HRC supporters: Hillary says her yes vote for IWA was not a vote for the war.

[hulka38]

Would the congressmen and senators who voted no on the IWA be able to convince people that they were pro-war had it turned out to be a cakewalk as was the conventional wisdom? The answer is obviously no. I doubt that they would even try for fear of being a national joke. Clearly, there was much more at stake, namely their careers, for the people who voted no. With the exception of the members with the most liberal states and districts, they would have been forced to leave Washington and their political lives behind them. I think all Dems owe these good people a great deal of gratitude and admiration for voting their conscience in spite of the internal and external pressures to preserve their careers.

[The River]

1. It Was a Vote to Further Her Career

She had to look tough on defense in preparation
for 08.

Her personal gain was more
important than the will of the people.

[Johnny__Motown]

2. That is a reasonable point. no way people who voted the other way could spin their vote

why should she be able to?



7 posts .... hmmm......



Did someone figure a way around the 3 new threads a day limit?

[hulka38]

4. I wish I were that clever. Someone donated to DU and gave me a star.

So I'm rolling now.

[Ravy]

3. Preserving their careers = voting the way their constituents wanted them to?

Hillary gave an AP interview a couple of weeks before the war saying that inspectors needed more time and that Bush had not made the case for military action, yet. This is when France was being vilified for saying the same thing. Rememer "Freedom Fries"?

Many, many people wanted to get more agressively diplomatically to end the Iraq sanctions, and to put weapons inspectors back in. Another UN resolution on top of the 15 that were being ignored would not have helped. It had to have teeth in it, and there are no better teeth in the world than the US threatening military action if Saddam did not comply.

Bush should not have invaded. Bill Clinton was on Larry King saying that Bush should not invade, Hillary was talking to AP saying Bush should not invade. Bush invaded, and now all of a sudden it is all Hillary's fault.

[hulka38]

6. I read your post with an open mind all the way through. Then I got to

"and now all of a sudden it is all Hillary's fault". Did I say that? I have 10 posts. Have I ever wrote that the Iraq war was all Hillary's fault implicitly or explicitly? Clearly, I have not. Stating my opinion that she along with many others bowed to pressure on the IWA is light years from me holding her personally responsible for the invasion of Iraq. How many other straw men do you have set up around here today? Those tactics don't belong on a Democratic discussion board. They degrade debate and argument. Hopefully that wasn't your intention.

[Ravy]

7. I wasn't singling you out. I thought your post was good.

My apologies, I was speaking in generalities about the issue.

[hulka38]

9. Apology accepted Ravy. When I see straw men I see red.

My apologies for the hot response

[Ravy]

11. Not a problem. I can understand how reading it and not being part

of the many heated discussions on here, it was out of context.

I don't generally look at post count. Welcome to DU. We can use people who can discuss an issue without a flamethrower, regardless of which side they take on the issues.

[hulka38]

8. About the substance of your post..

Bush and the neocon's objective was to invade Iraq. The intel was being fixed around the policy as Downing Street later proved. I knew it, I'm sure Hillary knew it and you probably should have known it too. All of the pro-war intel should have been seen from the that perspective. You said the case hadn't been made? To me and many others it hadn't. Just before the invasion Bush had 3/4 of America believing that Saddam was in on 9/11 and a similar percentage believing he was planning a WMD attack on the U.S. I think the case had been made very effectively, though falsely, to most Americans and I would suspect most HRC supporters. The weapons inspector argument is CYA.

[Ravy]

10. There was a lot of things that were made apparent after the IWR vote.

Remember that was before Powell went to the UN and people could see then the internal strife even in the administration. That was before the debunked 16 words in the SOTU. It was before most people ever heard of Joe Wilson. It was before intelligence operatives were telling us that the intel was fixed.

Right after the IWR, the Security Council vote was 10-0. Closer to the time they invaded, Bush and Blair had determined that they could not even get a majority of the Security Council votes. Clearly a *lot* of things came out between the IWR and the invasion.

I am one of a small minority on this board who thinks to this day that the IWR was the right vote, but dreadfully wrong in the execution. Inaction on the IWR had a cost, too. Sanctions were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents.

*Up until the time* of the actual invasion, the IWR was working great. Weapons inspectors were getting more or less overall access to where they wanted to go, and what made it less was just the griping about it. There were U-2 overflights of Iraq to ensure that the weapons were not being moved. Saddam was seeking asylum.

