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Bill Clinton, An Embarrassment »

Clintons Against the War Before For It

Posted by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist in At TMV.
Jan 13th, 2008 | Comments

“What Ifs” proliferate in any discussion of how the Iraq war might have turned out differently, indeed whether there would have been a war at all.

At the head of my list is what would have happened had influential Democrats opposed the war. They didn’t, of course, and the rest was history.

This makes Bill Clinton’s remarks that he doubts the sincerity of Barack Obama’s opposition to the war so ridiculous since Clinton and wife Hillary never raised a peep by way of objection in the run-up to the invasion.

Richard Durbin, Obama’s Democratic colleague from Illinois and second-ranking party leader in the Senate, tells The Politico that the former president needs to lay off:

“It was not easy to be against that war back when we cast that vote in October of 2002. I was one of 23 who voted against the war. Barack was supportive — one of the few candidates speaking out strongly against it in Illinois.

“If President Clinton had opposed that war as strongly as Barack Obama at the time, it would have helped a lot of us who had voted against authorizing an invasion.”

For the record, I initially supported the war, albeit reluctantly, because I bought into the Bush administration’s lies.

For Bill and Hillary Clinton to suggest that their support was anything but unequivocal is not just disingenuous. It smacks of a sort of desperation.

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DLS

Bill Clinton remains the toxic waste he was in the 1990s.

Rudi

LOL Shaun - You must now suffer from ABC(Anything But Clinton) on top of your BDS. But Billyboy was the first black POTUS...
For him to talk in Rovian code words is a disgrace, but the Clinton's and integrity are mutually exclusive.

Dave_Schuler

The only permanent conviction that either Bill or Hillary Clinton has is that one of the other of them should hold political office. Is there a more credible explanation for the vagaries of their opinions about Iraq over the last five years?

cosmoetica

Shaun: 'For the record, I initially supported the war, albeit reluctantly, because I bought into the Bush administration’s lies.'

Ditto for me, Shaun, but there's a big diff. Neither you nor I had access to classified docs and unclassified info from other intel sources that laid great doubt on the WMD claims. Hillary & the Dems did. She's a hack, and one with no sense of decency.

She is spineless, like the rest of the D's who supported the war and shd have known better.

DLS

Hillary Dillary Dock,
That witch would turn back the clock,
With utopian dreams and socialist schemes,
And the nation much deeper in hock!

-- DLS, 1993, true more than ever today as well

DLS

Nearly everyone supported the war. Many liberals did so begrudgingly, as a dirty job that was cheaper and more easily done now than later. But they were not big fans of the war and at least one of them said something to me that I believe others on the Left share: "Just show us the WMDs."

The tasteless looking-for-the-WMDs-under-the-table joke by Bush was what began to sour me on him.

Idiosyncrat

Shaun, there's no shame in having supported the war based on the evidence that was presented at the time.

shaun

Cosmo:

Excellent point.

Idiosyncrat:

No, I feel no shame.

StockBoySF

I'm not a Hillary supporter... but I can forgive her Iraq war vote. Bush clearly mislead the country.

I actually opposed the war at the time because I thought Bush was misleading us. (As you might recall millions of people all over the world marched in the streets- numerous times- to protest any planned invasion). Bush was pushing for the war against terrorists when we all knew the terrorists were elsewhere- also Bush did not allow the UN weapons inspectors to complete their job- and he had earlier said that they should complete their job- lastly when Bush said (effectively, I'm paraphrasing), "Trust us, we have evidence that Iraq has WMDs and once we get in we can show you." That last insane logic from Bush really put me over the top and clinched his untruthfulness for me. If Bush had evidence, then why couldn't he show us before the war? And why was he shoving the UN inspectors out before they could complete their job? the only reason I could come up with is that he had his own reasons for invading Iraq and if he allowed the UN to stay in and they issued a final report saying that Saddam had no WMDs nor was trying to reconstitute its WMDs programs, then Bush could not have gone into Iraq.

But anyway, I can not forgive Hillary her Iran vote last fall since I see the game as the same old Bush game (as with Iraq- knowingly misleading the country)- and she fell for it this time, just like she fell for Bush's Iraq lies. It's just more of the same with Hillary. Fortunately Bush can't invade Iran as easily as he went into Iraq.

Don't misunderstand me- I didn't much care for Saddam, but we had effectively castrated him with the no-fly zones and all those sanctions. So I thought he was contained and was not threat. And I believe Iran should be dealt with now (and dealt with effectively), though it is Bush's comments (and his subsequent refusal to even talk to them) in 2002 about Iran, Iraq and N. Korea being the axis of evil that pushed Iran over the edge.

StockBoySF

Of course Billary will distort the issues surrounding the Iraq war and their support because they can't win on the facts. All they can do is keep the issue open and muddled so people can't finally make up their minds as to what Billary actually did and did not do.

This issue is clearly one of Hillary's biggest liabilities but I see her prolonging it more than she should. Though I suppose it could be smart strategy be pre-emptively bringing it up- she gets her side (untruths) out there first, rather than have her opponents get the real record which she s forced to respond to.

It doesn't matter that Bill's statements are crazy- that's not the point nor the strategy.

If you want this same sort of attitude in the WH in the next administration, then by all means go ahead and vote for Hillary. You get two polarizers for the price of one- it's a great sale and the best part is they're at 90's prices!

Rudi

DLS says:
The tasteless looking-for-the-WMDs-under-the-table joke by Bush was what began to sour me on him.

But that sounds like BDS...

DLS

BDS is real, Rudi. (It's Reagan Derangement Syndrome on steroids.)

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