Why Hillary should *not* apologize for her IWR vote.

a) She made that vote with the best of intentions, that the vote would force Saddam into compliance with UN Resolutions to ensure that he had no WMD or means to get them. The vote would ultimately end the need for sanctions that were killing the Iraqi population.

or

b) She made the vote with full knowledge that Bush would invade Iraq come hell or high water.


If a) is closer to the truth, she has nothing to apologize for.

If b) is closer to the truth, no amount of apology should save her from prosecution in the Hague. I am not going to let Bush or Cheney off with an apology.


Many of you, I think, deep down, believe a) is the answer, but want her to apologize anyway. This will give the republicans more ammunition against her in the GE. I think it is best that she stick to her guns and continue to place the blame on Bush, where I truthfully think the blame should go. I could have never have supported Kerry or Edwards, or considered Biden or Clinton or Dodd if I did not believe a) was true. She said she would have voted differently if she had known how it was eventually going to turn out.

Those of you who argue that b) is the answer, but who insist that her saying "I made a mistake, I'm sorry" will make her a more viable candidate are just at the opposite end of the 28%er bell curve than those who support Bush for his war crimes.

Good op.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR2005111101623.html

snip>The Right Way in Iraq

By John Edwards

Sunday, November 13, 2005; Page B07

I was wrong.

Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda. <unsnip

Smart for the primary, slightly weakened position in the GE.

He didn't need to apologize to get my support. I believed from the beginning that he thought that the IWR could have had a radically different direction had Bush let it run its course and not invaded.

..Because I want Obama to win.

I need to hear more specifics on what they will do to corporations who are moving offshore to avoid our tax burden, yet still retaining full, unfettered access to our government contracts and markets.

whether she was sincere or not. So she might as well not bother to make her whole campaign about that vote, which is what it would do. Lose-lose for her.

And lost the 2004 elections.

Wow, I hope you never run for anything above town dog catcher.

I just understand that politics aren't black and white as so many consumer-age "sideline citizens" believe.

god only knows if they would be at the mercy of some sadistic warmonger.

He did say the invasion was wrong. He also had spoken out in early 2003 against invading. In 2004, I wondered why he did not point to that more than he did. In 2008, Bill Clinton gave me the answer. The derision that met Clinton, a 2 term President, when he insisted he was against the war from the beginning shows what would have happened if he challenged the media narrative.

He instead made the issue non-personal when he could. He had the same listed of things Bush promised to do before considering going to war that he failed to do. Oddly, people on the right DID understand that Kerry would not have gone to war - they constantly faulted him for it. I think most people on the left understood that too.

(c) Her presidential ambitions and first term status meant she had to vote against type and NOT be perceived as weak on military, defense, terror, yada yada yada.

Her Senate committee assignment efforts were designed to give her a position to get some street cred in those areas. She swam towards the center with passion, to sell those who needed to feel she was "safe."

I can't believe any rational person believed Bush would stop his planned war in Iraq. It was his reason for living, and he badly needed a war to ride into 2004, as per his reelection scheme. He saw what happened to Daddy when he shut down his war a year before the second term election.

well, those who would remain Dems after 2006, thought that war might be avoided with the UN inspectors going back in. Much the same way as the impending Iran war was at least postponed by the latest NIE.

Here's a quote about the resolution:

"In a major victory for the president, weeks of back-and-forth between Congress and the White House produced little significant change in Bush’s initial draft of the resolution."

In other words, those who voted for the resolution, pretty much rolled over for Bush.


Here's a Bob Herbert column about the anti-war protests in Feb. 2003

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9905E4DB1E3AF934A25751C0A9659C8B63

"The duct tape fiasco underscored the helplessness of the citizenry — in New York and across the nation — against the phantom-like forces of terror. And few people believed, despite the ambivalence (or outright opposition) of ordinary Americans to a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, that anything could be done to divert the Bush administration from its rush to war, and its potentially catastrophic aftermath."

Even after the IWR some of us were hoping that public opinion could prevent Bush from starting a war. What was Hillary's contribution to this anti-war effort? Well, here's one contribution

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/bill_clinton_opposed_iraq_from.php

"CLINTON: Well, I think that's the unfortunate conclusion that one has to draw from any objective reading of the evidence, not just in the last months, but going back more than a dozen years now. So I think that the president's made the right decision to go back to the United Nations. I always believe if you can have a larger group of people behind you, not only for the military action, where we don't really need their help, but for what comes after, that's preferable. But I also believe that at some point, this has been in Saddam Hussein's hands from the very beginning. He signed agreements that he has failed to keep, and even now has refused to cooperate with the inspectors."

Rather than freezing her a$$ off out on the street trying to stop a war, she's on TV making Bush's argument FOR the war. What's her excuse for that? Blix was saying "give us more time". Clinton/Bush were saying "Saddam's not co-operating".

The people at the last link are a little naive though. They think the internet can catch people in a lie. It can. The only trouble is, the lie is told on TV to millions of viewers, and the fact that it is a lie is only told to thousands of bloggers. So the lie still works.

the target was oil and military bases. Everyone else did.

I never cared if she apologised or not.

bush was beating the drums for war for months, and Cheney, Powell, Rice, and the entire bush Crime Family were all following suit. The approximately 10% of us who knew it was bullshit and a major mistake were severely chastised for being unpatriotic and un american.

Hillary would not even be a Senator, or a candidate in this Presidential race is she had not voted for the IWR the way she did at the time. And at the time, it was a vote to get inspectors in there, not to go to war. People should be blaming bush and President Cheney for starting that war debacle, instead of who voted for the IWR. This administration would have gone to war anyway, even without the vote in Congress.

But no matter - I am going to vote for the DEMOCRATIC candidate no matter who it is. I thought we had a very rish field of candidates this time, but so, now it's down to two. I'll happily support either one of them.

If she's not, she shouldn't.

I hope that Edwards' apology originated in the heart, but I do not KNOW it. I suppose in the world of politics where every move is triangulated, an apology has to be game planned. Perhaps Edwards did, too.

I will remember your rationale, though, the next time I am contemplating apologizing for something I have done. If I made an honest mistake, why should I apologize just because it didn't work out. If I was being deceitful, no apology should save me from the fate I deserve. (Though I realize that your apology criteria apply more to the political world than the "real" world. ;) )

it is more the fact that if what some people here are saying, her act was heinous.

And saying "I am sorry for the way it turned out" is a different apology than "sorry, I didn't do the right thing".

that you assign Senator Hillary with knowledge of intelligence on Iraq only equal to what the general public had.

Here's one for you. Her vote coincides with the fact that she's received more money from the defense industry than all the other candidates combined, and her talking out both sides of her mouth on the issue of Iraq.

Sorry, but if it looks like crap and smells like crap, guess what? Its crap.