Of course. Don’t misunderstand me, pm, that’s the right thing to do in discussing future Iraq strategies. But this is about the campaign for president, and imho US voters would be ill advised to disregard the question who has been right and who wrong on this important issue when weighing the qualifications of a candidate. It would be nice to see a person at the helm of the US for a change who has shown sound reasoning in the past.

I have to agree with her here. One doesn’t put out a fire by arguing over who held the match / spilled the kerosene / fanned the flames.

Well, that’s a diplomatic way of saying ‘get over it’. Clinton wants the public to discuss how to get out of the mess and ignore whose misjudgement was responsible for this crazy adventure in the first place? Yeah, sure, she would love the voters to simply forget that it would have been much harder for Bush to get approval for his Iraq fantasy if prominent Senator Clinton would have spoken against it. But it’s on the record, it will be a campaign topic and her incredible lame excuse won’t satisfy many liberal voters. All the millions in her war chest won’t get this out of the debate.

Nic, read her statement another time, with more suspicion. Essentially, she hasn’t really said she’s sorry. What she said is something like ‘I only voted this way cause the pres lied to me. Everybody else would have done the same under those circumstances’ (ignoring that there have been Dems who showed better judgement). She did never say she didn’t look into the issue deep enough, or anything else that might be construed as if she made an error. She regrets Bush lied, great. And she take responsibility, but doesn’t say she did anything wrong. How lame is this?

I’d like to know the reasons for other people, why they supported the war and if they did any reading about the history of the area, the history of Iraq or took the time to study the recent history of the region…or did everyone just think “well, GW is the Presidnet, he must know what he is doing.”

It seemed to me (and I ain’t the brightest buld in the lamp) that everything the administration was saying was factually wrong and historically ignorant. I read one or two histories of Iraq and looked into the Iran, Iraq war a bit. Adding o that was a clas I had in college about the imperial actions fo Britain and the US in the middle east, especiallly in forming the current countires and boundaries.

And one more thought, you never know the outcome of a violent situation, and along the way a lot of horrible things happen to people that you don’t control. War should be the very, very, very last resort and yet many people in this country seem to think it is all glory and only bad guys get blown up real good. Can any on of you who supported the war tell me you think our actions were worth say, 300 children being killed in Iraq? Would you feel the same way if a large part of your family was accidently killed if say, Canada decided to liberate America? Do you think you would say “well, sure my kids had to die and my brother had to have his arms blown off and my mother lost her legs, but Canada had to do it of the US would have (add nebulous threat here)…”

What reasosn did people have for supporting the war?

Joe, I think criticism of Clinton has more to do with just that fact that she voted for the war and only belatedly admitted that it was a mistake to do so. I think much of the anger surrounding Clinton from opponents of the war comes from:

1) She criticized in very strong terms those Democrats who were calling for withdrawal 2 years ago. Unlike Clinton, Senator Russ Feingold didn’t vote to go to war with Iraq, and he’s been a consistent critic of the war. When he proposed a timetable for withdrawal, one of the most forceful critics of the resolution was Senator Clinton, who even went to such lengths as adopting the Bush Administration’s rhetoric to criticize her fellow Democrat.

2) Why now? Why has Clinton chosen to admit she was wrong to vote for the war now in January of 2007 when she could have done so in January of 2006?

The answer is obvious. Political opportunism. The American people have turned against the Iraq War in droves, and Clinton is right there, tailoring her political position according to the prevailing winds of voter sentiment.

Call me a cynic, but I think the results of the midterm election had more to do with Senator Clinton’s change of heart than an honest reappraisal of the war. What if instead of picking up 6 seats in the Senate and 30 seats in the House, the Democrats had picked up 0 seats in the Senate and only 1 or 2 seats in the House, thereby assuring continued Republican control of both houses of congress? I’d be willing to bet that had that happened, Senator Clinton would still be supporting the war in Iraq.

The way I see it is, if we’re going to criticize President Bush and the Republican Party for the War in Iraq, we need to continue criticizing the Democratic Party. Democrats such as Senator Lieberman and Hillary Clinton are EVERY bit as responsible for this war as their Republican colleagues who supported it.

Arguing that the President “misused his authority” sounds like a cop out to me. She says that she takes “full responsibility” for her vote. But doesn’t taking full responsibility for her vote mean admitting that she was wrong and apologizing to voters, as Senator Edwards did?

I’m glad that Hillary Clinton has finally come around and seen the light. But jumping on the anti-war bandwagon 4 into the war isn’t leadership. It’s pandering.

There are other worthy candidates that will be overlooked because of Hillary and Obama. That is a great loss for my party and the voters.

Exactly those triangulations make me think that Clinton actually has a weak standing. ‘Triangulated’ opinions offered by politicians haven’t exactly been enthusiastically embraced by the population recently. Such a calculated positioning seems to be more of a weakness than an asset.

This would put Hillary even more on the defensive regarding her Iraq war vote. Having been wrong on this most important issue is her biggest handicap. How would she want to convince voters she’s the right choice when there’s another popular candidate who was right on the war? And she even would have to show restraint in attacking Al, because it wouldn’t look good if she smeared her own husband’s VP. Though the polls don’t reflect it yet, maybe because Gore hasn’t announced his candidacy, I’m sure Al would win a significant lead over Hillary in the primary.

Gore for president!

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