Markos on Hillary and the IWR -- Deja Vu all over again

[beachmom]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/14/12116/1064#c182

I'm maybe 50% with Markos here, but I can't embrace it completely:

Clinton cast a vote that has led to one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in this nation's history -- a vote that even cursory skepticism would've counseled a vote against handing Bush "authority" to proceed.

Most of the presidential candidates have gotten the "I fracked up the vote" stuff last year. It's not the most compelling tack to take -- if their judgment was so poor as to vote for the darn thing, why should we promote them. We talk about DC being a place where people fail upward. Do we really want to encourage that within our own party?

But in any case, pro-war Dems who have unequivocally admitted their mistake don't have to offer tortured justifications for their war.



Sorry, but nobody in the '08 field, save Kucinnich, voted against the IWR. They either voted for it or weren't in the Senate. If everyone listened to Kerry on Imus, he talked about his long conversation with Powell the night before the vote, and how he thought the Bush 41 crowd had won the day, and that they would go through the U.N. and not do anything unilaterally. He said it was a misjudgment, and I believe him. And, frankly, I wasn't angry about the vote when it happened -- I wanted U.N. weapons inspecters back in Iraq to make sure they didn't have anything. This is all because of Obama's presense in the race, but -- he didn't have to log a vote just like Howard Dean, so I just don't think the comparison works. Hillary should have been smart enough to say what Edwards and Kerry said well over a year ago, and now she just comes across as being like Bush, who can't admit a mistake. So that part of it, I agree. Still, I commented that current Iraq plans are more important than history.

[blm]

1. He should read the Downing Street Memos - they proved Bush didn't CARE what any IWR said.

He was going in anyway, and even if the IWR was written to demand proof of WMD's, what would BushInc have done? Made sure to get the WMDs planted FIRST. Having the inspectors in for the two months prior proved there were no WMDs, but had Bush felt the NEED to plant them brfore invasion, they certainly would have and THEN where would the debate be?

We'd be screwed, blued, and tattooed. The same chaos and tragedy would be going on, but BushInc would always have the ability to point to the WMDs they 'found' luckily before Saddam used them against us or gave them to Bin Laden.

Sorry, Markos, but that is the truth. The IWR didn't take this nation to war, and NO resolution would have stopped BushInc.

[karynnj]

2. What's really clear is that failing to say that,

she is held more responsible than Edwards, who co-sponsored it and who defended the war itself for months after it was known beyond a doubt that there were no weapons of mass destruction.

It would have been interesting had she in early 2005 moved quickly to say that the vote was wrong. I actually worried she would - and that she would try to further confuse Kerry's position because of the GC fiasco. This is an instance where I question the Clintons' vaunted political skills. What I don't question is their power and control. But, if she would have moved that way, I wonder if she would have been treated like Edwards, who was absolved immediately and not even given a penance or like Kerry who had to repeatedly say he regretted the vote - even though he spoke against the war before it started. Hillary was in between them in 2002 - 2003.

[TayTay]

3. There were threads in there dumping on Kerry

that had the basic assumption that if the Senator had only voted against the IWR, he would have won in 2004. This is not based on logic or a review of the facts. Kerry got 95% of the avowed anti-war vote. It is hard to see that there was a person interested in voting in America who didn't hear the 'wrong war, wrong time, wrong place' phrase that Kerry employed frequently during that campaign.

This is also wishful thinking on the part of lefties who desperately want to believe that a stronger anti-war candidate would have had a 'landslide' win. There is no statistical proof of that. (The approval of the war in Nov of 2004 was 51% and the percentage who didn't want to pull out of Iraq just yet and who wanted to give the US more time over there to settle the situation was even higher.)

This is revisionist history that hurts people going forward. Democrats are deluding themselves if they think that Kerry lost because of the war. There simply is no proof of that. This is not the lesson to talk about going forward, the lesson is that we need a functioning government that tells the truth, understands that war is a last resort to be engaged in when all else fails and that there is a continuing need for oversight and accountability on the part of all branches of government.

"Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it."

[beachmom]

4. Yep -- my 50% agreement with Markos is only on Hillary's lame

response about the IWR. I did engage the Hillary supporters, however, on Mrs. Clinton's insufficient Iraq plan. She needs to throw it out and build a new one.

Kerry lost mostly because of fear -- perpetuated by the Bush administration and Osama bin laden at the end.

[ginnyinWI]

17. it seems as if she is striking poses for the sake of votes.

I don't know how she really thinks about it, but the appearance is of a politician who is maintaining a position for the sake of politics. And that's bad! Unless she can explain it in a way that makes people believe that she in sincere, she won't win hearts.

I agree with your last point--it was more about * and being "at war" and being afraid to change commanders for a great many people. Bin Laden's tape certainly didn't help. People should have realized that bin Laden wanted * to win. (JK won, but not by enough to overcome the fraud.)

[ray of light]

5. I'm just sick of it.

They have no justification to continue the whole IWR thing. It's worse than talking to a deaf person because a deaf person is trying to hear you (ie reading lips, getting hearing aids, using sign language). but with Kos and those people, they hear what they want to and they're so busy going "we were right...we were right...you guys lack moral fortitude.." or whatever they say, that they continually ignore the facts laid before them: dsm, (unknown) hidden evidence, cherry-picked facts, and even Colin Powell was seen by most Dems as honest and reliable but he faild them.

