2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Sec. Clinton says that she trusted W... [View all]karynnj
(59,501 posts)To distort the timeline. The real timeline would actually help her.
At the time of the vote, the inspectors were not in Iraq yet and had not been for 4 years. So, it was not that they were suppose to finish their work, but to start it.
She references the Bush Cincinnati speech where he promised he promised to get inspectors in. She did not quote that Bush said it was not a vote for war or that he would go to war only as a last resort.
She also suggested that Saddam Hussein did not let them go everywhere, but he did and even destroyed out of compliance missles.
All I can think is that she did not want a follow up asking if she voted assuming Bush would follow the process promised in the Cincinnati speech -though the IWR resolution did not have teeth to compelling him to -why in early 2003 she did not speak out.
Conflating March 2003 with October 2002, places more blame on Congress and less on Bush. Far more was known after about 5 months of inspections than before they started.