There was no reason to invade. That is where the administration was damnedable wrong. They belong in jail.

[hulka38]

12. Ravy, I really don't recall a sea change in this nation

between the vote and the invasion. I'm sure more suspicious facts debunking their case were coming out. But they weren't front page news. And they were being challenged vigorously by the administration. The country was gearing up for war after the IWR and everyone knew it. The train and the U.S. military had left the station and was headed for Baghdad. I don't recall the major news media challenging the claims that Bush established for any sustained period. The leaders speaking out against the invasion at this time were the same ones who voted no on the IWR. And even they began to switch their rhetoric towards supporting the troops and hoping the operation was a success. The leaders who voted for it were certainly raising red flags about new intel coming to light, at least not publicly. The motives of the Bush administration should have been viewed with deep suspicion from the outset. And the time to stand against the invasion was the IWR.

[Ravy]

14. Well, Bill Clinton spoke out on the eve of the war, and Hillary

talked to the associated press on 3/3/03, just before the invasion saying we needed to continue with the "coerced weapons inspections" and that Bush should wait to get more allies and make his case. Yes, that was against the conventional media coverage of the day, and when Bill pointed that out in the SC debate how he was against the war before it started no one believed him.

People who fail to distinguish between the threat of force, and the use of force can hang their hats on the IWR vote as a vote for the use of force. But if you can distinguish between the two, and read Hillary's floor speech, and John Kerry's... I don't think there is any doubt that they did not view this as telling Bush to send our troops to war. Hillary wrote a letter to Powell also in January urging him to increase the diplomatic efforts and wait for the weapons inspectors to find something or give Iraq a clean bill of health.

But there is another force at work here as well. When US troops are actually in action, once the bombs start, you will not find a lot of outcry from national leaders even if they strongly disagree. Hillary was essentially silent on the issue until December 2003 when she started talking publicly about the way it was handled. I think that is understandable considering their (Clintons') complaints about the Republican public rhetoric during Kosovo.

[hulka38]

17. I think it's clear that Bush was determined to invade Iraq.

Again, a lot of people knew it at the time and I'm convinced that our congressmen and senators did as well. Knowing this, a senator voting yes to give the President authority to use of force, and Bush's rhetoric was clear about how he would use it, wasn't just authorization to threaten to use force but to actually use force. Do you believe that Hillary didn't know Bush was going to invade Iraq? Or that Bush was really interested in what the weapons inspectors were doing apart from helping him make the case for war? With respect, I think you're not seeing the forest through the trees here.

As far as Hillary's and Bill's talking about weapons inspectors and other nuances of the like, you could afford to hedge your bets, throw out caveats and and leave yourself outs if you voted for the IRW and things went south. The Clinton's are renown for being experts at this. At stake was another run at the White House. Bill never spoke out in any forceful or meaningful way against what was clearly a rush to war. His claim that he was always against the war was completely bogus. At the time I kept waiting for him to weigh in strongly. It never came. When Hillary voted for the IWR I knew they were in solidarity and I was gravely disappointed. Ravy, as someone who was for the war, did you believe that Bill was clearly against it?

[sendero]

5. Yeah..

... and look how it all turned out. Those who voted no are looking pretty good right now.

I've long since "forgiven" those who voted yes but later admitted they were wrong. I retain my distrust of those who are still basically "for" the war, the biggest mistake the US has ever made, one we will be paying for forever.

[David Zephyr]

13. Hillary voted to authorize the war because it was popular and she didn't want to look unpatriotic.

Now she wants to hide from her vote to wage war. She can't.

[suston96]

15. She did not vote for war......

Here is what she said before the vote:

"My vote is not, however, a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for uni-lateralism, or for the arrogance of American power or purpose -- all of which carry grave dangers for our nation, for the rule of international law and for the peace and security of people throughout the world.

*******

A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him - use these powers wisely and as a last resort."

But keep blaming Hillary Clinton instead of a lying president and his henchmen. Better to win an election than to fix the crumbling constitutional process that allows this fatal flaw in the constitutional system of checks and balances.

[NoPasaran]

16. She also claims her vote on IKEA was not a vote for crappy furniture!

How can supporters of such a DRANO be tolerated on a "progressive" massage board?