And...besides, if they voted with the assumption that there COULD BE WMD and Sadam was willing to use them, then maybe they voted with the intent to prevent millions of deaths here and around the world.

Kos likes to say they were playing with polls. I however disagree. Each and everyone of those people felt the weight of the world on their shoulders and it was a miserable time to be a Senator (or Rep.)...to actually vote on allowing the President to talk to other countries about war is a terrible, terrible thing to have to do.

[beachmom]

6. Weirdly enough, the Hillary supporters are thanking me for sticking

to facts. I think talking about Iraq NOW is what should be talked about. I also think all candidates should look at what Kerry is doing in the Senate, and ignore Biden (partitioning Iraq will be a disaster -- causing 1 civil war to become 3 civil wars) as to what to do about Iraq.

[ProSense]

7. Excellent points Tay and Ray of Light

I hope you'll make them in that diary.

[ray of light]

11. not this time. I'm too angry to post there.

[ProSense]

8. I posted a comment

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/2/14/12116/1064/542#c542

[sandnsea]

9. Some Dems did support war

The same Dems who orchestrated the vote in 2002 to get it out of the way. I think that would be Hillary, specifically. They refused to confront the Bush discrepancies of the inspections, refused to be a loud and strong voice against the actual invasion. They let Bush get away with characterizing that vote as a vote for war, despite Bush saying it wasn't at the time. It's unfortunate that Kerry's vote is going to be characterized the same way, because he was much more apprehensive about his vote and spoke against the invasion and Bush arrogance. But he didn't take on the war wing at the time, and he should have. As far as I'm concerned, Hillary is stuck in her own political triangulating just as she should be.

[Dr Ron]

10. Big difference between Hllary and Kerry

Both voted for the IWR, but Kerry spoke out against going to war before the war. Hillary is sounding a lot like Kerry at times now but it hardly means the same thing when she does it years later.

I had a post on this a couple of weeks ago:

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=929

[Inuca]

14. I saw short fragments of H's 02 Senate speech

on Hannity of all places. I had no idea what she said at the time. I am sure the snippets were chosen to make the point that she is "flip-flopping", but still, she sounded strongly in support, and with no doubts about the vote she was getting ready to cast. Contrast this with what Kerry said at the same time.

[Dr Ron]

15. Two articles yesterday with Hillary Quotes

I saw two articles on line last night with lots of Hillary quotes. I haven't had time to really go thru them to see if they will change my impression on Hillary.

Salon has one which from skimming it shows she did support the war.

David Brooks of all people has a column defending her, saying that she wasn't a big supporter of the war. . I'll have to take a closer look but obviously support form Brooks is hardly convincing. Still it might be interesting to read the quotes he came up with to see if they provide any further insight into her views.

[Dr Ron]

12. Ariana Gets Into The Act

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/team-hillarys-latest-exc_b_41155.html

Unfortunately she drags Kerry into it by comparing Hillary's comments on the war to Kerry's statement on the $87 billion vote. The two just aren't analogous. While said poorly Kerry's position of voting for it and then against it made sense as there were differences over how this money would be raised.

[emulatorloo]

13. I didn't hear the Imus interview, but I am glad to hear Kerry gave us "behind the scenes" of IWR

It sounds like he said pretty much what I have always assumed:

That Colin Powell gave them assurances that Bush wasn't going to do something crazy, that they were saber-rattling, and that all diplomatic resources were going to be used.

As Ray of Light says, The IWR Litmus test people don't want to hear this, they don't want to hear abou the rigged intel, they don't learn anything from DSM and Libby trial and Doug Feith revelations. While I have always been proud of those who voted against it, I can understand why others voted for it -- they were used by the admin, they were given promises by Powell. Unfortunately, Powell was out of the loop.

But I am glad to hear about it from Kerry. . .I was just thinking the other day when DU was experiencing IWR mania -- DAMN, someday somebody out to write the book about what really happened behind the scenes of IWR.

[Dr Ron]

16. Some good background here

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=17

The actual post responds to Kos misquotation of Kerry but it includes a lot of older posts with bacfkgrounds on Kerry's position on the IWR and the war.

I didn't see Imus, but beside Colin Powell's assurances there were Bush's own assurances--which turned out to be lies. Kerry can be faulted to some degree for believing Bush's lies, but Kerry has admitted he was wrong on this and this is hardly the same as supporting the war as some claimed.

[ginnyinWI]

18. people don't understand.

They say that they knew that * was lying, etc. so why didn't Senators know. But the Senators had the chance to talk directly to people and look them in the eye and based their votes more on that kind of thing than just assuming * was lying--in other words, based their votes on facts they could gather rather than guesses. Some, like Kennedy didn't vote for it--didn't trust the adm. I wish they all would have been as skeptical.

Kerry on Imus was repeating pretty much what he's said on this before: that he'd taken the time to go to the Pentagon and talk to people, and got assurances directly from Colin Powell, and felt that there would be constraints put on * and the neocons. He felt that it would be handled through the U.N. and the "Bush 41" people. His floor speech outlines exactly what he thought he was voting for. But a vote is a vote, alas.