 ABC News' David Chalian Reports: As Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to assess a possible presidential candidacy and the contours of a Democratic nomination fight, she has taken another step away from her 2002 vote authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq by saying that she "wouldn't have voted that way" if she knew everything she knows now.
| If I knew everything I know now, I wouldn't have loaned money to that hooker for her mother's operation... |
Clinton has often been asked if she regrets her vote authorizing military action and she usually answers that question with an artful dodge, saying that she accepts responsibility for the vote and suggesting that if the Senate had all the information it has today (no WMD, troubled post-war military planning, etc. . .), there would never have been a vote on the Senate floor. However, she has never gone as far as some of her potential rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination -- who also voted for the war -- and called her vote a mistake or declared that she would have cast her vote differently with all the facts presently available to her -- until now.
| Here's an interesting thought: President Bush next month sends an additional 30,000 combat troops to Iraq. He sends the greater part of the Navy to keep them company, and a considerable portion of the Air Force. Rather than wasting their time trying to avoid killing people, they move from city to city within Iraq, demanding surrender. Surrender involves giving up all the resident bad guys and the city remaining responsible for the absence or good behavior of any bad boyz who aren't given up. The first such city - let's postulate Qaim - sez to get bent, so we level it and deport all the inhabitants to Shiite country, where they either learn to behave or they'll be killed and eaten. Rather than moving on to the next Sunni burg, we visit al-Kut next, level it, and deport the inhabitants to Ramadi. As long as we're in the neighborhood, we demand Ramadi's surrender. Once the first city surrenders - in this case, probably Ramadi - further visits to Iraqi cities result in the bad guyz being given up and the city fathers ensuring good behavior. Within six months all is peaceful and calm in the Land of the Two Rivers and the Qaeda boyz and revanchist Baathists' skeletons are starting to fall apart on their gallows. We declare victory, inform the Iraqi government that we're leaving but if they screw around we'll be back and dish out more of the same. The response of the Iraqi government is "Yes, sir, thank you, sir. Would you like some cut-rate oil, sir?" At that point, I suspect Senator Clinton will discover that she was in favor of attending to the Iraq problem all along. But perhaps I'm becoming cynical in my dotage. |
| Beast. I am positively wracked with compassion 'n stuff. |
| Here's a hanky and the smelling salts, ya old softy. |
This morning on NBC's "Today" show, Sen. Clinton was asked about her 2002 vote and offered a slightly evolved answer. "Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote," she said in her usual refrain before adding, "and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way."
| "No, no! Not me! Certainly not!" |
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) have both publicly declared regret for their votes for the war and have become advocates for withdrawing American troops from Iraq sooner rather than later. Sen. Barack Obama, the freshman Senator from Illinois who is considering a presidential run and who may pose the single biggest threat to Clinton's bid for the nomination, wasn't in the Senate in 2002, but declared his opposition to the war at that time as a Senate candidate.
Sen. Clinton has long been viewed as potentially vulnerable on her left flank with regards to the war in a Democratic nomination fight where primary voters and caucus-goers tend to represent the more liberal wing of the party. Clinton has made strides over the last year in speeches, committee hearings, letters to her constituents, and television appearances to criticize the Bush administration's general handling of the war and specifically calling for former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation.
The Senator's comments on "Today" seem to continue a pattern of further distancing herself from her 2002 vote and an attempt to shore up that potentially vulnerable left flank on the issue that is likely to dominate the 2008 race for the White House as it did in 2004 and 2006.
In a statement to ABC News, Sen. Clinton's press secretary Philippe Reines didn't specifically address Clinton's remarks that she wouldn't have voted for the war, but instead referred to the Senator's previous comments about what would have been the likely overall congressional rejection of the war.
"As she has long and often said, Senator Clinton believes that if we knew then what we know now, Congress never would have been asked to give the President authority to use force against Iraq, and if the President still asked Congress despite a lack of evidence, the Congress would not have agreed," said Reines. |
