the decision to invade was right, 41% thought it was wrong. Now, there are far more people wanting to make that decision bipartisan. Yesterday there was a thread with Rove saying Congress pushed Bush to invade - which is absolutely not true.

I have many many problems with both Clintons - and no one who knows me here would think I like them, but this is not a good hit - it hurts the Democrats.

We know the type of people we're dealing with.

My issue is that publicly opposing Bush's crimes - and calling them crimes - could make a huge difference. I am looking for a full effort, rather than this string of "we don't have the votes" surrenders.

We need some stubborn, reliable Democrats who will fight even when the chips appear down.

...that he supported Bush asking for the authority to go to war. (Unless he had a crystal ball and could see the future he may have thought that it's better for Bush to ask for authority as appose to just going to war.) That is not "a firm stand on the invasion of Iraq". In Bushworld there is only black and white (with us or against us). Among the more intelligent, there are many shades of gray.

Bush said he would only go to war as a last result. He lied. You can accuse Bill Clinton of believing a liar, but to claim a "firm stand..." is ridiculous.

One notable example that has yet to make the rounds is a March 18, 2003, op-ed by Bill Clinton in the UK Guardian, titled "Trust Tony's Judgment." Clinton chastised the European states that had vetoed a resolution by ex-Prime Minister Blair justifying the use of force against Saddam if the Iraqi dictator did not meet several time-specific deadlines for weapons inspections.

More importantly, Clinton rationalized the impending war on grounds that it would be far less dangerous than doing nothing at all.

As Clinton opined:

"As Blair has said, in war there will be civilian as well as military casualties. There is, too, as both Britain and America agree, some risk of Saddam using or transferring his weapons to terrorists. There is as well the possibility that more angry young Muslims can be recruited to terrorism. But if we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance, there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing Saddam."

-snip

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/28/bill-clinton-i-was-for-_n_74501.html

I AM SICK OF LYING POLITICIANS WHO RE-WRITE HISTORY TO BENEFIT THEIR GOALS. WE NEED CHANGE IN THE WH-NOT CONTROVERSY OVER TRUTH. I REALIZE HE IS NOT RUNNING, BUT AS HRC REMINDS US YOU ELECT HER YOU GET BILL.

For balance, you could have included the discussion from the same piece about how the administration doesn't really care whether there were WMD and is intentionally undermining the inspections, or the several paragraphs about how the right solution is to leave the inspections regime in place.

Bill Clinton supported some sort of action against Iraq if the WMD were real. (A clear mistake. The WMD thing was irrelevant either way, as Gore noted at the time.) If they were not, he didn't. And he was willing to let the inspectors determine what was what.

Clinton was not a supporter or the IRW, and a moderate opponent of the invasion. I disagree with his behavior throughout 2002-2003, but I am not going to re-write history to say he was an unqualified war booster. He was an Iraq disarmament booster who did state opposition to the invasion itself several times in early 2003.

It's a shameful period from his biography, but it is not the unqualified caricature some DUers are currently recollecting.

reports that there weren't. Surely Clinton had access to non-neocon intelligence reports to know that the Chalibi crap wasn't real. And, what about what Joe Wilson? Have we ever heard Clinton defend Wilson and Plame? Why is Clinton claiming like Hillary that "everyone thought Saddam had WMD." What's come out is that it was the Neo-Cons feeding that info. Was Clinton clueless that he didn't know there weren't any and that Saddam had nothing to disarm...and he told us he didn't have anything...but no one believed him because Chimpy wanted Saddam gone...and Cheney wanted that oil and Halliburton in there and Rummy wanted to test his new military theories on invading and occupying with a small force but lots of Mercenaries.

He says he's not certain in the Guardian article

:shrug:

I was highly skeptical of the WMD in late 2002, but it's not surprising Bill Clinton wasn't.

We know that Bill Clinton believed in the WMD in 1998... enough so to bomb facilities in Iraq. So both Clintons were undoubtedly true believers in the WMD. I doubt his wife was thinking in 1998, "Geez. I can't believe Bill is blowing up WMD programs that don't exist."

Having been so persuaded by what US Intel was saying back in 1998, Bill was almost uniquely disinclined to skeptically revisit the whole question. And that almost certainly informed Hillary's lack of skepticism. (It would have been a settled question in her mind that Bill hadn't blown up those people in 1998 for absolutely no reason.)

(It must have been a shock to both of them to realize that Bill Clinton was the first one to attack the non-existent WMD.)

That's the bottom line, isn't it.